SOCIOLOGY L/30

“SCIENCE & SOCIETY”

Mon, Wed, and Fri, 11:15-12:05, in Center 222

Prof. Steven Epstein

Department of Sociology

University of California, San Diego

Spring 2002

Contact info:

Office phone: 858-534-0489

E-mail: sepstein@ucsd.edu

Home page: http://sociology.ucsd.edu/~sepstein

Drop-in office hours: Mon 1:30-2:30 pm and Wed 2:00-3:00 pm

in the Social Science Bldg, Room 476

Sections:

A01: Mon 2:30-3:20 in HSS 1305

A02: Mon 3:35-4:25 in Center 205

TA: Martha Poon

Email: mpoon@weber.ucsd.edu

Phone messages: Call Sociology Dept at 858-534-4627

Office hours: Mon 1:00-2:00 and Tue 4:00-5:00 in SSB 453

Summary:

Science and technology are dominant and defining forces in modern society. Today, science continues to promise changes that are both dazzling and, in some instances, worrying. Scientific and technological developments will continue to affect all of us, even if we never read a scientific paper, do an experiment, or enter a laboratory. What drugs will be discovered in the next generation? How will our technologies impact the environment? Will—and should—humans be cloned? Such questions are of great importance, not just for scientists, but for everyone.

Issues like these make it vitally important that we understand what science is and how it works. This course is designed to help us do so. Through a combination of lectures, readings, films, and discussions, we will consider how scientific knowledge is made and what happens when such knowledge is put to use. At the same time, we will be studying people whose job it is to provide answers: experts, especially scientific authorities. We will want to know how they get the authority to tell us what is true, what happens when they are in disagreement with one another, and to what extent what we do (as individuals, and as a society) depends upon what they say we should do.

In this course we will focus less on getting final answers to controversial issues, and more on posing the right questions. In this sense we will try to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate ways of framing debates over truth, ethics, politics, and economics in science.

The course is divided into four sections:

• We begin (in Part One) by examining how scientists (and others) grapple with uncertainty. How do scientists settle controversies? How do they make judgments about truth when scientific experiments necessarily constitute partial representations of real-world experiences? Our case studies will include AIDS causation, cold fusion, gravity waves, missile testing, earthquake predication, and climate change.

• Next, in Part Two, we examine popular and scientific understandings of scientific fraud, deviance, and failure, with special attention to the role of trust in scientific work. Here the cases we examine include environmental disasters, a contentious case of scientific misconduct, and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.

• In Part Three, we study the astonishing role of present-day science in redefining what it means to be human. We examine a wide range of cases, including the human genome project, clinical experimentation on human subjects, organ transplantation, cloning, breast implants, genetically modified food, “mad cow” disease, “contested illnesses,” DNA fingerprinting, biodiversity, and artificial life. These cases will help us understand some of the most visible, as well as some of the less obvious, political and ethical dimensions of scientific work.

• Finally, in Part Four, we study the place of modern science in a democratic polity and a market economy. What is the proper role of laypeople in the determination of research priorities, the assessment of technological risks, and the adjudication of scientific controversies? What are the implications of the growing commercialization of scientific research? Case studies include health activism, the “open source” movement on the internet, bioprospecting and biopiracy, tobacco research, and commercial funding of academic research.

Course Mechanics:

¨ All course readings are contained in the course reader, which should be purchased from University Readers, Inc. (800-200-3908; spcruz@universityreaders.com). Their representative will be on hand to sell readers at the first several meetings of the class.

¨ Although I strongly encourage you to purchase the reader, a copy of it will also be on reserve at the Social Sciences and Humanities library.

¨ Your grade for the quarter will be calculated on the basis of the following course requirements:

1. A take-home short essay that will focus on the material in Part One of the course (25% of grade). The assignment will be distributed Friday, April 12, and it is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, April 24.

2. An in-class midterm on Friday, May 10, covering all material up to that date (25%).

3. A take-home final covering the entire course (40%). The essay questions will be distributed Friday, May 31, and the final will be due in SSB 476 between 1:30 and 2:30 pm on Friday, June 14 (the final exam date for the course). You may also turn in the final earlier, if you prefer.

