Agnotology Explained

Within the sociology of knowledge, agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data (disinformation).^[1] More generally, the term includes the condition where more knowledge of a subject creates greater uncertainty.

Stanford University professor Robert N. Proctor cites the tobacco industry's public relations campaign to manufacture doubt about the adverse health effects of tobacco use as a prime example.^{[2] [3]} David Dunning of Cornell University warns that powerful interests exploit the internet to "propagate ignorance".^[4]

Agents of culturally induced ignorance include the media, corporations, and government agencies, through secrecy and suppression of information, document destruction, and selective memory. Passive causes include structural information bubbles, including those that reflect racial and class differences, based on access to information.

Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse knowledge does not "come to be", or is ignored or delayed. For example, knowledge about plate tectonics was censored and delayed for at least a decade because some evidence remained classified military information related to undersea warfare.

The availability of large amounts of knowledge may allow people to cherry-pick information (whether or not factual) that reinforces their beliefs^[5] and ignore inconvenient knowledge by consuming repetitive or fact-free entertainment. Evidence conflicts on how television affects viewers.^[6]

Origins

The term was coined in 1992 by linguist and social historian Iain Boal^{[7] [8] [9]} at the request of Stanford University professor Robert N. Proctor.^[10] The word is based on the Neoclassical Greek word agnōsis (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ἄγνωσις, 'not knowing'; cf. Attic Greek, 'unknown' and -logia (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: -λογία).

The term "agnotology" first appeared in print in a footnote in Stanford University professor Proctor's 1995 book, The Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know About Cancer:

Historians and philosophers of science have tended to treat ignorance as an ever-expanding vacuum into which knowledge is sucked – or even, as Johannes Kepler once put it, as the mother who must die for science to be born. Ignorance, though, is more complex than this. It has a distinct and changing political geography that is often an excellent indicator of the politics of knowledge. We need a political agnotology to complement our political epistemologies.

In a 2001 interview about his lapidary work with agate, Proctor used the term to describe his research "only half jokingly" as "agnotology". He connected the topics by noting the lack of geologic knowledge and study of agate since its first known description by Theophrastus in 300 BC, relative to the extensive research on other rocks and minerals such as diamonds, asbestos, granite, and coal. He said agate was a "victim of scientific disinterest," the same "structured apathy" he called "the social construction of ignorance".^[11]

He was later quoted as calling it "agnotology, the study of ignorance," in a 2003 The New York Times story on medical historians who testify as expert witnesses.^[12]

In 2004, Londa Schiebinger^[13] claimed that agnotology questions why humans do not know important information and that it could be an "outcome of cultural and political struggle".^[14]

In 2004, Schiebinger offered a more precise definition in a paper on 18th-century voyages of scientific discovery and gender relations, and contrasted it with epistemology, the theory of knowledge, saying that the latter questions how humans know while the former questions why humans do not know: "Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of cultural and political struggle."

Proctor co-organized events with Schiebinger, his wife and fellow professor of science history.^{[15] [16]} In 2008, they published an anthology entitled Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, which "provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about 'how we know' to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know?" They locate agnotology within the field of epistemology.

Examples

Some other examples offered by Proctor include Nakba education in the United States ^[17] and Penn State as an official United States Marine Corps university.

The fossil fuel industry used the technique in its campaign against the scientific consensus on climate change. It became the focus of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.^[18] Oil companies paid teams of scientists to downplay its effects.^[19]

Michael Betancourt used agnotology in a critical assessment of political economy in a 2010 article and book.^{[20] [21]} His analysis focused on the housing bubble as well as the 1980 to 2008 period. Betancourt argued that this political economy should be termed "agnotologic capitalism", claiming that the systematic production and maintenance of ignorance enabled a "bubble economy" that allowed the economy to function. In his view, the role of affective labor is to create/maintain agnotologic views that enable the maintenance of the capitalist status quo. This is done by proffering counters to every fact, creating contention and confusion that is difficult to resolve. This confusion reduces dissent by deenergizing its motivating alienation and thus its potential to address weaknesses that may trigger collapse.

Related concepts

Agnoiology

See main article: Agnoiology. From the same Greek roots, agnoiology refers either to "the science or study of ignorance, which determines its quality and conditions"^[22] or "the doctrine concerning those things of which we are necessarily ignorant,"^[23] describing a branch of philosophy studied by James Frederick Ferrier in the 19th century.^[24]

Ainigmology

Anthropologist Glenn Stone points out that some examples of agnotology (such as work promoting tobacco use) do not actually create a lack of knowledge so much as they create confusion. As a more accurate term Stone suggested "ainigmology", from the Greek root ainigma (as in 'enigma'), referring to riddles or to language that obscures the true meaning of a story.^[25]

Cognitronics

An emerging scientific discipline that connects to agnotology is cognitronics,^{[26] [27]} which aims to explain distortions in perception caused by the information society and globalization and cope with these distortions.

