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i
The Fight Against Doubt

ii
iii

HOW TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN SCIENTISTS
AND THE PUBLIC
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Melo-Martín, Inmaculada de, author.
Title: The fight against doubt : how to bridge the gap between scientists and
the public / Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040303 (print) | LCCN 2018020332 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190869236 (online course) | ISBN 9780190869243 (updf) |
ISBN 9780190869250 (epub) | ISBN 9780190869229 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Science—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC Q175.5 (ebook) | LCC Q175.5 .M467 2018 (print) | DDC 306.4/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040303
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v
For the children in our families, Martín, Cristina, Christian, and Nicolás,
hoping that our work will contribute to a better world for them, where
dissent does not obfuscate.
vi
vi
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1. Dissent and Its Discontents 1
2. The Important Roles of Dissent 20
3. Bad-Faith Dissent 33
4. Failing to Play by the Rules 44
5. Imposing Unfair Risks 60
6. Dealing with Normatively Inappropriate Dissent 73
7. The Relevance of Trust 87
8. Scientific Practices and the Erosion of Trust 96
9. Values in Science and the Erosion of Trust 115
10. Where Disagreements Can Lie: Attending to Values in Policy 129
11. Lessons Learned and New Directions 143
Notes 153
Index 211
vi
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like all books, this one has benefited from the generosity and expertise of
friends and colleagues. Thanks are due to John Beatty, Evelyn Brister, James
Brown, Stephen Brown, Martin Carrier, Sharon Crasnow, Kevin Elliot, Daniel
Flory, Karen Frost-Arnold, Maya Goldenberg, Daniel Hicks, Stephen John,
Ian James Kidd, Boaz Miller, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Torsten Wilholt, and
Alison Wylie for taking the time to read and comment on earlier versions of
the manuscript. We are also grateful to the organizers and participants of the
Workshop on the Epistemic Role of Manufactured Dissent in Climate Science
at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and particularly to Justin Biddle and
Anna Leuschener for pushing us to think more carefully about epistemically
detrimental dissent. Thanks also to the reviewers of the manuscript for their
thoughtful and detailed feedback, and to Lucy Randall, our editor at OUP, for
her encouragement and support through all the stages of this project.
This book would not have been possible without a collaboration that now
spans years. We have learned to understand quite well how one another thinks
and often can anticipate each other’s criticisms. We believe that this collabo-
ration has resulted in a better manuscript than it would have been otherwise,
and it undoubtedly made the work much more fun. This collaborative work
was greatly facilitated by both of our institutions, Weill Cornell Medicine and
Montana State University, who gave us time and support to work together—
both virtually and in person. Kristen Intemann is particularly grateful to Dean
Nicol Rae and the College of Letters and Sciences for travel support. Thanks
also to our colleagues in the Division of Medical Ethics and the Department
of History and Philosophy for their support and their willingness to discuss
many of the ideas addressed in this book.
Last, but certainly not least, we are immensely grateful to and for our
family and friends. They provide the love, support, laughs, and encourage-
ment that make life joyful and work meaningful. We owe special thanks to
our parents Gerald and Christina Intemann, Elinor and Ken Wymore, Alfredo
de Melo Coello, and Catalina Martín Cano. They inculcated in us a love for
learning and helped cultivate a sense of social justice. Kristen thanks Pablo
Fernandez Coletes whose constant support has brought joy and balance to her
life and whose boundless optimism makes her believe that the world can be
a better place. Inmaculada is grateful to Martín and Cristina, for bringing so
much delight to her life.
ix
x
xi

xi
1
Dissent and Its Discontents
During his time in office from 1999 to 2008, South African president Thabo
Mbeki and his Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala- Msimang, firmly
opposed government support for existent HIV antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and
sought to limit their use in the country.1 Despite the overwhelming global sci-
entific consensus that HIV causes AIDS and that ARVs are the most effective
way to control the disease, Mbeki’s government questioned these claims and
withdrew support from clinics that had started using ARVs, obstructed Global
Fund grants, and restricted use of donated ARVs.2 Researchers have estimated
that delays in the provision of ARVs in the public sector during the Mbeki
presidency resulted in the premature death of at least 330,000 South Africans.
Similarly, they have argued that because of restrictions on the use of drugs
to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, 35,000 babies were born
infected with the virus.3
Currently, in several countries including the United States and the United
Kingdom, an increasing number of parents are refusing to vaccinate their chil-
dren, despite the clear consensus among researchers that pediatric vaccines
are safe and effective.4 Parental refusal of the measles, mumps, and rubella
(MMR) vaccine during the last two decades has had a devastating effect on
public health, resulting in outbreaks in places where the disease had been
eradicated. In the early 2000s, vaccination rates dropped precipitously in
England going from 91% in 1998 to below 80% in 2003.5 New cases of measles
increased from 56 in 1998 to 1370 in 2008. Measles outbreaks began to occur
in London, where less than 50% of children were immunized, and quickly
spread to Scotland and Ireland. Similarly, the United States, where measles was
thought to have been eradicated since the year 2000, has suffered a resurgence
in the disease. In 2014, there were 644 cases of measles, three times as many as
reported the year before.6 Researchers have estimated that MMR vaccination
rates among the exposed population in which secondary cases occurred might
be as low as 50% and likely no higher than 86%.7
1
2
2 The Fight Against Doubt
There is a wide gap, particularly in the United States, between the results
of climate science and public support for climate policies. According to a re-
cent report by the Lancet Commission on Climate Change and Health, the
effects of climate change represent a potentially catastrophic risk to human
health.8 Possible direct and indirect health impacts include higher rates of res-
piratory and heat-related illness, spread of disease vectors, increased food in-
security and malnutrition, and displacement. The World Health Organization
estimates that an additional 250,000 deaths per year from 2030 to 2050 will
result from climate change related effects.9 Such changes will also produce
increased drought-related water and food shortages, damages from river and
coastal floods, and extreme heat events and wildfires. Research shows that all
nations will face the adverse environmental, economic, and health effects of
climate change, but developing countries and vulnerable populations such as
the elderly, children, and persons with chronic illnesses will be disproportion-
ately impacted. Available scientific evidence shows that preventing or limiting
these negative effects requires global and immediate behavioral and policy
changes intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.10 Nonetheless, although
concerns about reducing global warming are part of the international political
agenda, it has been difficult to obtain a binding international agreement to
curb climate change by all major emitters worldwide. The Paris Agreement,
an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change that aims to address greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adapta-
tion, and finance, is due to take effect in the year 2020. Although the Obama
administration signed and ratified the Paris Agreement, the Trump admin-
istration subsequently decided to withdraw from it. While many expressed
concerns about this move, many Americans oppose policies directed at
tackling climate change and support Trump’s decision. The most effective
policy implementations have been made by states and cities.
Why do people reject scientific claims that scientific experts accept?
What accounts for this gap between what the scientific community takes
as broad and well-grounded consensus and people’s support for such con-
sensus? And why do people push back against scientifically grounded public
policies and actions? A variety of complex factors, including educational
level, religious beliefs, political affiliation, and social identity, contribute to
the existence of these general differences between the public and the sci-
entific community.11 However, many have called attention to the role that
a handful of dissenters have played in generating these various disastrous
consequences.12
In justifying his AIDS and ARV policies, Mbeki explicitly seized on the
dissenting research of Peter Duesberg and his colleagues who insistently
denied that HIV was the cause of AIDS and that ARV drugs were useful.13
These scientists also served on Mbeki’s Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel
3
Dissent and Its Discontents 3
in the early 2000s to determine whether HIV caused AIDS. In fact, some
researchers have directly implicated Duesberg and colleagues—and not just
Mbeki’s government—in the resulting South African AIDS deaths.14
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children often cite concerns about
vaccine safety raised by a discredited study linking the MMR vaccine and au-
tism. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield described a new autism phenotype he argued
was triggered by environmental factors such as the MMR vaccine.15 The pub-
lication received a significant amount of attention and, with help from the
media and highly visible, sometimes celebrity-led advocacy groups, convinced
many parents that they should refuse to vaccinate their children.16 Although
the data presented in the paper have been declared fraudulent17 and Wakefield
has been found guilty of ethical, medical, and scientific misconduct in the
publication of the research,18 the influence of Wakefield’s dissent in parent’s
vaccination decisions has been difficult to counter.
Similarly, climate change skeptics have pointed to instances of dissenting
views about anthropogenic climate change as evidence that there is no sci-
entific consensus and that potential mitigation policies are unnecessary or
unwarranted. In many cases, private industries have funded such dissenting
research and think tanks have spent millions of dollars in publicizing these
views that benefit their particular economic and political interests.19 The
media’s practice of “balanced reporting”—a perceived duty on the media’s
part to give equal coverage to dissent and the scientific consensus–has also
contributed to the perception that dissenting voices are widespread. Although
this practice is increasingly questioned,20 this so-called balancing requirement
has made dissenting views appear more legitimate and extensive than they ac-
tually are.21 Many scholars have therefore concluded that the publicity given to
problematic expressions of dissent over the existence of anthropogenic climate
change has led to public confusion and doubt, as well as apathy and lack of
support for mitigation policies.22
As these examples show, some instances of dissent about scientific claims
have considerable negative epistemic and social impacts. Dissent can result in
confusion or false beliefs about what the evidence says, the existence of a sci-
entific consensus, or the degree to which scientific claims are supported by the
evidence. Furthermore, insofar as such dissent pushes scientists to repeatedly
critique dissenting voices or justify why such views ought to be dismissed, it
can force scientific communities to waste valuable time and other resources.
Dissent, particularly when it is aggressive and politically charged, can also
create a context in which scientists feel intimidated, slowing or impeding sci-
entific progress.23 Scientists may avoid research in particular areas or water
down their conclusions in order to avoid reprisals. Some cases of dissent, then,
not only can fail to contribute to the advancement of science but actually can
hinder it.
4
When scientific evidence is relevant for policy or action, these negative

epistemic consequences can also have other adverse social impacts. Scientific
consensus is a benchmark for scientific knowledge24 and thus essential for
legitimately grounding policy decisions. Scientific and technological ex-
pertise is important for legitimizing public policies, health advice, medical
treatments, or regulatory decisions.25 When experts agree on a particular sci-
entific claim—for example, that smoking causes cancer, that anthropogenic
causes are responsible for global warming, that condoms prevent transmis-
sion of HIV, or that childhood vaccines are safe—such consensus lends va-
lidity to the public policies supported by such scientific knowledge, such as
restrictions on smoking, CO2 regulations, free provision of condoms to those
at higher risk of contracting HIV, and mandatory vaccination. To the extent
that dissent appears to challenge the scientific consensus, it can lead the public
and policymakers to doubt the strength of the evidence in support of partic-
ular public policies or behaviors, and cause them to reject and actively oppose
such polices.26
How should we go about limiting the damage that problematic dissent re-
garding scientific claims can have? The purpose of this book is to answer this
question.
One way to address this concern would be for scholars to point out features
of dissent that make it problematic. Several authors have identified common
strategies that some dissenters have employed to manufacture doubt,27 that
create the appearance of scientific controversy,28 or that make resulting
dissent likely to be epistemically detrimental.29 If scholars can identify par-
ticular features of problematic dissent, then they could develop normative
recommendations for dealing with such dissent and limiting its epistemic and
social damages. We challenge this approach, however, in three main ways. We
argue that reliably identifying problematic dissent, or what we will call “nor-
matively inappropriate dissent” is an enormously difficult task, both concep-
tually and in practice. The first part (chapters 2–6) of the book assesses various
criteria that one could use to identify normatively inappropriate dissent (NID)
and concludes that they are unsuccessful. We further argue that, even if we
could do so, the strategies that one could employ to address NID are not only
unlikely to solve or reduce many of the problems of concern but could actu-
ally exacerbate some of them, as well as create new ones. For these reasons, we
go on to argue that the focus on dissent as such might not be the best strategy
when trying to deal with the problematic consequences of this dissent. In fact,
focusing on problematic dissent might have the exact opposite of the desired
effect, since it might distract from other epistemic and social conditions that
render laypersons more susceptible to dissenting views and thereby increase
the potential of NID to have detrimental effects.
In the second part (chapters 7–11) of the book we follow what, we believe,
constitutes a more fruitful approach and focus on some of those epistemic and
5
social conditions that actually contribute to making NID more damaging. We