4. Section attendance and participation (10%).

¨ Students are responsible for all material presented in the readings, videos, lectures, and sections. Class attendance is expected both at lectures and in sections. Come to class with your copy of the course reader and be prepared to participate.

¨ Late papers will be marked down unless a doctor’s note is presented.

¨ University regulations concerning plagiarism will be strictly enforced. Plagiarism may result in a failing grade for the course.

¨ At the beginning of class, please make sure your cell phone is turned off or set to vibrate.

¨ Arriving late, leaving early, and walking in and out of class are distracting to those around you. Obviously they are sometimes unavoidable. But I’d appreciate your keeping them to a minimum.

¨ This syllabus and all lectures for this course are copyright 2002 by Steven Epstein. Students are prohibited from selling (or being paid for taking) notes during this course to or by any person or commercial firm without the express written permission of Professor Epstein.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments:

WEEK 1

Mon, Apr 1: Introduction

**Sections begin meeting**

PART ONE: Science and the Negotiation of Uncertainty

Wed Apr 3: Controversy and Closure

Jon Cohen, “The Duesberg Phenomenon,” Science, 9 December 1994, 1642-1649.

Fri Apr 5: Controversy and Closure (Cont.)

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 57-78 (Chapter 3: “The Sun in a Test Tube: The Story of Cold Fusion”) and 91-108 (Chapter 5: “A New Window on the Universe: The Non-Detection of Gravitational Radiation”).

WEEK 2

Mon, Apr 8: Testing and Prediction

Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 340-381 (Chapter 7: “The Construction of Technical Facts”).

Gary Polakovic, “Predicting the Big One,” Los Angeles Times, 7 September 1999, A-1.

Wed, Apr 10: The Politics of Models

“Summary for Policymakers” in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, http://www.ippc.ch).

Richard S. Lindzen, “Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus,” Regulation, www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html.

Stephen H. Schneider and Richard S. Lindzen, “Warming the Debate,” Regulation, www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n3-lindzen.html.

PART TWO: Trust, Fraud, and Disaster

Fri, Apr 12: Images of Science and Technology

**Take-home essay assignment distributed**

Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin), 109-163 (Part II: “The Airborne Toxic Event”).

WEEK 3

Mon, Apr 15: What is Scientific Fraud?

Daniel Kevles, “The Assault on David Baltimore,” New Yorker, 27 May 1996, 94-109.

Wed, Apr 17: When Things Go Wrong

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem At Large (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 30-56 (Chapter 2: “The Naked Launch: Assigning Blame for the Challenger Explosion”).

PART THREE: Science and the Remaking of Life

Fri, Apr 19: The Meanings of Life

Margaret Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 1-13 (“Preamble: Accidental Death”).

John A. Robertson, “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” New England Journal of Medicine 339, no. 2 (9 July 1998): 119-122.

George J. Annas, “Why We Should Ban Human Cloning,” New England Journal of Medicine 339, no. 2(9 July 1993): 122-125.

WEEK 4

Mon, Apr 22: The Meanings of Life (Cont.)

William K. Stevens, “Lush Life,” New York Times, 2 June 1998, D1.

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 149-174 (Chapter 6: “Artificial Life as the New Frontier”).

Wed, Apr 24: The Politics of Risk

**Take-home essays due at the beginning of class**

Video: “Breast Implants on Trial” (Frontline, 1996).

Marcia Angell, “Evaluating the Health Risks of Breast Implants,” New England Journal of Medicine 334, no. 23 (6 June 1996): 1513-1518.

John Lanchester, “A New Kind of Contagion,” The New Yorker, 2 December 1996, 70-81.

Fri, Apr 26: The Politics of Risk (Cont.)

Susan Wright, “Down on the Animal Pharm,” The Nation, 11 March 1996, 16-21.

Ricki Lewis and Barry A. Palevitz, “GM Crops Face Heat of Debate,” The Scientist, 11 October 1999.