Unknowledge

Irvin C. Schick distinguishes unknowledge from ignorance, using the example of "terra incognita" in early maps in which mapmakers marked unexplored territories with that or similar labels, which provided "potential objects of Western political and economic attention."^[28]

See also

• • • , a six-part documentary that aired on PBS in 1997, based on Robert N. Proctor's 1995 book, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What we Know and Don't Know About Cancer
• , a social psychology theory that may explain the ease of maintaining ignorance (because people are driven to ignore conflicting evidence) and which also provides clues to how to bring about knowledge (perhaps by forcing the learner to reconcile reality with long-held, though inaccurate beliefs; see Socratic method)
  • • • , systematic denial of scientific biological realities by misrepresenting them in terms of various dogmatic tenets
    • The Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their skill level, and people with high ability at a task underestimate their skill level.
• , a disinformation technique using the appeal to fear
• , a class of creationism that attempts to support assorted topics in biological denialism by misrepresenting them and related junk science as scientific research
• , an attempt at obfuscation of the culpability of commercial whaling by misrepresenting its junk-scientific rationale as scientific research.
  • • Misinformation
      • , or Ignorance Studies, the study of ignorance as something relevant.
      • , based on assorted junk-scientific strategies to misrepresent life- and health-saving technologies as harmful rather than beneficial.

Further reading

• Book: Angulo . A. J. . Miseducation: A History of Ignorance-Making in America and Abroad . 2016 . Johns Hopkins University Press . 978-1-4214-1932-9.
• Kenyon, Georgina (2016 January 6). "The man who studies the spread of ignorance." BBC Future.
• Book: Michaels, David . David Michaels (epidemiologist) . Doubt is Their Product: How industry's assault on science threatens your health . . 2008 . 978-0-19-530067-3.
• Book: Mooney, Chris . The Republican War on Science . . 2005 . 0-465-04676-2 . Chris Mooney (journalist) . registration .
• Book: Proctor, Robert N. . Robert N. Proctor . Cancer Wars: How politics shapes what we know and don't know about cancer . registration . . 1995 . 978-0-465-00859-9.
• Book: Proctor. Robert N.. Schiebinger. Londa. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford University Press. 2008. 978-0-8047-5901-4. 31 October 2011.
• Smithson . Michael . 1985 . Toward a social theory of ignorance . Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour . 20 . 4 . 323–346 . 10.1111/j.1468-5914.1985.tb00049.x.

External links

• Agnotology: The Cultural Production of Ignorance
• Agnotology and Misology
• WordSpy citations