call attention to the ways in which epistemic trust is crucial to interactions be-
tween science and society, and we show how various scientific institutions and
practices fail to facilitate and sustain warranted public trust. We contend that
when trust is damaged, NID is more likely to have seriously adverse epistemic
and social effects. We also propose several strategies that focus on facilitating
trust rather than on addressing dissent as such. In our view, preventing or
limiting the negative epistemic and policy consequences that NID can have
requires both tackling institutional and social factors that undermine well-
grounded trust and promoting strategies that contribute to ensuring the trust-
worthiness of scientists.
Moreover, we question an implicit assumption often present in discussions
regarding problematic dissent: that public resistance to particular policies or
recommendations results mainly from confusion about or ignorance of scien-
tific claims for which there is a consensus. We show that some of the problems
attributed to NID are the result of disagreements about values, not about
facts.30 Insofar as this is the case, moving policy debates forward in fruitful
ways requires engaging in discussions about the values at stake, rather than the
truth of particular scientific claims.
Our project thus involves both a critical and a positive approach. Our crit-
ical approach challenges a common way to frame problems with NID. Our
positive proposal calls for two different strategies: promoting institutions
and practices that make the scientific community more trustworthy; and
recognizing the limits of science when it comes to policymaking.
Laying the Groundwork
In a book concerned with dissent about scientific claims, it is important to be

clear about what to count as such. In this book, we use “dissent” in a descrip-
tive rather than a normative way. We take dissent to be a type of disagree-
ment, and disagreements can be reasonable or unreasonable, well grounded
or not. When we refer to dissent, then, we do not intend to imply that the
disagreement it expresses is necessarily legitimate. We use “scientific dissent”
and similar terminology to mean dissent about scientific claims. That is, we
are not concerned here with dissent that targets primarily political claims.
The adjective scientific, therefore, is not meant to imply that the dissent in
question is scientifically adequate dissent—simply that it constitutes a dis-
agreement about scientific claims. Scientific dissent can thus cover a wide
range of practices.31 Various activities, such as criticizing and challenging, can
count as dissent. Our use of “scientific dissent” in this work is narrower, in
part following those who are concerned with cases of dissent that manufacture
doubt or create controversy about consensus views.32 We take scientific dissent
6
to be not just any criticism about science but specifically the act or practice
of challenging a widely held scientific position. This can include objecting to
particular hypotheses, theories, or methodologies. Furthermore, scientists and
their research are often the source of dissent, but in what follows we do not
assume that they alone can produce dissenting views. Other relevant parties
can also challenge widely held scientific conclusions, though as we will see,
identifying these parties is part of the debate over what constitutes appropriate
and inappropriate scientific dissent, as expertise may be relevant. Because we
take dissent to be a practice and not just a position, we also include in our
understanding of dissent the acts of promoting and disseminating dissenting
research.
Our focus is not, however, on scientific dissent in general—the challenging
of consensus positions—but on normatively inappropriate dissent. As we dis-
cuss in chapter 2, scientific dissent has various epistemic benefits that are es-
sential to the advancement of science. Such epistemic benefits can obtain even
when the dissent in question turns to be erroneous. What distinguishes NID
from dissent that is merely mistaken is that it fails to yield any of the epistemic
benefits that make even false dissent valuable. Hence, we take NID to be not
simply dissent that advances incorrect scientific claims but, rather, dissent that
fails to promote or that hinders scientific progress. This failure is problematic not
only for obvious epistemic reasons but also for social ones, as NID can lead
people to disregard well-grounded policies or oppose needed ones.
Our choice of the term “normatively inappropriate dissent” is not
without importance. The cases of dissent discussed in the introduction and
other similar ones have been variously referred to as “manufactured doubt,”33
“epistemically detrimental dissent,”34 dissent that fails to be “normatively ap-
propriate,”35 or dissent that artificially “creates scientific controversies” where
there are none.36 Although terms such as “manufactured doubt” are now part
and parcel of both academic and popular discussions regarding what many,
including us, take to be problematic instances of scientific dissent, we find
the terminology limiting. To refer to cases of problematic dissent as “man-
ufactured” or “artificially created controversies” implies that the dissent in
question has been deliberately produced with negative intentions. Nefarious
motives may—and indeed we believe they do—characterize problematic
dissent in many cases, and we discuss this criterion in c hapter 3. Nonetheless,
dissent can have disastrous epistemic and social consequences even when it
is created without conscious malicious intentions. Similarly, the term “epi-
stemically detrimental” focuses attention only on one potential adverse con-
sequence of problematic dissent—that is, it can slow or impede scientific
progress. Although this might be a particularly important effect of problem-
atic dissent, we prefer not to limit our attention to epistemic consequences
alone. After all, some of the most debated concerns about problematic sci-
entific dissent have centered on adverse social consequences such as the
7
stalling of public policies—for example, regulations of CO2 emissions that

are arguably necessary to protect human interests and environmental well-
being, or behaviors among members of the public, such as failing to vaccinate
children. We believe that referring to problematic dissent as “normatively in-
appropriate” can capture dissent that has a variety of adverse consequences,
whether or not it was created in bad faith.
Successful criteria for NID should therefore be able to reliably identify
cases of scientific dissent that fail to advance or hinder knowledge produc-
tion while excluding cases of dissent that are epistemically valuable (even if
mistaken).37 However, coming up with criteria for NID presents a challenge.
Using the consequences of certain types of scientific dissent as an indication
that it is normatively inappropriate will not do, because classifying as nega-
tive some effects of dissent assumes that the dissent in question is indeed nor-
matively inappropriate. After all, any instance of scientific dissent, no matter
how legitimate, could create confusion, promote or deter particular actions,
and call into question the implementation of certain policies. In general,
however, we would be hard-pressed to see those as adverse consequences
if the dissent were legitimate. Challenging an existing scientific consensus
is an inherent part of the usual process of producing scientific knowledge.
Hence, confusion among the public and policymakers about the degree of
existing consensus or the quality of such consensus is an adverse impact
only if there is actually no real, relevant dissent in the scientific community
and if the process by which consensus has been achieved is in fact reliable.
Similarly, concerns about false beliefs are appropriate only if such beliefs are
indeed false—that is, if they reject the existence of a consensus where there is
one or its reliability where it occurs. The same follows for peoples’ behaviors
and support for public policies. That parents, for instance, refuse to vacci-
nate their children because of fears that doing so might cause autism in their
children is a negative consequence of dissenting views if the safety of the
vaccines in this respect is, in fact, well established. Similarly, stalling policies
on mitigating the effects of global warming constitutes an adverse impact of
dissent if there are no good reasons to question the scientific consensus on
climate change. Thus, a successful account of NID would need to identify
criteria that do not rely solely on the presumed negative consequences of the
dissent in question.
Examining cases that many consider paradigmatic instances of such
dissent to uncover what they have in common is similarly problematic.
Whether dissent involved in denials of climate change, vaccination safety, or
the relationships between HIV and AIDS are in fact cases of NID is contested.38
Witness, for example, the debate over genetically modified products (GMPs).
Some have taken dissent regarding their safety as a paradigmatic instance of
NID.39 However, although many scientists believe that the safety of GMPs is
well grounded,40 many others contend that methodological concerns such as
8
the duration of many studies, or the limited endpoints utilized, legitimately

call into question the strength of the evidence.41 Insofar as a consensus about
the safety of GMPs exists, then critics will very much disagree that their dissent
is normatively inappropriate. Of course, there are also disagreements about
whether a reliable consensus actually exists.42 And if no consensus exists, then
it is not clear that challenges to the safety of GMPs would count as dissent at
all—as opposed to criticism or disagreements—much less as NID. Moreover,
at most this strategy would allow one to explain why a particular instance of
dissent is normatively inappropriate. However, ideally the objective would be
to identify NID before it inflicts any damage, or at least when we can still
minimize its negative effects. Thus we need predictive criteria and not just
explanatory ones.
One possible way to deal with these challenges is to use cases of dissent that
appear intuitively to constitute NID not simply as a way to uncover identifying
features but, rather, as a step that would allow us to reflect on whether some
of their features are inconsistent with the goals that dissent has in knowledge
production. If such is the case, then this would constitute a good reason to
question the value of the dissent in question. In chapter 2, then, we tackle this
task and discuss the ways in which scientific dissent is epistemically and so-
cially valuable.
Finally, while we criticize several different criteria for NID, we do not deny
that NID exists or that it can constitute a problem. Neither do we exclude the
possibility that some instances of dissent can correctly be identified as nor-
matively inappropriate—that is, as dissent that fails to contribute to or that
hinders knowledge production. We contend, however, that successful criteria
for NID must provide predictive criteria that can reliably identify NID—that
is, it must be able to successfully identify NID as such when the dissent in
question is in fact normatively inappropriate and be able to exclude scientific
dissent that is actually legitimate when such is the case.
One might be concerned that this is setting the bar rather high. If a cri-
terion or criteria for NID could provide some reasonable guide to cases of
dissent about which we ought to at least be suspicious, why should we demand
more? There are, after all, many concepts that are useful even if they are not un-
derstood as corresponding to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. For
example, one might be unable to provide necessary and sufficient conditions
for liberalism, but that hardly prevents us from using the term in meaningful
ways. It is true that sometimes one might be incorrect in describing a certain
policy as liberal when it is not or one might be wrong in declaring that some
policy is not liberal when, in fact, it is. Nonetheless, people can usually cor-
rectly identify liberal policies. Why should we suppose, then, that a successful
account of NID must reliably distinguish cases of NID from cases of appro-
priate dissent in every case?
9
We take it that the degree of “reliability” to which it is appropriate

to hold criteria depends in part on both the aims of the criteria and the
consequences of error. As we mentioned, a primary goal of identifying NID
is that doing so can allow us to put strategies in place to prevent or address
the adverse consequences NID can have. If we seek to identify NID in order
to simply educate laypeople about the problematic nature of some dissent
so that they are more attentive and less likely to be persuaded by it, then the
consequences of characterizing some dissent as normatively inappropriate
when it is not would not be very serious. Rough guidelines for NID might
occasionally fail to capture cases of problematic dissent or accidentally pick
out instances of valuable dissent, but the result would be more attentive
laypersons, which would be a good thing. Toward this aim, then, criteria for
NID need not be highly accurate or reliable. However, in this case, it is also
not clear that criteria for NID would be very useful, since dissent against a
scientific consensus should be rigorously scrutinized in any case (regardless
of whether it is normatively inappropriate or not). If, however, the goals of
identifying NID is to allow us to limit, discourage, suppress, or ignore cer-
tain kinds of dissenting views, then—as we will show in c hapter 2—the ep-
istemic and social consequences of mistakenly identifying some dissent as
NID when it is not can be very serious. If, for example, reviewers were con-
sidering not funding research that inappropriately challenged a consensus
view, or prohibiting the publication of dissenting views deemed NID, they
would want to be reasonably sure that such research was, in fact, of little epi-
stemic or social value. Otherwise, the reviewers risk suppressing dissent that
could have significant benefits. In such case, it is appropriate to ask for more
reliable and precise identifying criteria.
Some further clarifications regarding terminology are also in order.
Throughout the book we use “scientists” and “scientific community” inter-
changeably, and unless otherwise noted, we do not make distinctions be-
tween different scientific communities. This is certainly a simplification,
as differences do indeed exist among scientific disciplines with respect to
practices, methodologies, organization, and so on. Nonetheless, we do not
believe that such differences are relevant to the arguments we make here.
Similarly, in much of our discussion we use “science” to refer both to the insti-
tution and the knowledge produced. However, where relevant to the arguments
we present, we aim to make careful use of this distinction.
We also talk about the “public” or “laypeople,” but we are quite aware that
the public is not a unified entity and that laypeople do not have equal knowl
edge, values, interests, or backgrounds. We use the term “public” to refer to all
“publics” or layperson stakeholders who might be affected by the production
of knowledge, but we do so in ways that do not make the assumption that this
is a monolithic group. Where necessary, we make such distinctions. Indeed,
10
we believe that differences between stakeholders are of relevance when trying

to implement some of the solutions needed to minimize the damages NID can
produce.
Overview of the Book
Trying to prevent or limit the damages that can result from problematic
dissent involving policy-related science might initially appear a relatively easy
task. Once the dissent in question has been identified, scholars and others can
attempt to discredit dissenters by showing, for instance, their financial ties to
industry or political think tanks so as to call into question the quality of the
dissent.43 In an effort to correct false beliefs or reduce them, scholars could
also choose to emphasize the existence of scientific consensus44 and to limit
public discussion regarding legitimate disagreements within the scientific
community.45 Scientists could also limit the influence of NID and thus reduce
its presumed negative epistemic and social consequences by suppressing prob-
lematic dissenting views through the review process.46
But as we will see in chapter 2, scientific dissent plays essential roles in
the production of scientific knowledge. First, it furthers scientific progress.47
Dissent can contribute to limiting the influence of problematic biases of indi-
vidual researchers; ensure that a full range of research projects, hypotheses,
models, and explanations receive adequate attention; and provide alternative
ways of conceiving phenomena. Second, even if dissenting claims turn ulti-
mately to be incorrect, dissent may lead to new evidence in support of the
consensus view, strengthen justification for the consensus, and thus increase
confidence in its correctness.48 Third, the existence of dissent can promote ap-
propriate public trust in science. It can give the public confidence that the sci-
entific community is open to challenges and that it duly scrutinizes consensus
views.49
Because of the critical value that dissent has in science, any strategy in-
tended to target dissent necessitates a reliable means to identify problematic
dissent—that is, the ability to distinguish NID from legitimate and valuable
instances of dissent, whether or not such legitimate instances turn out to be
scientifically correct. Without the ability to reliably identify NID, an emphasis
on the consensus, the silencing or restriction of dissenting views, or even
attempts to simply limit opportunities for dissent can constrain valid research
agendas, the pursuit of alternative areas of knowledge, and the consideration
of important objections if the dissent targeted is actually epistemically val-
uable.50 To the extent that such strategies might, even if inadvertently, lead
to excluding the legitimate voices of those who are socially marginal, they
can also contribute to social injustice.51 Of course, insofar as education of the
public and policymakers is the primary strategy used to address the adverse
1
consequences of NID, strict identifying criteria might well be unnecessary.

