Basic research on developing the pandemic vaccine has put more than the virus under the microscope.
The ‘Group Science’ has spawned new and exciting knowledge as well as new research tools, technologies, and methods as well as an unprecedented volume of research publications and competing ideas. The vaccine development and vaccination delivery protocols, however, have revealed deep fissures of disagreement in our beliefs, values, and images of science as a way of knowing. Faith and trust in science has challenged some, been broken for others. The Invited Symposium brings together four scholars with expertise in philosophical, psychological, and/or pedagogical perspectives for a moderated dialog that will build off of prerecorded presentations. Working from different couplings of the 3P perspectives, the panelists will illustrate scholarship on issues regarding the limits, acceptance, doubt, and outright rejection of science. During the panel discussion a Moderated Chat Room will be coordinated. Trust and Truth/Post Trust issues in science and science education are not new challenges. Recent relevant controversies and case studies include GMO foods, Creation Science, Young Earth, MMR Jabs/Shots, Electromagnetic waves from towers. But that pandemic is a new context that sheds light on the nuances of how science and applied science work and work differently. New tools, technologies, and theories have and will continue to shape ‘what counts’ as scientific evidence and explanations, and best practices. Science is inherently messy and increasingly so with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary contexts; e.g. climate risk management. Scientific inquiry is a struggle that occurs at the fringes of building and refining new knowledge or alternative views of established knowledge. Such struggles are not typically found/discussed in our formal and informal educational offerings.
The panel will be charged with examining how the messiness, competing views, and struggles of science might be better communicated, appreciated, and hopefully understood.