Notes and References

1. Web site: Kreye, Andrian. 2007. We Will Overcome Agnotology (The Cultural Production Of Ignorance). 12 August 2007. The Edge World Question Center 2007. Edge Foundation. 6. This is about a society's choice between listening to science and falling prey to what Stanford science historian Robert N. Proctor calls agnotology (the cultural production of ignorance).
2. Web site: Palmer . Barbara . 4 October 2005 . Conference to explore the social construction of ignorance . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20070724074303/http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2005/pr-agno-100505.html . 24 July 2007 . 12 August 2007 . Stanford News Service . Proctor uses the term "agnotology" – a word coined from agnosis, meaning "not knowing" – to describe a new approach to looking at knowledge through the study of ignorance..
3. News: Kreye . Andrian . Polonium in Zigaretten : Müll in der Kippe (Polonium in cigarettes : Garbage in the butt) . 17 May 2010 . . 15 July 2014 . Proctor:...Die Tabakindustrie hat ... verlangt, dass mehr geforscht wird. Das ist reine Ablenkungsforschung. Wir untersuchen in Stanford inzwischen, wie Unwissen hergestellt wird. Es ist eine Kunst – wir nennen sie Agnotologie. (Proctor:...The tobacco industry has ... called for further study. That is pure distraction research. At Stanford, we study how ignorance is manufactured. It is an art we call agnotology.).
4. Web site: Kenyon . Georgina . 6 January 2016 . The man who studies the spread of ignorance . BBC Future.
5. Knobloch-Westerwick . 2009 . Study: Americans choose media messages that agree with their views . dead . Communication Research . Sage . 36 . 426–448 . 10.1177/0093650209333030 . https://web.archive.org/web/20090709134211/http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/poliview.htm . 9 July 2009 . 6 July 2009 . 26354296.
6. Thakkar RR, Garrison MM, Christakis DA . 5 November 2006 . A Systematic Review for the Effects of Television Viewing by Infants and Preschoolers . Pediatrics . 118 . 5 . 2025–2031 . 10.1542/peds.2006-1307 . 17079575 . 26071118.
7. "My hope for devising a new term was to suggest the opposite, namely, the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known-and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things. In 1992, I posed this challenge to the linguist Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term agnotology, in the spring of that year.” Robert N. Proctor, "Postscript on the Coining of the Term 'Agnotology'", in "Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance", Eds. Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, 2008, Stanford University Press, page 27.
8. interview with Robert Proctor "So I asked a linguist colleague of mine, Iain Boal, if he could coin a term that would designate the production of ignorance and the study of ignorance, and we came up with a number of different possibilities."
9. News: Arenson, Karen W. . 22 August 2006 . What Organizations Don't Want to Know Can Hurt . The New York Times . 'there is a lot more protectiveness than there used to be,' said Dr. Proctor, who is shaping a new field, the study of ignorance, which he calls agnotology. 'It is often safer not to know.'.
10. Web site: Stanford History Department : Robert N. Proctor . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070319025655/http://www.stanford.edu/dept/history/Faculty/proctor.html . 19 March 2007 . 12 August 2007 . Stanford University.
11. Web site: The Agateer . 12 August 2007 . Research Penn State . Nancy Marie . Brown . September 2001 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070811131237/http://www.rps.psu.edu/0109/agateer.html . 11 August 2007 . live.
12. Web site: History for Hire in Industry Lawsuits . 14 June 2003 . 15 July 2014 . Cohen, Patricia . . Mr. Proctor, who describes his specialty as "agnotology, the study of ignorance", argues that the tobacco industry has tried to give the impression that the hazards of cigarette smoking are still an open question even when the scientific evidence is indisputable. "The tobacco industry is famous for having seen itself as a manufacturer of two different products," he said, "tobacco and doubt"..
13. Web site: 13 October 2004 . IRWG director hopes to create 'go to' center for gender studies . 12 August 2007 . Stanford News Service.
14. Schiebinger, L. . 2004 . Feminist History of Colonial Science . Hypatia . 19 . 1 . 233–254 . 10.2979/HYP.2004.19.1.233 . I develop a methodological tool that historian of science Robert Proctor has called "agnotology"—the study of induced ignorances—that serves as a counterweight to more traditional concerns for epistemology, refocusing questions about "how we know" to include questions about what we do not know, and why not. Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of the cultural and political struggle..
15. Web site: Agnatology: The Cultural Production of Ignorance . The British Society for the History of Science . 15 July 2014 . Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture Pennsylvania University Presents a Workshop: ... Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, co-organizers . 21 August 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160821135915/http://www.bshs.org.uk/agnatology-the-cultural-production-of-ignorance . dead .
16. Web site: Agnotology: The Cultural Production of Ignorance . 12 August 2007.
17. Book: Proctor, Robert N. . Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance . 2008 . 17.
18. Book: Oreskes . Naomi . Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming . Conway . Erik M. . Bloomsbury Press . 2010 . 978-1608193943.
19. Book: Herwig . A. . Law and the Management of Disasters: The Challenge of Resilience . Simoncini . M. . Taylor & Francis . 2016 . 978-1-317-27368-4 . Law, Science and Society . 86 . 2 May 2021.
20. Web site: Betancourt . Michael . 2010 . Kroker . Arthur . Kroker . Marilouise . Immaterial Value and Scarcity in Digital Capitalism . https://web.archive.org/web/20101005143051/http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=652 . 5 October 2010 . 6 September 2010 . CTheory, Theory Beyond the Codes: tbc002.
21. Book: Betancourt, Michael . The critique of digital capitalism : an analysis of the political economy of digital culture and technology . 2015 . . 978-0-692-59844-3 . New York . 1097118186.
22. Agnoiology. 1. 378.
23. Book: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary . Porter, Noah . G & C. Merriam Co. . 1913.
24. Encyclopedia: James Frederick Ferrier . 12 August 2007 . Encyclopædia Britannica.
25. Book: Stone, Glenn Davis . Bioinsecurity and vulnerability . 2014 . 978-1-938645-42-6 . 1 . Santa Fe, New Mexico . 881518431. Biosecurity in the Age of Genetic Engineering . Nancy . Chen . Lesley A. . Sharp . School for Advanced Research Press . 71–86.
26. Book: Rueckert, Ulrich . NANO-CHIPS 2030 . 2020 . Springer . 978-3-030-18338-7 . Murmann . B. . The Frontiers Collection . Human-Machine Interaction and Cognitronics . 549–562 . 10.1007/978-3-030-18338-7_28 . 226744728 . Hoefflinger . B..
27. Web site: THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on COGNITONICS: The Science about the Human Being in the Digital World . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20121129035545/http://is.ijs.si/is/is2013/konference/Kognitonika/Cognitonics.html . 29 November 2012 . 4 February 2013.
28. Book: Schick, İrvin Cemil . The erotic margin : sexuality and spatiality in alteritist discourse . 1999 . Verso . 1-85984-732-3 . London . 40776818.