Public engagement and argumentation in science

Silvia Ivani; Catarina Dutilh Novaes

doi:10.1007/s13194-022-00480-y

Public engagement and argumentation in science

Silvia Ivani
, Catarina Dutilh Novaes^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Reasoning and Argumentation

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Public engagement is one of the fundamental pillars of the European programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020. The programme encourages engagement that not only fosters science education and dissemination, but also promotes two-way dialogues between scientists and the public at various stages of research. Establishing such dialogues between different groups of societal actors is seen as crucial in order to attain epistemic as well as social desiderata at the intersection between science and society. However, whether these dialogues can actually help attaining these desiderata is far from obvious. This paper discusses some of the costs, risks, and benefits of dialogical public engagement practices, and proposes a strategy to analyse these argumentative practices based on a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange. As a case study, we discuss the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, arguably a result of suboptimal public engagement, and show how the proposed model can shed new light on the problem.

Original language	English
Article number	54
Pages (from-to)	1-29
Number of pages	29
Journal	European Journal for Philosophy of Science
Volume	12
Issue number	3
Early online date	9 Aug 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00480-y
Publication status	Published - Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research is generously supported by the European Research Council with grant ERC-2017-CoG 771074 for the project ‘The Social Epistemology of Argumentation’. We thank the SEA team at VU Amsterdam, and in particular Caglar Dede, for their contributions to the research leading to this paper. We also thank two anonymous referees and audiences in Helsinki and at the EPSA conference in Turin for their insightful comments. The initial idea for the paper was proposed by Silvia Ivani; after that, both authors contributed equally during the writing process.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

Funding

This research is generously supported by the European Research Council with grant ERC-2017-CoG 771074 for the project ‘The Social Epistemology of Argumentation’. We thank the SEA team at VU Amsterdam, and in particular Caglar Dede, for their contributions to the research leading to this paper. We also thank two anonymous referees and audiences in Helsinki and at the EPSA conference in Turin for their insightful comments. The initial idea for the paper was proposed by Silvia Ivani; after that, both authors contributed equally during the writing process.

Funders	Funder number
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme	771074
European Research Council

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

Argumentation
Public engagement
Responsible research and innovation
Trust in science
Vaccine hesitancy

Access to Document

10.1007/s13194-022-00480-y

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Cite this

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title = "Public engagement and argumentation in science",

abstract = "Public engagement is one of the fundamental pillars of the European programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020. The programme encourages engagement that not only fosters science education and dissemination, but also promotes two-way dialogues between scientists and the public at various stages of research. Establishing such dialogues between different groups of societal actors is seen as crucial in order to attain epistemic as well as social desiderata at the intersection between science and society. However, whether these dialogues can actually help attaining these desiderata is far from obvious. This paper discusses some of the costs, risks, and benefits of dialogical public engagement practices, and proposes a strategy to analyse these argumentative practices based on a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange. As a case study, we discuss the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, arguably a result of suboptimal public engagement, and show how the proposed model can shed new light on the problem.",

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KW - Trust in science

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Public engagement and argumentation in science

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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