Education about a particular instance of scientific dissent is unlikely to do
harm even if the dissent in question is normatively appropriate. Unfortunately,
education is also unlikely to be very successful in addressing the challenges
that NID can create.
Similarly, as mentioned earlier, the evaluation of the consequences of cer-
tain types of dissent as negative rests on the assumption that the dissent in
question is indeed problematic. That people reject certain policies grounded
on a presumed consensus view or that they ignore experts’ advice regarding a
consensus is a problem if the consensus in question is, in fact, reliable. Thus,
determining whether particular consequences that stem from the existence of
dissent are indeed negative, so that they can be tackled, also requires that we
are able to reliably identify NID.
Chapters 3 through 5 critically evaluate specific criteria that could be
used for identifying NID. We are not claiming that all those discussing or
using such criteria explicitly talk about criteria for appropriate or inappro-
priate dissent. Nor are we arguing that the goal of the authors we discuss is
to find criteria to reliably identify NID—indeed, many of them have not such
goal at all.52 Nonetheless, when discussing cases of what they argue consti-
tute problematic dissent, various authors have pointed to particular features
of the dissent they believe are indicative that the dissent in question is indeed
problematic. Our goal in these chapters is to assess whether one or more of
these features might be used to reliably identify NID. Some have pointed out
that many instances of problematic dissent involve inappropriate intentions.53
Could attending to the intentions of dissenters be useful in reliably identifying
NID? Intuitively, dissenting research that aims to confuse the public, promote
false beliefs, or manipulate policy decisions—that is, dissent that is produced
in bad faith—seems unlikely to provide the kinds of epistemic benefits that
make dissent valuable. In chapter 3, we assess this criterion. We explore var-
ious ways to explain why bad faith motives could indeed result in dissent that
fails to promote or that in fact impedes scientific progress, and we assess their
plausibility. We consider the possibility that the problem with these bad faith
motives is that they insert nonepistemic values in the conduct and appraisal of
scientific research and reject this option. We also contemplate whether what
constitutes the problem is that bad-faith motives involve values antithetical
to the epistemic aims of science. We conclude that, in spite of the intuitive
appeal of attending to motivations, they cannot serve as a criterion to reliably
identify NID.
Focusing on rules of engagement for fruitful discussions about competing
scientific views provides another strategy for trying to reliably identify NID.
Chapter 4 analyses this approach. It discusses some of the rules for effective
criticism dominant in the philosophy of science literature: shared standards,
uptake, and expertise. In order to advance scientific debates, some shared
12
standards for what constitutes good evidence must exist.54 Similarly, dissenters
must engage in uptake—that is, they must take criticisms of their own views
seriously and respond to these challenges by revising their arguments or
explaining why the criticism is unsound or misguided.55 Likewise, actors must
have appropriate expertise in the scientific area under dispute in order to be
able to propose and evaluate dissenting claims.56 Although it would be prob-
lematic to dismiss dissent on the basis of some epistemically irrelevant fea-
ture, such as the gender, race, or political affiliation of the dissenter,57 being
an “eligible player” in the scientific-inquiry game requires that one meets
certain qualifications relevant to the area of science under investigation. In
chapter 4, we argue that, although these criteria appear eminently reason-
able as requirements of transformative criticisms, what they actually involve
is not straightforward. Indeed, we show that some of the interpretations of
these criteria are likely to identify as inappropriate dissent that is actually ep-
istemically valuable, while other interpretations of these criteria would fail to
pinpoint the very cases of dissent that some consider paradigm cases of NID,
such as dissent with respect to evolutionary theory, climate change, and GMO
safety.
Others have called attention to the role of inductive-risk judgments in the
context of problematic dissent.58 Dissent that calls for rejecting certain con-
sensus views related to public policy can be risky. When consensus views are
mistakenly rejected, it can have serious consequences for public health and
well-being. These risks may not be worth taking when the risks dispropor-
tionately fall on the public, or when the dissent in question fails to conform to
widely shared standards of good science. Chapter 5 focuses on this inductive-
risk account. After showing its strengths, we critically evaluate it and argue
that this account also fails to provide us with a criterion to reliably identify
NID. In part this is because of the difficulties presented by the criterion of
shared standards in science. Moreover, because of the ambiguities present in
judgments about inductive risks, the inductive-risk account also turns out to
present serious problems in practice.
These chapters together provide one of the pillars of our challenge to the
question of dissent: reliably identifying NID is difficult, and although some
scholars have defended potential criteria implicitly or explicitly, none has
been successful. Chapter 6 introduces the second pillar: even if such reliable
identification were possible, it would be unlikely to help us in addressing
many of the epistemic and social adverse impacts that can result from NID.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that it is possible to reliably track NID,
we study how this could be used to prevent or reduce the damage that such
dissent can produce. For instance, once identified as NID, one could prohibit
the dissent in question, target it for special scrutiny, discredit dissenters,
or determine when to emphasize a consensus. Scholars could also use the
ability to reliably identify NID as a way to place limits on scientists’ epistemic
13
obligations and as a source of information to guide public beliefs. We show

that, although some of these strategies might have some utility in addressing
some of the problems that NID can create, others are unhelpful in limiting
its impacts and may even exacerbate them or generate other equally se-
rious problems. Moreover, to ensure that only NID is classified as such, the
identifying criteria would have to be correctly applied.59 The effectiveness of
the criteria would therefore also depend on the extent to which laypersons
could use them in practice. This would obviously depend on how much ex-
pertise one requires to correctly employ the relevant criteria. If people must
have a high level of expertise, the NID-detecting criteria would be of limited
use in helping address the adverse epistemic and social consequences such
dissent can create, since much of the damage is the consequence of policy
choices made by laypersons.
If finding criteria to reliably identify NID is unlikely to be effective or
useful, then what should we do about this dissent and its adverse consequences?
Answering this question is the task of c hapters 7 through 10. Here, we propose
to move the debate away from dissent itself. After all, a focus on dissent is un-
likely to prove particularly fruitful. Instead, we attend to factors that arguably
contribute to making NID particularly damaging. We thus argue in chapter 7
that a context where the trustworthiness of scientists is called into question,
and where there is an excessive reliance on scientific information when it
comes to assessing policy decisions, allows NID to take hold and erroneously
affect people’s beliefs and ultimately their actions.
When the public fails to believe that scientific communities deserve their
trust, dissenting views that contest the reliability and soundness of scientific
testimony will find fertile soil. Chapters 8 and 9 focus on some of the social and
institutional factors we believe cast doubt on the trustworthiness of scientists
and ultimately undermine warranted trust in scientific communities and their
testimony.
Chapter 8 attends to some social and institutional factors related to
the practice of science that we argue contribute to the erosion of trust in
scientists. Specifically, we consider the role that the increasing commer-
cialization of science and concerns about scientific misconduct have in
calling into question the trustworthiness of scientists. In a context where
economic incentives and profits play a substantial role in determining the
direction of research agendas, the common good of all will take a back seat.
The increased commercialization of science thus undercuts one of its pri-
mary goals—that of contributing to the common good. Inadequate attention
to the public good, then, contributes to undermining trust in the scientific
community. Moreover, the commercialization of science results in financial
conflicts of interest for both scientists and research institutions, and such
conflicts threaten the integrity of research. Conflicts of interest, although
not necessarily resulting in biased science, certainly create a fertile ground
14
for it. Given that in general it is difficult for laypersons to assess whether or
not conflicts have adversely affected the justification for particular scien-
tific claims, rampant conflicts of interest cast doubts on the trustworthiness
of scientists. We likewise consider the phenomenon of scientific miscon-
duct. We show that scientific misconduct, particularly when understood
as including questionable research practices, is far from uncommon, and
that policies to prevent, detect, investigate, and sanction such misconduct
are either nonexistent or inadequate, meaning that the current research
system is probably contributing to the presence of cases of misconduct.
Unsurprisingly, we claim that this phenomenon also undermines trust in
scientific communities and their claims. We consider some strategies for
changing these trust-undermining practices so as to better facilitate and
maintain rational trust in scientific communities.
Chapter 9 deals with another factor that plays a role in eroding trust
in science: concerns about the negative influence of nonepistemic values in
science. The use of social, political, or personal values and interest can threaten
the epistemic integrity of the research. If the public believes that scientists
have a political agenda that biases their research, this can call into question
the trustworthiness of scientists in a particular research area and thus can un-
dermine public trust in science. To address this source of public mistrust, it
might be tempting to encourage scientists to adhere more strictly to a value-
free ideal of science so as to ensure that nonepistemic values do not influence
scientific reasoning. This, however would be a mistake. Notwithstanding nu-
merous examples from the history of science where the use of nonepistemic
values have led to bias, such values also play necessary and important roles
in scientific reasoning. Facilitating warranted trust, we argue, requires that
we develop and implement strategies likely to reduce the illegitimate use of
nonepistemic values in science. Institutional practices, such as promoting
public avenues for criticism or promoting diversity among scientists, increase
the opportunities for identifying and critically evaluating values, as well as
for correcting the biasing influences such values may have. Such practices
are likely to be more successful both in ensuring the epistemic integrity of
the research and in creating and sustaining justified public trust in scientific
communities. These sorts of mechanisms, however, fail to address reasonable
concerns the public may have about the priority of certain values over others.
Such concerns can also undermine justified trust in scientific communities.
Even if nonepistemic values do not undermine and can actually improve
the epistemic soundness of research, leaving these decisions in the hands of
scientists alone is a different matter altogether. Scientists have no expertise in
this area and their value choices are unlikely to be representative of the diverse
interests that exist among stakeholders. Thus, to create and sustain warranted
public trust, the scientific community needs to implement strategies that
15
promote transparency of values and are inclusive and representative of the di-
versity of stakeholders’ interests.
If we are correct in our analysis, then encouraging institutional and so-
cial practices that make the scientific community more trustworthy is likely
to be a more effective strategy to address the problems that NID can create.
This will require significant empirical research aimed at identifying the kinds
of mechanisms that can be successful in doing so. Of course, even if such
mechanisms can be identified, we recognize that implementing them will
not be an easy task. But, as the continuing debate on global warming shows,
attempts to target some dissenting views so as to avoid their negative social
and epistemic consequences is not an easy task, either. Moreover, promoting
institutional changes that encourage warranted trust in the scientific commu-
nity is likely to have additional benefits that have nothing to do with correcting
or limiting the problems that NID can produce.
In chapter 10, we change gears and propose a second recommendation to
deal with the negative adverse effects that NID can have: we must recognize
the limits of scientific evidence when it comes to public policymaking. All the
prior chapters accept an assumption that underpins much discussion regarding
problematic dissent: that resistance to particular policies and actions stems in
great part from the presence of such dissent. The contention is that failures
to, for example, support emissions regulations, vaccinate children, or embrace
widespread use of GMOs are to a large extent the result of dissenting views that
end up confusing the public and policymakers about the state of the science.
Chapter 10 interrogates that assumption. We argue that resistance to science-
based policy recommendations can arise from disagreements about the values
that underlie certain policy choices, rather than simply from confusion about or
ignorance of the state of the science. In this chapter, we call attention to an im-
portant aspect of policy-relevant science that has been obscured in discussions
over NID: the role of values in policy decisions. We identify different ways in
which value disagreements can reasonably lead people to conflicting views
about whether to reject or support particular policies or actions. Specifically,
we argue that failure to accept certain policies or actions may be the result of
disagreements about what has value, how to interpret particular values that are
shared, how to weigh competing goods when they conflict, or how best to pro-
mote particular values or policy goals. Insofar as resistance to certain policies
is the result of disagreements about values rather than simply the result of
disagreements about the scientific evidence, understanding the ways in which
differences in values can influence policy debates is crucial to being able to ad-
vance such debates in fruitful ways. As important as science is for sound public
policy, at least in the context of some public policies, a focus on the science can
take us only so far. Finding ways to solve value disagreements is thus likely to
help address the negative effects that NID can have.
16
How this Book Is Different
There are genuine concerns about the gap in various scientific areas between
what scientists take to be a matter of consensus and what laypersons often
believe regarding such consensus. Many have argued that this gap results in
significant part from the presence of problematic dissent, or what we here
call NID. In this book, we challenge this approach to the problem. Without
denying that some dissent can fail to advance or even hinder knowledge pro-
duction, and that its existence can have adverse consequences such as public
confusion, stalled policies, wasted resources, and intimidation of scientists, we
believe that the central problem has been misdiagnosed.
This book aims to consider four central questions: Is NID a primary cul-
prit of these various problems? Insofar as NID is a problem, is there a way to
reliably identify it? If we were able to reliably identify such NID, what could we
do about it? And if reliable identification is not possible, what else can be done
to minimize the problems of concern?
Other authors have assumed, either implicitly or explicitly, that NID is in-
deed a primary culprit, and they have pointed out features that could be used
to identify such dissent. Presumably, once identified, the dissent in question
could be managed in some way by, for example, prohibiting it, ignoring it,
or exposing it.60 This book makes a significant contribution to the discussion
by providing a systematic assessment of these varied features and by showing
that they are not as straightforward or successful as those using them have
assumed. Indeed, we show that, even if successful, efforts to provide criteria
to reliably identify NID would fail to address the negative consequences that
can result from it.
But the contribution of this work goes further. We reframe the discussion
in a more fruitful way to focus not on dissent itself but, instead, on the so-
cial and institutional conditions in which NID arises—conditions that allow
such dissent to have adverse effects. In particular, NID is more likely to be
damaging when warranted public trust in scientists falters and when we fail
to recognize the limits of scientific evidence when making policy decisions.
This reframing sheds light on various features of scientific practices that cast
doubt on scientists’ trustworthiness and contribute to undermining warranted
trust. Similarly, it also calls attention to the relevance of inescapable value
judgments that play a role in policy decisions where scientific knowledge is
also important. This reframing is particularly important because much of the
discussion on NID has implicitly or explicitly assumed that people’s rejection
of the reliability or existence of a genuine scientific consensus regarding, for
instance, climate change or vaccine safety stems from the influence of such
dissent. Under this assumption, promoting strategies to better communicate
to the public and policymakers that a consensus exists seem appropriate. And
17
this is, in fact, what many of those engaging in this debate have done.61 But if
a significant reason for why NID is so effective is that laypersons question the
trustworthiness of scientists, or that they have different value assumptions,
then the success of this strategy will be limited. Insisting on the existence of
a consensus will have little impact on those who doubt the very foundations
of that consensus or who disagree with them because they hold conflicting
values. Furthermore, insofar as these strategies obscure what are at least im-
portant contributory factors, they prevent us from identifying more successful
alternatives.
This book advances discussions within the philosophy of science by
synthesizing and drawing connections from several distinct bodies of
literature—specifically, literature on consensus and dissent, the roles of values
in knowledge production, the relevance of values for science-based public
policy, and epistemic trust. We aim to show that attempts to understand and
address concerns related to dissent and public policy can be greatly informed by
elucidating the roles—both negative and positive—that contextual values play
in science and in policymaking. Other discussions of problematic dissent have
been particularly concerned with the negative role that values can play, leading
to conflicts of interest and bias,62 or do not attend to the role of such values alto-
gether.63 At the same time, many of those writing on values in science have not
been attentive enough to the ways in which the presence of contextual values
may provide fertile ground for problematic dissent that can lead to negative
consequences.64 We thus advance current debates by underscoring the limits
of scientific knowledge when trying to solve controversial policy decisions.
Likewise, questions about trust, both moral and epistemic, are a relatively new
concern in philosophy of science.65 Though a concern for social scientists, few
philosophers of science have explored the role of trust and trustworthiness in
relation to current debates regarding climate change, vaccine denials, or crit-
icism of GMO.66 We advance these discussions by calling attention to the role
that trust—or lack thereof—plays in current disputes over scientific dissent, as
well as to its importance when trying to address the problems that NID can
produce.
This book also differs from the usual way in which many philosophers of
science approach scientific practices. Unlike some accounts,67 we do not aim to
offer an idealized model of scientific practices.68 Our analysis is tied to the con-
text in which science is currently practiced: one that is largely capitalist and
increasingly driven by commercial interests, where participants do not have
equal access to education or expertise, nor equal power to make their voices
heard. Insofar as we are concerned with diagnosing very real problems related
to dissent and the negative consequences that impact society, we believe that
an analysis both of the problem and of the solutions must be attentive to these
conditions that are so difficult and slow to change.
18
The scope of our project is also limited in important ways. We do not

