Was “science” on the ballot?
Abstract
On 7 November 2020, moments before Kamala Harris and Joe Biden began their victory speeches, giant screens flanking the stage proclaimed, “The people have chosen science.” Yet, nearly 74 million Americans, almost half the voters, had cast their ballots for Donald Trump, thereby presumably not choosing science. Prominent scientists asserted that “science was on the ballot” and lamented that “a significant portion of America doesn't want science” (1). But before despairing at the loss of trust in science, we should be sure we are worrying about the right problem. Was “science” really on the ballot? Is it useful to imagine U.S. citizens as divided into pro-science and anti-science camps? Does the label antiscience serve the purposes of deliberative democracy? The answer to these questions is plainly no. A correct diagnosis is essential to repairing the sorry state of science-society relations in the United States.
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References and Notes
1
N. Florko, “‘Science was on the ballot’: How can public health recover from a rebuke at the polls?,” STAT, 4 November 2020.
2
S. Jasanoff, Designs on Nature: Science & Democracy in Europe and the United States (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005).
3
S. Jasanoff, Droit, Sciences, Technologies 11, 125 (2020).
4
R. Bayer, A. Fairchild-Carrino, Am. J. Public Health 83, 1471 (1993).
5
S. Jasanoff et al., “Comparative Covid response: Crisis, knowledge, politics,” 12 January 2021; www.futuresforumonpreparedness.org/research.
6
S. Hilgartner, Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Stanford Univ. Press, 2000).
7
J. B. Hurlbut, Experiments in Democracy: Human Embryo Research and the Politics of Bioethics (Columbia Univ. Press, 2017).
8
D. P. Carpenter, Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA (Princeton Univ. Press, 2010).
9
National Research Council, Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (National Academies Press, 1996).
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Published In
Science
Volume 371 | Issue 6532
26 February 2021
26 February 2021
Copyright
Copyright © 2021, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Published in print: 26 February 2021
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge funding from Schmidt Futures and the National Science Foundation (award nos. 2028567 and 2028585). The views expressed here are the authors' alone.
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- Integrate US science and diplomacy, Science, 372, 6542, (582-582), (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.abi8644
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