In a recent article published in this journal, Hugh Desmond attempts to show that status differences can rationally justify the conspiracy theorist’s repeated refusal to defer to the authority of scientific experts. We will show that the ‘stubborn distrust’ described by Desmond is irrational. Nevertheless, it raises important questions regarding the authority of scientists to set the bounds of reasonable belief and whether there are circumstances in which the layperson can rationally reject scientific authority. To explore such rational resistance, we (...) consider Love Canal, among the United States’ worst human-caused environmental disasters wherein a working-class community was built atop a chemical waste dump. We examine scientists’ repeated assurances to the residents that their homes were safe and residents’ struggle to convince decision-makers otherwise. We find that resident distrust was warranted and driven either by the irrationality of scientists or by differences in values. This case illustrates how the influence of values in science can lead to a persistent rational distrust of scientific expertise amongst the public and clarifies the bounds of scientific authority. Finally, the rationality of the rejection of scientific expertise at Love Canal helps put in relief what is epistemically problematic when conspiracy theories are irrationally held. (shrink)

The problem this paper addresses is that scientists have to take normatively charged decisions which can have a significant impact on individual members of the public or the public as a whole. And yet mechanisms to exercise democratic control over them are often absent. Given the normative nature of these choices, this is often perceived to be at odds with basic democratic principles. I show that this problem applies in similar ways to civil service institutions and draw on political philosophy (...) literature on the civil service (e.g. Rosanvallon, 2011; Heath, 2022) to discuss when such normative judgements can nevertheless be said to be democratically legitimate. Concretely, I seek to show that normative judgements in research need not be democratically legitimated in order for science to be democratically legitimate. Indeed, it can be democratically legitimate for scientists to go against the expressed views of the public or political representatives if this is justified in light of, firstly, the role science has been asked to fulfil and, secondly, when it is in line with public institutions’ key principles. This is a counter-position to views currently held in the values in science debate (e.g. by Kitcher, 2011; Intemann, 2015; Schroeder, 2021; Lusk, 2021) which argue that value-laden judgements in science are legitimate if they are aligned with the public’s views or directly decided by public. (shrink)