attempt to provide an exhaustive analysis of all the factors that contribute to
individuals’ resistance to particular beliefs or policies. Social scientists are
doing important work on these issues, including the ways in which such resist-
ance may be caused by cognitive biases, political orientation, social identity, or
moral worldview.69 While we aim to be attentive to this empirical evidence in
our arguments, it is beyond the scope of our project to provide a full analysis
of belief formation or policy preferences. Rather, our goal is to evaluate some
contextual aspects that arguably make some dissent particularly problematic.
Similarly, we do not aim to develop or defend a particular account of
trust in general or epistemic trust in particular. Instead, we hope to show how
questions about trust, moral and epistemic, bear on concerns that have arisen
in relation to people’s perceptions of scientific dissent and consensus. Nor
do we provide an exhaustive examination of all the variables that influence
public trust in scientific communities or all the factors that impact scientists’
trustworthiness and people’s assessment of it. However, we believe that the
factors we address are particularly relevant to understanding concerns that
dissenting views in various policy-relevant scientific issues give rise to, as well
as proposing effective responses to them. Similarly, although we consider and
evaluate several strategies that could be effective in facilitating and sustaining
warranted public trust in science, we do not claim to offer an exhaustive list of
potential solutions. Our aim is to show that reframing debates about dissent
can reveal several important future areas of inquiry that will be important to
enabling and nourishing justified public trust in scientific communities and to
moving policy debates forward.
We do not attempt to offer an exhaustive account of the many ways in
which contextual values may play a role in policy decisions or how such values
inform people’s beliefs. Nor do we claim that the options we discuss to attempt
to solve value disagreements in science-based policy decisions are the best or
only ones. Our goal is simply to call attention to the limits of scientific knowl
edge when dealing with complex and controversial policy issues and to en-
courage scholarly work that can provide strategies to address the effect that
value disagreements have on policy decisions.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing that although our arguments ultimately
show the difficulties of identifying NID, this should not be understood as a
defense of many of the instances of problematic dissent we discuss here. We
do believe that it is reasonable to think of at least some of the dissenting views
we present as failing to provide any epistemic benefit. But this recognition
alone is unlikely to help us either prevent or solve the epistemic and social
problems NID can create. Thus, if our goal is to do something about dissent
that is identified as normatively inappropriate, we need some reliable criteria.
Our concern, however, is that providing such criteria is difficult and risky, as
19
well as unlikely to be effective in helping us address the damage such dissent

can inflict.
Finding criteria to reliably identify NID is challenging precisely because
dissent plays a crucial role in the production of scientific knowledge. Indeed,
the valuable role that dissent plays means that scientific communities have an
obligation not simply to tolerate but also to actively seek out and engage with
dissenting views. Any attempt to tackle NID must recognize and safeguard the
epistemic and social value of dissent.
20
The Important Roles of Dissent
For much of the twentieth century a consensus existed within the medical
community that the cause of stomach ulcers was an excess of stomach acid
and dietary factors. Barry Marshall, an internist, and Robin Warren, a patholo-
gist, first reported “unidentified curved bacilli” on gastric epithelium in active
chronic gastritis in two letters published in the Lancet journal in 1983,1 and
later postulated that the bacteria could possibly play a role in peptic ulcer dis
ease.2 They argued that the bacteria could not be seen with the usual staining
methods employed at the time, which explained why the bacteria had mostly
been overlooked. The possibility that bacteria could be a cause of stomach
ulcers was met with significant skepticism, in part because it was inconsistent
with the prevailing view that bacteria could not survive in the highly acidic
environment of the stomach.3 A decade later, the National Institutes of Health
Consensus Development Conference concluded that there was a strong asso-
ciation between Helicobacter pylori and ulcer disease, and recommended that
ulcer patients with H. pylori infection be treated with antibiotics.4 Medical
practice was slow to follow recommendations. Studies showed that by the year
2000 the overwhelming majority of ulcer patients were still treated primarily
with anti-secretory medications, with only 17% of them receiving antibiotic
therapy.5 The dissenting research by Marshall and Warren, however, eventually
prevailed, improving the treatment for peptic ulcers and earning the Nobel
Prize in Physiology in 2005.
There is widespread agreement that dissent plays a crucial role in the gen-
eration of scientific knowledge.6 Even those who believe that consensus is the
ultimate goal of scientific inquiry take dissent to be important to achieving or
maintaining the integrity of that consensus.7 As we will see, dealing with nor-
matively inappropriate dissent (NID) is challenging precisely because dissent
is critically valuable in the production of knowledge. The purpose of this
chapter is to provide an overview of the ways in which dissent from a scientific
consensus is epistemically valuable.
20
21
The Important Roles of Dissent 21
Dissent furthers scientific progress. It can do so in several interrelated

ways, including correcting false empirical assumptions, providing alternative
ways of conceiving phenomena, and challenging value judgments. Dissent can
also strengthen the justification for consensus views and thus increase con-
fidence in their correctness. Consensus views are more likely to be reliable
when they survive critical scrutiny than if they go unchallenged. Additionally,
the existence of dissent, even when it is incorrect, can foster warranted public
trust in science. That is, it can assure the public that scientific inquiry is an
open and critical process whereby scientists consider evidence and challenges
carefully. In the last section of this chapter, we argue that because dissent yields
these benefits, it imposes epistemic obligations on scientific communities. We
discuss what such obligations are and show that fulfilling them can also result
in important benefits.
Understanding why dissent is valuable is relevant, for several reasons.
It helps us to identify the aspects of dissent that need protection in order to
foster scientific progress. In addition, attending to what is valuable about
dissent is necessary for distinguishing between normatively appropriate and
inappropriate dissent. If some dissent has features that are incompatible with
the epistemic roles that dissent plays—that is, if there is dissent that either
fails to contribute to knowledge production or actively hinders it—then we
have good reasons to characterize such dissent as normatively inappropriate.
Insofar as this is the case, then, we could have a justification to impose limits
on such dissent without fearing negative impacts on the production of sci-
entific knowledge.
The Value of Scientific Dissent
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill famously defended the importance of dissent

and its expression in the political sphere.8 He argued that dissent and its dis-
semination are essential not only to promoting truth but also to ensuring that
the truths held are done so for the right reasons. In his words:
[T]‌the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is
robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation—those
who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the
opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error
for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer
perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with
error.9
Dissenting views, however implausible they might first seem, may in fact by
true. Even when they are not true, they provide us with increased under-
standing of why we hold the views we do.
2
Dissent in the scientific sphere is valuable for similar reasons. Clearly, in-
sofar as some accepted scientific claims are false and dissenting views true,
censoring or actively ignoring dissenting views will prevent the emergence of
truth. Scientists, like all epistemic agents, are fallible, after all. A cursory review
of any history of science book will show multiple instances in which a view, or
some aspect of it, that enjoyed widespread consensus within a scientific com-
munity later turned out to be false. The geocentric view of the universe, the
phlogiston theory, the fixity of species, the immobility of the continents, phre-
nology, and the existence of ether all were ultimately abandoned because of
persistent dissent from the prevailing consensus. Science often gets it wrong,
even when there appears to be overwhelming evidence and widespread agree-
ment. Indeed, that science “gets it wrong” is arguably intrinsic to the nature
of scientific progress. The common phenomenon of underdetermination of
theory by evidence and human fallibility are sources of error. The fact that
scientific consensus has often been mistaken in the past gives us good reason
to think it is likely to be mistaken again in the future, and thus good reason to
value dissenting views.
Scientific reasoning has the potential to go wrong in many ways. Scientific
hypothesis or theories are not tested in isolation; they require a host of back-
ground assumptions in order to make empirical predictions, employ certain
conceptual frameworks, justify particular methodologies, classify data, and
make evidential inferences about the data in question.10 These background
assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses are often implicit and not uncommonly
adopted by scientists unconsciously. But, because they are frequently uncon-
sciously assumed, even thorough and well-trained scientists sometimes rely on
background assumptions that are actually false. Obviously, it is generally easy
to see mistaken assumptions in hindsight, but such assumptions can be diffi-
cult to identify at the time, particularly if they are widely shared or supported
by the available evidence. Similarly, inappropriate methodologies, faulty evi-
dence gathering, and incorrect interpretation of data can result in error.
Dissent can thus contribute to promoting scientific truths and scientific
progress in various interrelated ways. First, it can challenge incorrect em-
pirical assumptions.11 The case of Marshall and Warren’s work on H. plylori
discussed at the beginning of this chapter exemplifies this benefit of dissent.
At the time, their claims seemed extraordinary—and extraordinarily wrong—
both because no such bacteria had been observed previously and because the
scientific community accepted the belief that bacteria could not survive in
highly acidic environments. Marshall and Warren’s dissenting research, how-
ever, clearly played an important role in correcting those false background
assumptions, advancing medical knowledge, and improving the treatment for
peptic ulcers.
The work of cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock also illustrates the im-
portance of dissent in challenging problematic empirical assumptions.12
23
Her maize breeding experiments provided the first evidence of transposable

