Tag Archives: scientific controversies

Controversy as a teaching tool

Students like learning about controversies, but there are some traps.

Decades ago, in my first year of full-time university teaching, I taught “The environmental context,” which was about the social aspects of environmental issues. Some students in the class were doing an environmental science degree; others were doing an arts degree. To appeal to both sorts of students, I built the class around several controversial topics with both scientific and social dimensions.

            One of them was nuclear power. I was an opponent, and so were nearly all the students. To challenge them, one week I invited an experienced figure from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission to give a pro-nuclear guest presentation. Several of the students tried to challenge him, but they could hardly dent his arguments.

            From this experience, I learned several things. One was that controversial topics gain students’ interest. Conflict is well known to stimulate interest. Because conflict attracts audiences, it is one of the “news values” journalists and editors use to decide what is newsworthy. In this respect, students are just another sort of audience.

            But there was a problem with nuclear power as a topic. Most of the students already knew they were opposed to it. The trouble was they felt they didn’t need to do anything further once they knew which side of the controversy they supported. They hadn’t studied pro-nuclear arguments, so the pro-nuclear speaker out-argued them.

            I watched this with some amusement. To develop rebuttals to pro-nuclear arguments, I had studied them in depth. I could readily see possible challenges to our visiting speaker, but kept quiet, which worked out well. The students learned a lesson.

            There was another problem. Many students try to figure out their teacher’s viewpoint. When doing assignments, they say what they think their teacher wants to hear. This is instrumental behaviour to get better grades. The trouble was that they knew I was anti-nuclear, so that’s the perspective most of them took in their assignments.

            I told them that if they wanted to support their views effectively, they needed to study the views of opponents. But few took this to heart. It’s pretty hard to spend hours poring over views you disagree with. It’s well documented that most people prefer to read about views that reinforce their own.

            To counter this, in a later year I introduced a different sort of controversial issue: fluoridation, the process of adding the element fluoride to public water supplies to reduce tooth decay in children. At the time, Australia was highly fluoridated but there was little attention to the issue. The students were in a quandary. They knew the official line: fluoridation was good. But they weren’t sure what an environmental perspective might be.

            Several of them tried to figure out my view, namely whether I was pro or antifluoride. I told them I didn’t have a strong view — I was just studying the debate. That was true, and conveniently it meant students couldn’t decide how to please me, their teacher, by adopting my view. Because the students didn’t all agree with each other, we had some stimulating discussions in class.

            Years later, I taught a class titled “Scientific and technological controversy.” I found a good way to stimulate student interest. They worked in groups to investigate controversies. They could choose who to work with, and each group chose what controversy to study. This general approach worked well in other classes, including ones where disagreements were not so salient.

Marking

I’ve always wanted to treat students fairly, but it’s not easy to avoid bias. When marking assignments, my judgement could be unconsciously influenced when I knew whose essay I was marking. I found a good way to counter this. I asked the students to put their student numbers on their essays but not their names. After marking all the essays, I could match each one to the student’s name.

            There remained a different problem. If students thought they knew what I wanted to hear — for example, being anti-nuclear — they might adapt their assignments accordingly. Some of them told me they did this in other classes. The solution was to get someone else to mark their assignments, such as a different tutor in the same class.

            One problem remained for which there was no obvious solution. On many controversial topics, there is a dominant perspective and a dissident perspective. Examples include fluoridation and vaccination. Few students will take the risk of supporting the dissident perspective unless they know whoever marks their assignments will be sympathetic to it.

Goals

Thinking about what students should learn about controversies raises a more general issue: what should anyone know about controversies? Time is limited, and it’s impossible to study lots of controversies in depth. Even to get to the bottom of a single one requires a major effort. What can be done?

            Some people take a shortcut. They adopt the position of authorities or the groups with the most power and influence. This makes sense in many cases. For example, is the universe expanding? Nearly all cosmologists say so, so why not believe them? But it can be useful to know that there are a few dissidents, ones with credentials and publications and university positions. One option is to accept the standard position but be open to being wrong.

            Whether the universe is expanding is contested mainly within scientific circles, and has little relevance to everyday life. It’s different with issues like climate change, abortion, nuclear power, euthanasia, GMOs and vaccination. These have obvious social, political and health implications. They raise ethical concerns.

            In each of such issues, there is evidence on each side, and sometimes there are multiple “sides.” But there is something extra. Many of those involved have a stake in the outcome. Sometimes it’s jobs and funding. Almost always, it involves status. And it involves psychological commitment. If you’ve been campaigning for or against fluoridation for years, it’s hard to admit you’ve been wrong.

            There’s so much to learn about controversies. Studying them is one way to do it. Another is to get involved, taking a side and trying to engage with those on the other side. If students ever do this, they’ll learn far more than from any class.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au
Publications on scientific and technological controversies

Thanks to Olga Kuchinskaya, Julia LeMonde, Alison Moore and Erin Twyford for useful comments.

In praise of scholarly values

Even for a critic of academia, scholarly values are worth defending.

In the half century of my academic career, I’ve repeatedly studied and exposed shortcomings in academic systems and behaviour. Problems include bias, misrepresentation, suppression of dissent, and unquestioning service to vested interests such as the military. This is not to mention bitter and destructive interpersonal and organisational politics. It is safe to say there are lots of negatives in academic life.