WEEK 5

Mon, Apr 29: The Politics of Diagnosis

Video: “Safe” (Todd Haynes, 1995)

Jerome Groopman, “Hurting All Over,” The New Yorker, 13 November 2000, 78-92.

Wed, May 1: The Politics of Diagnosis (Cont.)

Joan Acocella, “The Politics of Hysteria,” The New Yorker, 6 April 1998, 64-77.

Fri, May 3: The Politics of Identification

Eric Lander, “DNA Fingerprinting: Science, Law, and the Ultimate Identifier,” in Daniel J. Kevles and Leroy Hood, eds., The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 191-210.

WEEK 6

Mon, May 6: The Politics of Human Experimentation

Video: “Deadly Deception” (PBS, 1993).

James Jones, “The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment,” in Phil Brown, ed, Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 3^rd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000), 376-388.

David J. Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 15-29 (Chapter 1: “The Nobility of the Material”).

Wed, May 8: The Politics of Human Experimentation (Cont.)

David J. Rothman, “The Shame of Medical Research,” New York Review of Books, 30 November 2000, 60-64.

Fri, May 10: **IN-CLASS MIDTERM** (Bring blue books!)

WEEK 7

Mon, May 13: The New Genetics

Video: “Gattaca” (Andrew Niccol, 1998)

Francis S. Collins, “The Medical and Societal Consequences of the Human Genome Project,” New England Journal of Medicine 341:1 (1 July 1999): 28-37.

Dorothy Nelkin, “The Social Power of Genetic Information,” in Daniel J. Kevles and Leroy Hood, eds., The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 177-190.

Wed, May 15: The New Genetics (Cont.)

Leon Kass, “The moral meaning of genetic technology,” Commentary, September 1999.

Fri, May 17: The New Genetics (Cont.)

Michael Specter, “Decoding Iceland,” New Yorker, 18 January 1999, 40-51.

WEEK 8

PART FOUR: Science, the Public, and the Marketplace

Mon, May 20: Public Understanding of Science

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 141-151 (Conclusion: “Putting the Golem to Work”).

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem At Large (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 113-125 (Chapter 6: “The Science of the Lambs: Chernobyl and the Cumbrian Sheepfarmers”).

Wed, May 22: Distributing Expertise

Sheila Jasanoff, Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 42-68 (Chapter 3: “The Law’s Construction of Expertise”).

Michael Lewis, “Faking It,” New York Times Magazine, 15 July 2001, 32-63.

Fri, May 24: Public Participation and Democracy

Sylvia Tesh, Uncertain Hazards (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 81-99 (Chapter 5: “Understanding Risk”).

WEEK 9

Mon, May 27: MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY—NO CLASS

Wed, May 29: Public Participation and Democracy (Cont.)

Video: “Lorenzo’s Oil” (George Miller, 1992)

Steven Epstein, Impure Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 181-234 (Chapter 5: “Points of Departure”; Chapter 6: “Drugs Into Bodies”).

Fri, May 31: Public Participation and Democracy (Cont.)

**Take-home final exam distributed**

Charles C. Mann, “Programs to the People,” Technology Review, 1 January 1999.

WEEK 10

Mon, Jun 3: Science and Money

Daniel S. Greenberg, Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 348-359 (Chapter 22: “The Ethical Erosion of Science”).

Daniel Zalewski, “Ties that Bind,” Lingua Franca, June/July 1997, 51-59.

Wed, Jun 5: Science and Money (Cont.)

Derek Yach and Stella Aguinaga Bialous, “Junking Science to Promote Tobacco,” American Journal of Public Health 91, no. 11 (November 2001): 1745-1748.

Rural Advancement Foundation International, “Bioprospecting/Biopiracy and Indigenous Peoples,” http://www.latinsynergy.org/bioprospecting.htm.

Fri, Jun 7: Science and the “Selling” of the University

Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University,” The Atlantic Monthly, March 2000, 39-54.

EXAM WEEK

**TAKE-HOME EXAM DUE** on the final exam date for this course, Friday, June 14, between 1:30 and 2:30 pm, in SSB 476.