elements—also known as “jumping genes”—in the genome.13 These transpos-
able elements are DNA sequences that move from one location on the genome
to another.14 Her work thus showed that genomes were not stationary entities
but, rather, were subject to alterations and rearrangements, and that genomic
replication did not always follow a consistent pattern. She also found that,
depending on where these mobile elements were inserted into a chromosome,
they could reversibly alter the expression of other genes. Such suggestions di-
rectly contested the neo-Darwinian paradigm that reigned in biology during
the 1950s, and that maintained that the environment could not influence the
genomes other than by random mutations.15 Yet while this paradigm was
widely accepted at the time, McClintock’s work revealed that it rested on sev-
eral problematic assumptions and thus her research contributed to significant
progress in biology.
A second way that dissent can further scientific progress is by pro-
viding new ways of conceiving of certain phenomena and with that, offering
novel opportunities to tackle problems in productive ways.16 Dissenting
research is likely to result from the use of new methodologies, novel re-
search questions, and innovative explanations, often because these reject
certain assumptions of the consensus view. Dissenting views thus can make
room for alternative possibilities that are obscured for those who hold the
majority view.
McClintock’s work with maize also provides an example of this ben-
efit. Gregor Mendel used maize to corroborate his experiments with peas.
Nonetheless, maize did not become an important model organism until the
1920s and 1930s, when a group of geneticists at Cornell University, which
included McClintock,17 began to work with it. Her use of maize as an ex-
perimental system for genetics was uncommon at the time for molecular
geneticists, who usually made use of bacterial systems.18 McClintock’s re-
search on transposable elements exploited particular aspects of maize that
would have been more difficult to do with model bacterial organisms.19 Thus,
in working with an unusual model organism, she opened new possibilities for
experimenting on genes.
Similarly, work in archeology regarding the evolution of human tool use
provides an illustration of how dissenting views can promote alternative ways
to look at evidence. Historically, many archeologists focused solely on the ac-
tivities traditionally assigned to males, such as hunting.20 As a result, scientists
came to agree that human tool use emerged primarily from the activities of
male hunters. This consensus was challenged in the 1970s and 1980s, when
more females entered the field of archeology and began asking new questions
about women’s activities.21 These new questions led female archeologists to
reveal new lines of evidence: baskets and reeds used for foraging could also
be thought of as tools, thus contesting the hypothesis that the evolution of
24
human tools was primarily the result of men’s activities.22 Willingness to raise
new questions challenging the consensus view ultimately enriched our under-
standing of the evolution of tool use and provided new areas of investigation
within archeology.
In addition to challenging assumptions and providing alternatives, dissent
can advance scientific knowledge by calling attention to and disputing value
judgments at stake in scientific reasoning. There is a growing consensus among
philosophers of science, science studies scholars, and even scientists that eth-
ical and social values, or contextual values, play a role in scientific knowledge
production in a variety of ways.23 Such values may influence the framing of
research problems;24 they can affect the use of particular ontologies, models,
or conceptual categories;25 and can impact the selection of methodologies and
the assessment of risks.26 Many times, value judgments that influence these
decisions are implicit and unconscious. As a result, these judgments can al-
ternatively enhance or obscure knowledge of phenomena, depending on the
values at stake and who shares them. Dissenting views that call attention to
and challenge the use of certain value judgments in science can thus promote
scientific progress.
For instance, value judgments are at stake in the choice of methodology
that scientists use to study the toxicity of insect-resistant maize. The genetically
modified (GM) plant contains an inserted gene from the bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) that produces the Bt toxin. This endows the resulting GM
Bt maize plants with a resistance to certain pest species. The established meth-
odological norm in toxicity studies is to use the purified Bt protein from the
bacteria rather than using purified plant protein.27 This methodological choice
is grounded on the assumption that transgene insertion and integration are
sufficiently precise and well-controlled processes. It also presupposes that the
creation, from such processes, of other products that might have different side
effects than the ones produced by the purified Bt protein is unlikely.28 The
plausibility of these assumptions rests on value judgments about what counts
as “sufficiently” precise and well controlled so as to be safe, or how bad the
risks of different side effects might be, given the likely benefits of such crops.
Questioning these value judgments has led some researchers to use purified
plant protein to assess Bt toxicity, which has produced dissenting findings on
the safety of GM crops.29 That is, they are using alternative methodologies that
may yield different evidence because they challenge the value judgments im-
plicitly supporting the consensus view. At the very least, this presents a larger
range of possibilities regarding the impacts of GM crops and increases our
understanding of them.
Some dissent with respect to modeling climate change also has advanced
scientific progress in this way. Historically, the standard practice for modeling
climate impacts was to measure the aggregate effects of factors that were easily
quantifiable, such as crop yield, loss of life, dollars lost in GNP, or destroyed
25
property.30 This methodological practice was grounded on various value

judgments, such as the assumption that the distribution of impacts is not im-
portant, or that effects difficult to measure should be disregarded even though
they might be relevant to some stakeholders.31 But the use of such value
judgments in the construction of climate models had important consequences.
For example, many integrative assessment models measured the aggregate im-
pact of climate change on food production, as opposed to examining impacts
at a regional or local level.32 Such models suggested that although agriculture
would decrease in places where droughts or rising sea levels caused land to
become unusable, this would be offset by increased food production in areas
that would have milder climate conditions.33 Dissenters attentive to social jus-
tice concerns objected that measuring the aggregative effects of climate change
on food production obscured how access to food may be affected in ways that
reinforce or exacerbate existing social inequalities.34 They called attention to
the fact that, while the models indicated that the world’s food supply may not
be drastically reduced, they failed to account for the particular effects on the
Global South areas, which already experience food scarcity. For dissenters,
this was particularly problematic in a context where such countries arguably
have less responsibility for anthropogenic climate change. Dissenters then
challenged existing modeling practices and proposed new ones that involved
information both about the aggregate impacts expected from climate change
and about the distribution of those impacts to ensure that costs and benefits
could be distributed equitably.35 As a result, climate science advanced so as
to produce data relevant to developing just policies and adaptation priorities.
Yet, dissent is valuable in other ways besides advancing scientific progress.
As Mill’s quote earlier indicates, dissenting views are epistemically valuable
even when they turn out to ultimately be erroneous. Even if a consensus view
holds up over time under significant scrutiny, the challenge can sharpen our
understanding of particular phenomena, can help generate new evidence or
reasons for believing that the consensus view is correct, and can allow scientists
and the public to have more confidence that the established consensus is more
than mere dogma. Consider, for example, concerns about a possible link be-
tween the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and thimerosal-containing
vaccines such as the diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DPT or DT) and the devel-
opment of autism spectrum disorders.36 Challenges to the consensus about the
safety of childhood vaccines have led to research aimed at directly assessing
the existence of such a link.37 Thus, there is now new and extensive evidence
that supports the consensus view that childhood vaccines do not cause autism.
Although the dissent was incorrect, it led to new research that has resulted in
more reliable evidence.
Finally, scientific dissent, whether correct or not, can be valuable not only
for epistemic reasons but also for social ones. For instance, and particularly
when dealing with policy-relevant science, dissent can strengthen warranted
26
public trust in an existent scientific consensus and thus motivate relevant public
actions. When the scientific community is open and welcoming of dissenting
views, it signifies that the consensus has been reached through a rigorous and
fair process.38 When a consensus goes unchallenged, the public might worry
that the consensus in question is unreliable and that it is not receiving the sort
of scrutiny that it should.39 This can be epistemically problematic insofar as
potentially false assumptions might go uncorrected. But it can also be socially
problematic. A consensus view that goes unchallenged, even if correct, may
have the unintended consequence of decreasing public trust in science. The
existence of dissent can reassure the public that the scientific community is
appropriately scrutinizing the research, that external interests are not biasing
the results, and that consensus that persists in the face of dissent is ultimately
well grounded. Indeed, arguably this is one reason the consensus on climate
change is impressive. The central consensus view remains well supported de-
spite many rigorous attempts to challenge it.
Taking the Value of Dissent Seriously
The valuable roles that dissent can play call for scientific communities not
merely to tolerate or be open to dissent when it arises but also to actively seek and
engage dissenting views. In particular, the crucial role of dissent in promoting
scientific progress imposes epistemic obligations on scientific communities
to: provide public venues for dissent; encourage and secure the participa-
tion of dissenting views originating from a diverse community of experts and
stakeholders; engage in uptake of dissent; and ensure that dissenting views are
not dismissed on the basis of epistemically irrelevant factors.40
Dissent can only yield epistemic and social benefits if there are mechanisms
in place to solicit and disseminate dissenting views. Peer review is one way to
fulfill the obligation to provide public venues for scrutiny of consensus views.
Although far from perfect,41 the process is useful in checking the quality of
submitted work to grant-awarding agencies, journals, or conferences—that
is, that the data seem right, that the conclusions are well reasoned—and in
improving the quality of the research itself. Reviewers may point out prior
research important to the work under consideration, point out flaws or limi-
tations in the methodologies researchers have used, request new experiments,
call attention to errors in the interpretation of the data, and—particularly
important—bring to bear a different point of view on the phenomena.
Unless open to diverse points of view, the peer review process will fail
to reap the benefits of dissent. Dissenting views will be unlikely to be given a
fair chance if peer review draws mainly on experts within a particular field or
discipline where scientists share relevant assumptions in virtue of common
training and practices. Thus, in order for dissent to effectively play its valuable
27
role in revising incorrect beliefs, scientific communities must also strive to