            In recent years, though, I’ve come to a greater appreciation of scholarly values. These values include respect for evidence and arguments, willingness to address the views of others, and the freedom to investigate and speak out about sensitive topics.

            Much of my research has been about public scientific controversies such as over nuclear power, pesticides and fluoridation. These provide a window into some of the most extreme behaviour by researchers, administrators and outside groups. However, it was only when I started studying the Australian vaccination debate that the importance of scholarly values really hit home. (This was years before Covid came on the scene.)

Ad hominem unlimited

Let’s start with respect for evidence and arguments. Scholars, ideally, engage with each other’s work by addressing, contesting and debating facts, methods, theories and perspectives. It is widely considered improper to openly criticise researchers as individuals. Behind the scenes, in private conversations, many researchers, including top ones, can be harshly critical of their opponents. Ian Mitroff in his classic book The Subjective Side of Science found that, in private, leading moon scientists would make derogatory comments about researchers with contrary views. However, personal attacks in the open literature are rare. Most scientific disputes are carried out in a seemingly respectful fashion.

            Outside scholarly forums, things can be much rougher. In the Australian vaccination debate, personal slurs are commonplace on blogs, Facebook pages and in some mass media outlets. Enough people in the debate have been sufficiently nasty to degrade the tone and deter others from participating.

            Although I engaged in the debate as a sociologist and defender of free speech, I became a regular target of ad hominem comments. Here’s a typical one: “I’d be embarrassed for a schoolkid that lazy or stupid. For a professional scholar, it’s gobsmacking. What a moron.”

            I get a laugh out of comments like these but abuse is not always funny. Many prominent women commentators regularly receive threats of rape or murder. This is remote from scholarly decorum.

Point-scoring

Many partisans in scientific controversies identify some mistake or shortcoming in the opponent’s case and seize on it, as if a single mistake or logical flaw invalidates the entire case. For example, pro-vaccination campaigners regularly refer to alleged fraud by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, implying that this discredits all criticisms of vaccination. For serious scholars, using this sort of point-scoring technique should be an embarrassment. It would be like discrediting a social theory because a leading theorist allegedly plagiarised.

Presenting contrary arguments

In philosophy, it is common to carefully present the arguments supporting a contrary view, critically examine them and, if possible, demolish them in terms of logic and evidence. This approach can be applied in examining controversial and provocative topics, as in Aaron James’ book Assholes.

            In many public controversies, this willingness to engage with the opponent’s arguments is sadly lacking. In the vaccination debate, each side presents evidence and arguments supporting its own position and attacking the opponent’s position. I am yet to discover a partisan on either side who presents the opponent’s argument in a fair fashion. The usual approach is to say, “Here are my strong points and there are your weak points,” with no acknowledgement of one’s own weak points or the opponent’s strong points.

            There is a reason for this. In polarised controversies, making any admission of weakness may be seized upon by opponents and used relentlessly. Many campaigners never admit a weakness or a source of bias, instead focusing exclusively on the weaknesses and biases of the opponent. In contrast, a good scholar should be willing to acknowledge weaknesses and to be open about possible sources of bias, in what is called reflexivity.

Academic freedom

Scholars like to imagine they can undertake investigations into controversial areas and be protected from adverse consequences. The reality is that few scholars ever tackle really sensitive topics, knowing it may be career suicide to challenge orthodoxy. Nevertheless, despite shortcomings in practice, freedom of inquiry remains a crucial academic value.

            Threats to academic freedom have come both from outside vested interests, such as big business, and from university administrators. With the advent of social media, it is now easier to express displeasure with researchers and their work, and easier to mount campaigns against academics whose views are unwelcome.

            After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricane researcher Ivor van Heerden criticised the Army Corps of Engineers. He ended up losing his job at Louisiana State University.


Ivor van Heerden

            Canadian political scientist Tom Flanagan, identified with the conservative side of politics, was attacked online by the circulation of an extract from a talk he gave, surreptitiously recorded and misleadingly labelled, to discredit him personally. As recounted in his lucid book Persona Non Grata, the campaign had a damaging effect on his work, while his university did little to defend him.

            University administrations depend on their public reputations for recruiting high-quality staff and obtaining income via donations and student enrolments. As a result, they take a risk in standing up to campaigns against stigmatised scholars.

Scholarly values, another look

Having observed up close some online campaigns against dissident scholars, it seems to me that the rejection of scholarly values is less a betrayal than a disregard. In much political campaigning as well as in public scientific controversies, many members of the public are more concerned about winning by discrediting opponents than they are in having a rational conversation about an issue of social importance. Scholarly values can be boiled down to encouraging engagement on the basis of respectful interactions that address the issues. This means avoiding, when possible, making abusive comments, manipulating evidence and arguments, or trying to silence opponents.

            Though the academic system has many shortcomings, I realise now that many of them are due to a failure to live up to the values of respectful engagement and freedom of expression that are widely given lip service. The degraded commentary in many online confrontations should serve as a reminder of the positive aspects of academic discourse.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au