Abstract
This chapter offers a perspective that combats both cynical and idealist forms of public engagement. Engaging in a conversation with the “demarcation problem,” this chapter suggests that a rhetorical standpoint helps reframe the difference between expert and nonexpert discourse and alleviates the cynical mindset. This conceptual development invites us to reconsider the authority of publics to deliberate on technical and scientific issues. Following our discussion of demarcation, ending with the collision between Kuhn and Popper, we examine how demarcation is enacted in legal settings. Our final task in this chapter is to briefly review and synthesize some of the arguments we have made in previous chapters and suggest that a rhetorical sensibility can assist in producing more ecologically valid public engagement with science.
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Notes
- 1.
The most authoritative and superlative overview of this case can be located in Jasanoff’s Science at the Bar.
- 2.
More specifically the Daubert challenges, which is a hodgepodge of social constructivist, Popperian, and positivist benchmarks for determining expertise.
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Lerner, A.S., Gehrke, P.J. (2018). Scientific Expertise and Engagement Experts. In: Organic Public Engagement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64397-7_5
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