involve diverse participants.42 To be sure, what sort of diversity is relevant
to producing dissenting views that will yield epistemic benefits depends on
various aspects of the research in question and the scientific community. In
some cases, the inclusion of participants with a diversity of values and interests
will be beneficial in identifying and scrutinizing background assumptions.43
Similarly, ensuring the participation of people from different social positions
or those likely to have different kinds of life experiences can also be important
to ensure the objectivity of science.44 Diversity of ideas can also contribute to
the kind of creativity needed to foster alternatives.45 In some areas of research,
diversity of methodology and disciplinary expertise will be of particular rele-
vance.46 While it is an open question what type of diversity will best contribute
to producing and nurturing epistemically beneficial dissenting views, it is clear
that some such diversity will be vital to do so.
The importance of dissent in promoting scientific progress also imposes
obligations on members of the scientific community to listen and take the
dissent in question seriously; that is, if dissent is to yield epistemic benefits,
the scientific community must engage in what Helen Longino refers to as “up-
take.”47 The obligation to engage in uptake does not require that proponents
of the consensus accept the claims of dissenters. Rather, it entails a prima
facie duty on the side of those who support the consensus to respond to the
dissenting evidence and arguments, either by refining or revising the con-
sensus views or assumptions or by explaining why the dissent is misguided
or inadequate. Clearly, dissent that is ignored by relevant members of the sci-
entific community will have little effect on the improvement of knowledge
production. Even if dissent that turns out to be correct is eventually given
the attention it deserves, failing to engage with dissenting views when they
arise can slow scientific progress and delay benefits to societies. Consider the
case of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician who
pioneered antiseptic procedures.48 Puerperal fever, or postpartum infection,
was common in hospitals during his time and fatal in high numbers. While
practicing at the Vienna General Hospital, Semmelweis noticed a high death
rate among women who delivered their babies with the assistance of doctors
and medical students, whereas women who were assisted by midwives had a
much lower death rate. After considering several hypotheses for the discrep-
ancy in mortality rates, he concluded that the higher death rates for the women
treated by doctors and medical students were associated with the latter’s role
in the handling of corpses during autopsies and before attending the preg-
nant women. The midwives, on the other hand, did not partake in autopsies.
Semmelweis associated the exposure to decomposing organic matter with an
increased risk of puerperal fever, and determined that washing hands and
cleaning medical instruments might reduce the mortality. He then instituted
a mandatory handwashing policy in a chlorinated lime solution for medical
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Aboyne, being aware that Montrose’s intention was to storm the
bridge, drew all his forces to its defence. In a valley, at a small
distance from the bridge, Montrose stationed the flower of his army,
and, with the rest, including the waggoners and other followers of the
camp, to make a more formidable appearance, made a feint as if he
intended to ford the river above the bridge. This stratagem
succeeded, for Aboyne instantly withdrew the greater part of his
forces to oppose them, and thus left the most important station
almost at the mercy of the enemy. The ambuscade rose immediately,
and advanced even to the cannons’ mouths. The artillery, however, of
that period, was not so formidable as it is now. It was ill-served, ill-
directed, and did little execution. A brisk engagement took place at
the bridge, which, however, was maintained but a few minutes; for
the Covenanters, clearing the bridge of its defenders, and quickly
removing the barricades, opened to the right and left a path for their
cavalry, who drove the citizens off the field with considerable loss.
Aboyne returned quickly with his men to assist the citizens, but their
courage was now damped with their loss; so that, by the first charge
of the Covenanters, their ranks were broken, and they began to fly in
every direction. It was no longer a battle but a rout. The Covenanters
hewed down without mercy their flying enemies; and, so exasperated
were they at their obstinate fickleness in former times, that the more
merciful among them were hardly able to obtain quarter for those
who confessed themselves vanquished. Aboyne, with great exertion,
having rallied one hundred horse, made for the town, determined if
possible to defend it. Montrose dispatched a party after him, and
both, plunging their rowels into their horses’ sides, dashed forward
over friends and enemies indiscriminately, and arrived close at each
other’s heels in the town. There was no possibility of shutting the
gates; so both entered by St Nicholas Fort at the same instant. The
intention of Aboyne was thus frustrated, and he found it not an easy
matter to escape with his followers by the Gallowgate Port.
The inhabitants had waited with breathless expectation the event
of this day’s battle, and had in some measure made up their minds in
case of Aboyne’s failure. But the anticipation fell far short of the
reality. The town was in the possession of the enemy. At every
turning of the streets there were parties engaged in desperate
combat, while the troops of cavalry that occasionally passed
sometimes trampled down both friend and foe, never more to rise.
The poor citizens were endeavouring to escape from the place with
whatever of their effects they could lay hands on. The aged were
feebly endeavouring to leave the resting-place of their youth. Wives,
mothers, and sisters were searching in tears for their friends, while a
loud and piercing shriek announced the agony of the maidens when
informed of the death of their betrothed. The innocent children in
the confusion were left to wander, neglected by their guardians,—and
the records from which this tale is compiled say, that a little boy and
girl, who were twins, while wandering hand-in-hand in the streets,
unconscious of danger, were crushed by the coursers’ hoofs, while
their mother was hastening to remove them from danger. But why
dwell upon the horrors of this scene?
On a signal given, Basil forded the Dee with his followers, and
advanced to the city. Having taken possession of his post, he kept
himself on the alert, to restrain any irregularity among his men,
which the scene before them was but too well calculated to
superinduce. The town was given up to be pillaged. It had been set
on fire in different places; therefore it required the utmost attention
to prevent his followers from mingling with their companions. He
had remained at his post a considerable time, when he heard a
piercing shriek in a voice well known to him. He sprang to the place
whence it seemed to come, and beheld Mary Leslie struggling with a
Covenanter, who was plundering her of the trinkets that adorned her
dress. “Villain!” said he, drawing his sword; but the exclamation put
the Covenanter on his guard. He aimed a fearful blow at him, but the
Covenanter’s blade, being of better temper than Basil’s, stood the
blow, while the other was shivered into a thousand pieces. The
Covenanter’s weapon was now within a few inches of his breast,
when Basil, in a state of desperation, enveloped his hand in his cloak,
and seizing the blade suddenly, bent it with such force that it
snapped at the hilt—when, seizing a partisan that lay near him, he
dealt the Covenanter such a blow with it as felled him to the earth.
Basil then hastily asked Mary what she did here.
She informed him that the soldiers had broken into the house in
search of plunder, and that she had been obliged to fly when she met
with the Covenanter. He asked her where her father was. She told
him, weeping, that forty-eight of the principal citizens, along with
her father, had been bound, and cast into the common prison.
“Then,” said he, “you must allow me to conduct you to a place of
safety.”
“No, Basil, I cannot. My dear father”——
“He is in no danger; and this is no place for maidens;” and running
speedily for his horse, he placed her, more dead than alive, behind
him, and galloped out of the town.
When he returned, which was about eight, the confusion had in a
great measure ceased; the magistrates, by a largess of 7000 merks,
having prevailed on Montrose to put a stop to the pillage. When Basil
came near to his post, he discovered that the house had been
plundered, and that an attempt had been made to set it on fire.
Montrose and his suite were standing before it; his father was also
there, and ran to meet him.
“Thank God, my son, that thou art come. This,” looking round him,
“this looks not like treason.”
“Come hither, Basil Rolland,” said Montrose, “and answer me
truly. My bowels yearn for thee; yet if what is testified against thee be
true, though thou wert my mother’s son, God do so to me, and more
also, if thou shalt not die the death. Why—why, young man, didst
thou desert the important trust assigned to thee?”
Basil told the naked truth.
“Thou hast done wrong, young man; yet thy father, thy youth,
thine inexperience, all—all plead with me for thee.”
“Heaven bless you, my lord, for the word,” said Isaac Rolland. “My
life for it, he is innocent!”
“Believe me,” said Montrose, “I would fain that he were so. There
is not in his eye the alarmed glance of conscious guiltiness. Answer
me again, didst thou not join the camp with traitorous intent? Didst
thou not, last night, under cloud of darkness, betake thee to the camp
of the enemy to tell the Viscount of Aboyne what thou knewest about
the strength and intentions of the host?”
The truth and falsehood were here so blended together, that Basil
betrayed signs of the greatest confusion, and was silent.
“Nay, now,” said Montrose, “he denies it not; his confusion betrays
him. One of the sentinels discovered him,—the very man against
whom he this day drew the sword for a prelatemonging maiden.
Young man, this hath destroyed my aversion to sacrifice thee; and
the good cause demands that such treachery pass not unpunished. If
thou hast any unrepented sin, prepare thyself; for yet two days, and
thou art with the dead. Bind him, soldiers; and on the second day
hence let him suffer the punishment due to his crimes.”
“Stop, my lord,” said Isaac Rolland, “and shed not innocent blood.
O cut not down the flower in the bud! Exhaust your vengeance on
me; but spare, oh, spare my son!”
“Entreaty avails not. My duty to the host demands it. And know, I
do nothing but what I wish may be my own lot if I betray the good
cause. If I betray it, may my best blood be spilled on the scaffold, and
may the hangmen put on my shroud!”
This was spoken in an inflexible and enthusiastic tone; but he
knew not that he was condemning himself. His wish was
accomplished; for they who had that day witnessed his proud desire,
ere many years, saw one of his mangled limbs bleaching over the city
gates. Basil was led off by the guards; while his father, unable to
follow, stood speechless and motionless as a statue.
Chapter V.
Farewell, ye dungeons, dark and strong,
The wretch’s destinie;
Macpherson’s time will not be long
On yonder gallows-tree.—Old Song.
Basil Rolland was conducted into one of the cells of the common
prison, and, notwithstanding his excitement, fell into a profound
slumber; but it was of that troubled kind which nature obtains by
force when the mind is disposed for watchfulness. He imagined
himself by the sea, on a beautiful summer evening, walking with his
love by the murmuring shore. On a sudden they were separated; and
he, in a small boat, was on the bosom of the ocean. The tempest was
raging in all its grandeur, and the unwilling bark was whirling and
reeling on the mountainous waves; it struck upon a rock, and was
dashed into a thousand pieces. He felt the waters rushing in his ears;
he saw the sea-monsters waiting for their prey; and his bubbling
screams filled his own heart with horror. He sunk—but the waters
receded and receded, till he stood firmly on a dry rock. A vast plain
was around him—a black and barren wilderness, without one plant,
one shrub, or one blade of grass. It lay stretched before him, as far as
his eye could reach, the same dismal, monotonous scene of
desolation. On a sudden, the mists that covered its termination were
dispelled, and piles of rocky mountains, whose tops touched the
clouds, began to close around him. A vast amphitheatre of smooth
and perpendicular stone surrounded him, and chained him to the
desert. The rocky walls began to contract themselves, and to move
nearer to the spot where he stood. Their summits were covered with
multitudes of spectators, whose fiendish shout was echoed from rock
to rock, until it fell upon his aching ear. Wild, unearthly faces were
before him on every side; and fingers pointed at him with a
demoniacal giggle. The rocks still moved on. The narrow circle on
which he stood was darkened by their height—he heard the clashing
of their collision—he felt his body crushed and bruised by the
gigantic pressure. He raised his voice to shriek his last farewell; but
the scene was changed. The grave had given up her dead; and the
sea, the dead that were in her. He was among the companions of his
childhood; and not one was wanting. The jest and the game went on
as in the days of his youth. His departed mother awaited his return;
but her kiss of welcome blenched his cheek with cold. Again he was
involved in a scene of strife. The death-bearing missiles were
whizzing around him; but he had not the power to lift an arm in his
own defence. A supernatural energy chained him to the spot, and
paralysed all his efforts. A gigantic trooper levelled his carbine at
him; the aim was taken deliberately; he heard the snap of the lock; he
saw the flash of fire; he gave a loud and piercing shriek, and awoke in
agony, gasping for breath.
The sun was shining through the grated window when he awoke,
weak and exhausted by his unrefreshing sleep. He found the sober
form of the Covenanting preacher seated beside his pallet, with a
small Bible in his hand.
“I thought it my duty,” said the preacher, “to visit thee, and mark
how thou bearest thyself under this dispensation, and to offer thee
that consolation, in the name of my Master, which smoothes the
passage to the tomb.”
“You have my thanks,” said the unfortunate youth. “Have you
waited long in the apartment?”
“I came at daybreak; but often was I tempted to rouse thee from
thy slumbers, for thy dreams seemed terrifying.”
“I have indeed passed a fearful night. Fancy has chased fancy in
my scorching brain till it appeared reality. But I can spend only
another such night.”
“I grieve to tell thee, young man, that thy days are numbered: all
the intercession of thy father and his friends hath been fruitless. I
also talked to James of Montrose concerning thee; for I hold that he
hath overstretched the limit of his power, and that there is no cause
of death in thee: but he treated me as one that mocketh, when I
unfolded the revealed will of God, that the earth will not cover
Innocent blood; wherefore turn, I beseech thee, thine eyes to the
Lord,—for vain is the help of man. Look to the glory on the other side
of the grave. Fear not them which can kill the body, but after that can
have no power; but fear Him that can cast both soul and body into
hell.”
“I fear not, father; I fear not death. I could close my eyes for ever
on the green land of God without a sigh. Had death met me in the
field, the bugle would have sung my requiem, and I would have laid
me on the turf, happy in being permitted to die like a man; but to die
like a thief—like a dog—is fearful and appalling. Besides, there are
ties which bind to earth souls stronger than mine. Alas! alas! what is
the common approach of Death to the stealthy and ignominious step
with which he visits me!”
“Compose thyself,” said the preacher, “and let these earthly wishes
have no place in thy thoughts. Time, to thee, is nearly done, and
eternity is at hand. Approach thy Creator, as the Father of Mercy, in
His Son. Murmur not at His dispensations; for He chasteneth in
love.”
“A hard lesson!” said Basil. “Tell me, didst though ever love a wife,
a son, or a daughter?”
“I lost a wife and a son,” said the preacher with emotion.
“In what manner?” said Basil.
“I visited the west country, on business of the Congregation, and in
my absence the hand of Death was busy in my house. When I
returned, my wife and son were both beneath the sod. But God’s will
be done! They are now in heaven,” said he, while the tears stole down
his cheeks.
“And,” said Basil, “did you never feel a desire again to see them?
Did you not wish that the decree of fate had been altered, and that
your family had been again restored to you?”
“Often—often,” said he, wringing his hands. “God forgive me! often
have I murmured at His dispensation. At some seasons I would have
bartered my life—nay, my soul’s weal—for one hour of their society.”
“And yet ye bid me do that which ye confess to be above your
efforts! You lost but your wife and child; I lose my own life—my fame
—my Mary.”
“But your father”——
“Peace! I have no father—no friend—no love. To-morrow’s sun will
see me as I was before my being; all of me gone, except my name
coupled with hated murderers and traitors. Away, away, old man! it
drives me to madness. But, if the spirits of the dead can burst the
sepulchre, I will be near my murderer. In the blackness of night I will
be near him, and whisper in his thoughts dark, dark as hell.”
“Have patience”——
“Patience! Heaven and earth! Remove these bonds,” said he,
striking his manacles together till the vaulted roof echoed the
clanking. “Give me my sword,—place Montrose before me,—and I’ll
be patient! very patient!”—and he burst into a fit of hysterical
laughter which made the preacher shudder.
“Prepare to meet thy God, young man,” exclaimed the Covenanter.
He succeeded in gaining his attention, and resumed: “Thy thoughts
are full of carnal revenge, forgetting Him who hath said, ‘vengeance
is mine.’ I tell thee that thy thoughts are evil, and not good. Turn
thyself to thy Saviour, and, instead of denouncing woe on thy fellows,
prepare thyself for thy long journey.”
“Long, indeed!” said Basil, entering into a new train of ideas. “Ere
to-morrow’s sun go down, my soul, how far wilt thou have travelled?
Thou wilt outstrip the lightning’s speed. And then, the account! I am
wrong, good man; but my brain is giddy. Leave me now,—but,
prithee, return.”
“I shall see thee again. Put thy trust in the Lord. Compose thy
troubled mind, and God be with thee! Thy father is soliciting thy
pardon; and he bade me tell thee he would visit thee to-day. I’ll go to
Montrose myself,—for he shall pardon thee.”
The day following, a dark gibbet frowned in the centre of the
market-place, erected in the bore of the millstone which lies at this
day in the middle of Castle Street. At an early hour the whole square
was filled with spectators to witness the tragedy. A powerful band of
the Covenanters guarded the scaffold. A deep feeling of sympathy
pervaded the multitude, for the wretched prisoner was known to
almost every individual. Every one was talking to his neighbour on
the distressing event, with an interest which showed the intensity of
their sympathy with the sufferer.
“Willawins! willawins!” said an aged woman; “I suckled him at this
auld breast, and dandled him in these frail arms. On the vera last
winter, when I was ill wi’ an income, he was amaist the only ane that
came to speir for me; an’ weel I wat, he didna come toom-handed. I
just hirpled out, because I thought I wad like to see his bonny face
and his glossy curls ance mair; but I canna thole that black woodie! It
glamours my auld een. Lord be wi’ him! Eh, sirs! eh, sirs!”
“Vera right, cummer,” said Tenor the wright; “it’s a waesome
business. Troth, ilka nail that I drave into that woodie, I could have
wished to have been a nail o’ my ain coffin.”
“And what for stand ye a’ idle here?” said a withered beldame,
whom Basil had found means to save from being tried for witchcraft,
which, as the reader is aware that “Jeddart justice” was administered
on these occasions, was tantamount to condemnation. “Why stand ye
idle here? I’ve seen the time when a’ the Whigs in the land dauredna
do this. Tak the sword! tak the sword! The day ’ill come when the
corbies will eat Montrose’s fause heart, and”——
“Whisht, sirs! whisht!” exclaimed several voices; and there was a
rush among the crowd, which made the whole mass vibrate like the
waves of the sea. It was the appearance of our hero, surrounded by a
guard of the insurgents. His arms were bound. The cart followed
behind; but he was spared the indignity of riding in it. It contained
the executioner, a miserable-looking man, tottering in the extremity
of old age. It also bore the prisoner’s coffin. His demeanour was calm
and composed, his step firm and regular; but the flush of a slight
hectic was on his cheek. He was attended by the Covenanting
preacher, whom, on his coming out, he asked, “If she knew of this?”
He whispered in his ear. “Then the bitterness of death is past;” and
the procession moved on. These were the last words he was heard to
utter. He never raised his eyes from the ground till he reached the
scaffold, when, with a determined and convulsive energy, he bent his
eyes upon the scene before him. It was but for a moment; and they
sank again to the earth, while his lips were moving in secret prayer.
We must now retrograde a little in our story, to mark the progress
of two horsemen, who, about noon, were advancing with the utmost
rapidity to Aberdeen. These were Isaac Rolland and Hackit, Provost
Leslie’s servant. To explain their appearance here, it will be
necessary to notice some events of the preceding day. Isaac Rolland
and his friends had applied earnestly to Montrose for the repeal of
his hasty sentence; and their representations seemed to have great
weight with him. He told them to return early next morning to
receive his answer. At the first peep of day Isaac was at his lodgings,
and found, to his surprise and sorrow, that news had arrived of the
pacification of Berwick late the evening before, and that Montrose
had instantly taken horse for the south. There was no time to be lost,
and, accompanied by Hackit, he set out on horseback to Arbroath,
where Montrose was to rest for a little, and reached it as the other
was preparing to depart.
The pardon was readily granted, as peace was now established
between all the king’s subjects. Montrose, moreover, acknowledged
that he had proceeded too hastily.
They accordingly set out on their journey, and spared neither whip
nor spur, lest they should arrive too late. They changed horses at
Dunottar, and rode on to Aberdeen with all the speed they could
make. When about six miles from the town, Isaac Rolland’s horse
broke down under him, when Hackit, who was better mounted,
seized the papers, and, bidding him follow as fast as possible, pushed
on. The noble animal that bore him went with the speed of lightning,
but far too slowly for the impatient rider. Having shot along the
bridge of Dee at full gallop, he arrived at Castle Street, by the
Shiprow with his horse panting and foaming, while the clotted blood
hung from the armed heels of his rider.
“A pardon! a pardon!” shouted Hackit, as he recklessly galloped
over and through the thick-set multitude, and lancing to the quick
his horse’s sides with his deep rowels at every exclamation. “A
pardon! a pardon!” cried he, advancing still faster, for the rope was
adjusted, and all was ready for the fatal consummation. “Lord hae
mercy on him!” His horse with one bound brought him to the foot of
the scaffold, and then dropped down dead, while a loud execration
burst from the spectators, which drowned his cries. The prisoner was
thrown off just in Hackit’s sight as he advanced, the Covenanters
having dreaded that this was the beginning of some commotion. He
threw the sealed pardon at the head of the commandant, and,
mounting the scaffold, cut the cord in a twinkling, letting the body
fall into the arms of some of the crowd who had followed him; and,
quicker than thought, conveyed him into an adjacent house, where
every means was tried to restore animation. There was not one who
could refrain from tears when they compared the crushed and
maimed being before them with the jovial young man he was a few
days before. His eyes, bleared and bloodshot, were protruded from
their sockets; a red circle surrounded his neck, and the blood,
coagulated under his eyes, showed the effects of strangulation. After
some time he heaved a sigh, and attempted to raise his right hand to
his breast; his intention was anticipated, and a picture that hung
round his neck was put into his hand. At this moment Mary Leslie
entered the apartment. A tremulous shuddering ran through his
frame; he attempted to raise himself, but life ebbed by the effort,
and, with a deep groan, he fell back into the arms of death. Mary
Leslie, however, did not witness his departure, for she had sunk
senseless on the floor. When she recovered, all was calm, save her
eye which rolled with the quickness of insanity.
“Hush!” said she; “he sleeps, and you will waken him. I’ll cover
him with my own plaid, for it is cold—cold.” She set herself to cover
him, and sang the verse of the ballad—
My love has gone to the good green wood
To hunt the dark-brown daes;
His beild will be the ferny den,
Or the shade of the heathery braes.
But I’ll build my love a bonny bower——
“Basil, awake! the old man waits you at the Playfield—arise! He hears
me not—ha—I remember!” and she sank again on the floor, and was
carried home by her friends.
A fair company of young men bore Basil to his grave; and by his
side a weeping band of maidens carried Mary Leslie. They were
lovely in their lives, and in death they were not separated. One grave
contains them both, which was long hallowed by the remembrance of
this tragical transaction. The sacred spot has now become common
ground, and I have searched in vain for it, that I might shed one tear
to the memory of the unfortunate lovers.
The goodwill of his fellow-citizens called Patrick Leslie several
times to be their chief magistrate; but life to him had lost its savour,
and he lingered for several years in this world as one whose hopes
and enjoyments were elsewhere. It was said that Isaac Rolland, at
stated intervals, visited the grave of his son, and watered it with the
tear of unavailing sorrow. He afterwards involved himself with the
factions that tore the kingdom asunder, and, it was supposed,
perished at the battle between the Covenanters and Oliver Cromwell,
at Dunbar, in 1650.—Aberdeen Censor.
THE LAST OF THE JACOBITES.
By Robert Chambers, LL.D.
I had occasion to mention, at the conclusion of my “History of the

