Scientific and Technical Controversy: Three Frameworks for Analysis

I would like to suggest three frameworks for the analysis of scientific controversies. The first is derived from the work of a sociologist, Joseph Gusfield, the second from that of an anthropologist, Victor Turner, and the third from that of a philosopher, Jurgen Habermas. The first sees controversy in the context of an existing moral order, the second, as social drama, the third, as communicative action. In each case the framework enables the rhetorical analysis of scientific and technological controversy. But in no case are these frameworks unique to controversies of this sort. Indeed, I see no reason to believe a priori that such controversies have unique characteristics. A GUSFIELD FRAMEWORK Joseph Gusfield feels that society is structured according to moral orders, powerful sets of forces that strongly influence our judgments. They are, he states, "a way in which ruling groups create legitimation and functional response to their power and interests." They do so "by construction of a cognitive and moral reality, a set of motives and directions in the ruled which are consonant with the needs and interests of ruling groups" (187). Gusfield's example is the drunken driver, universally regarded as the cause of accidents and of unnecessary death on the highway. But this moral order in place-Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is its most visible exemplification--inevitably slights other plausible explanations for highway carnage: the free sale of alcoholic beverages in their paths, along with prior decisions to prefer automobiles to public transportation and decisively to separate home from work, play, and shopping. The rate of alcohol-related fatalities in Austria is one-seventh that in the United States, a difference that seems attributable, at least in part, to two differing moral orders in only one of which the automobile is culturally central. Moral orders let us make judgments without taking thought. In any complex society, were such orders not in place, our mental capacity would soon be swamped. But, of course, this means that moral orders also have a resilience that can defeat all plausible alternatives. In the case of the drunken driver, for example, the existing moral order, supported and abetted by powerful industrial lobbies, militates against effective and widespread systems of public transportation. Goethe called architecture frozen music; in effect, the infrastructure of public superhighways and private subdivisions constitutes a frozen rhetoric no rhetoric of talk or action can effectively undermine. There is a more insidious effect of moral orders: by substituting displays of high feelings for reason, they distort and suppress public debate over the issues that are their concern. We see this phenomenon in full force in the wake of remarks given by Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, entitled "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities, and their S & E Careers." In the course of his impromptu address, Summers outlined three factors that, he felt, counted against the equal representation of women in science and engineering: the eighty-hour weeks that characterize successful careers, real differences in the aptitudes of men and women at the highest levels of quantitative thinking, and discrimination, in that order. The choice of the second of these factors was the most provocative. Early on, Summers announced his intention to provoke and indicated that he "would like nothing better than to be proved wrong." His was a call for rational debate, bolstered by evidence: "What's to be done?" he said: it would be very useful to know, with hard data, what the quality of marginal hires are when major diversity efforts are mounted, and consciousness is raised, and special efforts are made, and you look five years later at the quality of the people who have been hired during that period, how many are there who have turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search. …