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Controversial science is a domain of knowledge that is controversial by its very nature, in that what is thought by the layman to be "established fact" (in actuality a provisional state), is determined through a process of challenge and debate in which one school of thought emerges, for a time, victorious over the others. Such debates are never officially settled with any finality whatsoever, and it is expected that if and when conflicting evidence is discovered and confirmed, the science will be modified to include that discovery. As Sharon Dunwoody writes in Communicating Uncertainty, "all science is inherently uncertain."
The term "controversial science" however has been traditionally used of those ideas and theories which are at odds with generally agreed-upon findings, and have failed to be embraced by the majority of workers in a particular discipline. These ideas have often been advanced by individuals either from outside the field of science, or by scientists outside the mainstream of their own disciplines. An example of controversial science is the work of Wilhelm Reich a psychiatrist whose work with "orgone," a physical energy he claimed to have discovered, contributed to his alienation from the psychiatric community and eventually resulted in his jailing. A similar case was that of Linus Pauling, who advanced the theory that large amounts of vitamin C functioned as a panacea for a whole host of diseases, a claim that has largely been refuted.
Another use of the term is in describing fields of knowledge which are not, for lack of evidence or confirmability, recognized as bona fide sciences. This use of "controversial science" is subsumed by the term pseudoscience. Included in this category are the study of super-natural phenomena (reflected in the title of a work on the supernatural, "Parapsychology: The Controversial Science"), alien abductions, flying saucers and so on.
Towards the end of the 20th century, religiously inspired critics of certain fields of scientific research attempted to brand as "controversial" a host of scientific fields which contradicted literal or fundamentalist readings of certain ancient religious texts, taking the fact that scientific debate on certain aspects of those topics continued, as evidence that those findings were not conclusively valid. This was claimed to have left open a window for divine intervention and intelligent design. Among these fields were paleo-anthropology, human sexuality, evolution, geology, and paleontology.
However, such attempts are dismissed by epistemologists as being the result of a misunderstanding of the scientific process, understood by scientists to be akin to a dialogue which has no conclusion, while many in the public imagine it as a debate which should have ultimate winners and losers. As Dr. Donald E. Simanek, Physics professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania asserts, Too often speculative and tentative hypotheses of cutting edge science are treated as if they were scientific truths, and so accepted by a public eager for answers, ignorant of the fact that As science progresses from ignorance to understanding it must pass through a transitionary phase of confusion and uncertainty.
The media also play a role in the creation and propagation of controversies and the view that certain fields of science are controversial. In "Optimising Public Understanding of Science: A Comparative Perspective" by Jan Nolin et al., the authors claim that From a media perspective it is evident that controversial science sells, not only because of its dramatic value but also since it is often connected to high-stake societal issues.
See also
References
- Controversial Science: From Content to Contention by Thomas Brante et al.
- Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science by Sharon Dunwoody et al.