Insurrection of 1745,” that after that period the spirit of Jacobitism
became a very different thing from what it had formerly been; that,
acquiring no fresh adherents among the young subsequent to that
disastrous year, it grew old, and decayed with the individuals who
had witnessed its better days; and that, in the end, it became
altogether dependent upon the existence of a few aged enthusiasts,
more generally of the female than the male sex.
These relics of the party—for they could be called nothing else—
soon became isolated in the midst of general society; and latterly
were looked upon, by modern politicians, with a feeling similar to
that with which the antediluvian patriarchs must have been regarded
in the new world, after they had survived several generations of their
short-lived descendants. As their glory lay in all the past, they took
an especial pride in retaining every description of manners and dress
which could be considered old-fashioned, much upon the principle
which induced Will Honeycomb to continue wearing the wig in
which he had gained a young lady’s heart. Their manners were
entirely of that stately and formal sort which obtained at the
commencement of the eighteenth century, and which is so
inseparably associated in the mind of a modern with ideas of full-
bottomed perukes, long-backed coats, gold-buckled shoes, and tall
walking canes. Mr Pitt’s tax, which had so strong an effect upon the
heads of the British public, did not perhaps unsettle one grain of
truly Jacobite powder; nor is it hypothetical to suppose that the
general abandonment of snuff-taking by the ladies, which happened
rather before that period, wrenched a single box from the fingers of
any ancient dame, whose mind had been made up on politics, as her
taste had been upon black rappee, before the year of grace 1745.
In proportion as the world at large ceased to regard the claims of
the house of Stuart, and as old age advanced upon those who still
cherished them, the spirit of Jacobitism, once so lofty and so
chivalrous, assimilated more and more with the mere imbecility of
dotage. What it thus lost, however, in extensive application, it gained
in virulence; and it perhaps never burned in any bosoms with so
much fervour as in those few which last retained it. True, the
generosity which characterised it in earlier and better times had now
degenerated into a sort of acrid humour, like good wine turned into
vinegar. Yet, if an example were wanting of the true inveterate
Jacobite, it could not be found anywhere in such perfection as
amongst the few who survived till recent times, and who had carried
the spirit unscathed and unquenched through three-quarters of a
century of every other kind of political sentiment.
As no general description can present a very vivid portraiture to
the mind, it may be proper here to condescend upon the features of
the party, by giving a sketch of an individual Jacobite who was
characterised in the manner alluded to, and who might be
considered a fair specimen of his brethren. The person meant to be
described, might be styled the Last of the Jacobites; for, at the
period of his death in 1825, there was not known to exist, at least in
Edinburgh, any person, besides himself, who refused to acknowledge
the reigning family. His name was Alexander Halket. He had been, in
early life, a merchant in the remote town of Fraserburgh, on the
Moray Firth; but had retired for many years before his death, to live
upon a small annuity in Edinburgh. The propensity which
characterised him, in common with all the rest of his party, to regard
the antiquities of his native land with reverence, joined with the
narrowness of his fortune in inducing him to take up his abode in the
Old Town.
He lodged in one of those old stately hotels near the palace of
Holyroodhouse, which had formerly been occupied by the noblemen
attendant upon the Scottish court, but which have latterly become so
completely overrun by the lower class of citizens. Let it not be
supposed that he possessed the whole of one of these magnificent
hotels. He only occupied two rooms in one of the floors or “flats” into
which all such buildings in Edinburgh are divided; and these he
possessed only in the character of a lodger, not as tenant at first
hand. He was, nevertheless, as comfortably domiciled as most old
gentlemen who happen to have survived the period of matrimony.
His room—for one of them was so styled par excellence—was cased
round with white-painted panelling, and hung with a number of
portraits representing the latter members of the house of Stuart,
among whom the Old and Young Chevaliers were not forgotten.[15]
His windows had a prospect on the one hand of the quiet and
cloistered precincts of Chessels’ Court, and on the other to the gilded
spires and gray, time-honoured turrets of Holyroodhouse. Twice a
year, when he held a card party, with three candles on the table, and
the old joke about the number which adorn that of the laird of Grant,
was he duly gratified with compliments upon the comfortable nature
of his “room,” by the ancient Jacobite spinsters and dowagers, who,
in silk mantles and pattens, came from Abbeyhill and New Street to
honour him with their venerable company.
15. Some rascally picture-dealer had imposed upon him a nondescript daub of
the female face divine as a likeness of the beautiful Queen Mary. How he
accomplished this it is not easy to say; probably he was acquainted with Mr
Halket’s ardent devotion to the cause of the house of Stuart, at every period of its
history, and availed himself of this knowledge to palm the wretched portrait upon
the old gentleman’s unsuspecting enthusiasm. Certain it is that the said portrait
was hung in the place of honour—over the mantelpiece—in Mr Halket’s apartment,
and was, on state occasions, exhibited to his guests with no small complacency.
Many of his friends were, like himself, too blindly attached to everything that
carried a show of antiquity to suspect the cheat; and others were too good-natured
to disturb a harmless delusion, from the indulgence of which he derived so much
satisfaction. One of them, however, actuated by an unhappy spirit of
connoisseurship, was guilty of the cruelty of undeceiving him, and not only
persuaded him that the picture was not a likeness of the goddess of his idolatry,—
Queen Mary,—but possessed him with the belief that it represented the vinegar
aspect of the hated Elizabeth. Mr Halket, however, was too proud to acknowledge
his mortification by causing the picture to be removed, or perhaps it might not
have been convenient for him to supply its place; and he did not want wit to devise
a pretext for allowing it to remain, without compromising his hostility to the
English queen one whit. “Very well,” said he, “I am glad you have told me it is
Elizabeth; for I shall have the pleasure of showing my contempt of her every day by
turning my back upon her when I sit down to table.”
Halket was an old man of dignified appearance, and generally
wore a dress of the antique fashion above alluded to. On Sundays
and holidays he always exhibited a sort of court-dress, and walked
with a cane of more than ordinary stateliness. He also assumed this
dignified attire on occasions of peculiar ceremony. It was his custom,
for instance, on a particular day every year, to pay a visit to the
deserted court of Holyrood in this dress, which he considered alone
suitable to an affair of so much importance. On the morning of the
particular day which he was thus wont to keep holy, he always
dressed himself with extreme care, got his hair put into order by a
professional hand, and, after breakfast, walked out of doors with
deliberate steps and a solemn mind. His march down the Canongate
was performed with all the decorum which might have attended one
of the state processions of a former day. He did not walk upon the
pavement by the side of the way. That would have brought him into
contact with the modern existing world, the rude touch of which
might have brushed from his coat the dust and sanctitude of years.
He assumed the centre of the street, where, in the desolation which
had overtaken the place, he ran no risk of being jostled by either
carriage or foot-passenger, and where the play of his thoughts and
the play of his cane-arm alike got ample scope. There, wrapped up in
his own pensive reflections, perhaps imagining himself one in a
court-pageant, he walked along, under the lofty shadows of the
Canongate,—a wreck of yesterday floating down the stream of to-day,
and almost in himself a procession.
On entering the porch of the palace he took off his hat; then,
pacing along the quadrangle, he ascended the staircase of the
Hamilton apartments, and entered Queen Mary’s chambers. Had the
beauteous queen still kept court there, and still been sitting upon her
throne to receive the homage of mankind, Mr Halket could not have
entered with more awe-struck solemnity of deportment, or a mind
more alive to the nature of the scene. When he had gone over the
whole of the various rooms, and also traversed in mind the whole of
the recollections which they are calculated to excite, he retired to the
picture-gallery, and there endeavoured to recall, in the same manner,
the more recent glories of the court of Prince Charles. To have seen
the amiable old enthusiast sitting in that long and lofty hall, gazing
alternately upon vacant space and the portraits which hang upon the
walls, and to all appearance absorbed beyond recall in the
contemplation of the scene, one would have supposed him to be
fascinated to the spot, and that he conceived it possible, by devout
wishes, long and fixedly entertained, to annul the interval of time,
and reproduce upon that floor the glories which once pervaded it,
but which had so long passed away. After a day of pure and most
ideal enjoyment, he used to retire to his own house, in a state of
mind approaching, as near as may be possible on this earth, to
perfect beatitude.[16]
16. He paid a visit, in full dress, with a sword by his side, to the Crown Room,
in Edinburgh Castle, immediately after the old regalia of the kingdom had been
there discovered in 1818. On this occasion a friend of the author saw him, and
endeavoured to engage him in conversation, as he was marching up the Castle Hill;
but he was too deeply absorbed in reflection upon the sacred objects which he had
to see, to be able to speak. He just gazed on the person accosting him, and walked
on.
Mr Halket belonged, as a matter of course, to the primitive
apostolical church, whose history has been so intimately and so
fatally associated with that of the house of Stuart. He used to attend
an obscure chapel in the Old Town; one of those unostentatious
places of worship to which the Episcopalian clergy had retired, when
dispossessed of their legitimate fanes at the Revolution, and where
they have since performed the duties of religion, rather, it may be
said, to a family, or at most a circle of acquaintances, than to a
congregation. He was one of the old-fashioned sort of Episcopalians,
who always used to pronounce the responses aloud; and, during the
whole of the Liturgy, he held up one of his hands in an attitude of
devotion. One portion alone of that formula did he abstain from
assenting to—the prayer for the Royal Family. At that place, he
always blew his nose, as a token of contempt. In order that even his
eye might not be offended by the names of the Hanoverian family, as
he called them, he used a prayer-book which had been printed before
the Revolution, and which still prayed for King Charles, the Duke of
York, and the Princess Anne. He was excessively accurate in all the
forms of the Episcopalian mode of worship; and indeed acted as a
sort of fugleman to the chapel; the rise or fall of his person being in
some measure a signal to guide the corresponding motions of all the
rest of the congregation.
Such was Alexander Halket—at least in his more poetical and
gentlemanly aspect. His character and history, however, were not
without their disagreeable points. For instance, although but humbly
born himself, he was perpetually affecting the airs of an aristocrat,
was always talking of “good old families, who had seen better days,”
and declaimed incessantly against the upstart pride and consequence
of people who had originally been nothing. This peculiarity, which
was, perhaps, after all, not inconsistent with his Jacobite craze, he
had exhibited even when a shopkeeper in Fraserburgh. If a person
came in, for instance, and asked to have a hat, Halket would take
down one of a quality suitable, as he thought, to the rank or wealth of
the customer, and if any objection was made to it, or a wish
expressed for one of a better sort, he would say, “That hat, sir, is
quite good enough for a man in your rank of life. I will give you no
other.” He was also very finical in the decoration of his person, and
very much of a hypochondriac in regard to little incidental maladies.
Somebody, to quiz him on this last score, once circulated a report
that he had caught cold one night, going home from a party, in
consequence of having left off wearing a particular gold ring. And it
really was not impossible for him to have believed such a thing,
extravagant as it may appear.
THE GRAVE-DIGGER’S TALE.
It was one cold November morning, on the day of an intended

voyage, when Mrs M‘Cosey, my landlady, tapped at my bed-chamber
door, informing me that it was “braid day light;” but on reaching the
caller air I found, by my watch and the light of the moon, that I had
full two hours to spare for such sublunary delights as such a
circumstance might create. A traveller, when he has once taken his
leave, and rung the changes of “farewell,” “adieu,” “goodbye,” and
“God bless you,” on the connubial and domestic harmonies of his last
lodgings, will rather hazard his health by an exposure to the “pelting
of the pitiless storm,” for a handful of hours, than try an experiment
on his landlady’s sincerity a second time, within the short space of
the same moon. If casualty should force him to make an abrupt
return, enviable must be his feelings if they withstand the cold
unfriendly welcome of “Ye’re no awa yet!” delivered by some
quivering Abigail, in sylvan equipment, like one of Dian’s foresters,
as she slowly and uninvitingly opens the creaking door—a
commentary on the forbidding salute. He enters, and the strong
caloric now beginning to thaw his sensibilities, he makes for his
room, which he forgets is no longer his; when, though he be still in
the dark, he has no need of a candle to enable him to discover that
some kind remembrancer has already been rummaging his corner
cupboard, making lawful seizure and removal (“‘convey’ the wise it
call”) of the contents of his tea-caddy, butter-kit, sugar-bowl, and
“comforter;” to which he had looked forward, on his return, as a
small solace for the disappointment of the morning, affording him
the means of knocking up a comfortable “check,” without again
distressing the exchequer.
I had therefore determined not to return to Mrs M‘Cosey’s; for
“frailty, thy name is woman;” and I felt myself getting into a sad
frame of mind, as I involuntarily strolled a considerable distance
along the high road, pondering on the best means of walking “out of
the air,” as Hamlet says, when, as the moon receded behind a black
cloud, my head came full butt against a wall; the concussion making
it ring, till I actually imagined I could distinguish something like a
tune from my brain. Surely, said I, this is no melody of my making;
as I now heard, like two voices trolling a merry stave—
Duncan’s comin’, Donald’s comin’, &c.
Turning round to the direction from whence the sound seemed to

proceed, I perceived I was in the neighbourhood of the “Auld Kirk
Yard;” where, by the light from his lantern, I could discover the old
grave-digger at work—his bald head, with single white and silvery-
crisped forelock, making transits over the dark line of the grave, like
a white-crested dove, or a sea-gull, flaunting over the yawning gulf.
One stride, and I had cleared the wall of the Auld Kirk Yard.
“You seem merry, old boy!—You are conscious, I presume, that
this world has few troubles that can affect you in your present
situation—the grave.”
“I was takin’ my medicine to keep my heart up, sir; but I wasna
merry: yet I’m content wi’ my station, and am a thocht independent.
I court the company o’ nae man alive; I boo to nae man breathin’—I
quarrel nane wi’ my neebours;—yet am I sought after by high and
low, rich and puir; the king himsel maun come under my rule—this
rod of airn;—though I’m grown frail and feckless afore my time: for
healthy as my looks be, I’m aye, aye at death’s door; our work, ye see,
sir, ’s a’ below the breath; and that’s a sair trade for takin’ the wind
oot o’ a body. Then, I hae my trials,—sair visitations, sic as fa’ to the
lot o’ nae man on this side the grave but mysel! It’s true, that when
the wind gaes round merrily to the east, I get a sma’ share o’ what’s
gaun; but just look at that yird, sir,—as bonnie a healthy yird as ane
could delight to lie in;—neist, look at that spear,—a fortnight’s rust
upon that dibble! Mind, I downa complain;—Live, and let live, say I!
“But what’s the use of talkin’ sae to a life-like, graceless, thochtless,
bairn-getting parish?—the feck o’ whom, after having lived on the fat
o’ the kintra-side, naething will sair, but they maun gang up to the
town to lay their banes amang the gentles, and creesh some hungry
yird wi’ their marrow! The fa’ o’ the leaf is come and gane; an’ saving
some twa or three consumptions—for whilk the Lord be thankit, as a
sma’ fend—tak the parish a’ ower head—frae head to tail—and for
ane that gaes out at my gate-end, ye’ll find a score come in at the
howdie’s!”
“Damna famæ majora quam quæ æstimari possint.”[17]
17. The loss of reputation is greater than can be reckoned.
“I hae lost my Gaelic, sir; but ye speak like a sensible man. The
fame o’ the place is just as ye say, there’s ower mony merry pows
in’t. But see, there’s a sober pow, wi’ a siller clasp on’t.”
“With all due gravity, may I ask, whose property was that?”
“Hech, man! that’s a skeigh tune for a dry whistle; sae, gin ye
please, we’ll tak our morning first.”
So saying, he took his spade, and cutting steps in the side of the
grave he was digging, he mounted to the surface; then, walking off a
few paces, I saw him strike some dark substance lying on a flat stone;
when, to my astonishment, a Flibbertigibbet-looking creature
unrolled itself, from a mortcloth, at my feet.
“Hannibal Grub, my ’prentice, sir, at your service.—Hawney, tak
the shanker ower to Jenny Nailor’s, an’ bring a dooble-floorer to the
gentleman; an’, hear ye, say it’s for the minister’s wife—fourpenny
strunt, Grub, mind—nae pinchin’. If ye meet his reverence, honest
man, tell him ye’re gaun for oil to the cruizie.”
“That auld wizzened pow is a’ that’s left o’ the Laird o’ Nettleriggs.
It was lying face down, when I cam till’t this morning, maist horrifu’
to see; for he maun hae turned in his kist, or been buried back
upwards! It was ae blawy, sleety nicht, about this time twal-year,
when I was sent for express to speak wi’ the laird. Thinkin’ that he
maybe wanted the family lair snodded out, or a new coat o’ paint to
the staunchels, I set out without delay. I had four mile o’ gate to gang
on a darksome dreary road, an’ I couldna but say that I felt mair eerie
than I had ever felt in my ain plantin’, amang honest folk. Sae, wi’
your leave, I’ll just put in ane o’ Jenny’s screws, afore I gae ony
farther. Here’s wishing better acquaintance to us, sir.—Is this frae
the ‘Broon Coo,’ Grub?”
“Ay!” groaned an unearthly voice, as if the “Broon Cow” herself
had spoken.

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The Fight Against Doubt

The Fight Against Doubt

Inmaculada de Melo-​Martín and Kristen Intemann

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Dissent and Its Discontents 1

2. The Important Roles of Dissent 20

4. Failing to Play by the Rules 44

5. Imposing Unfair Risks 60

6. Dealing with Normatively Inappropriate Dissent 73

7. The Relevance of Trust 87

8. Scientific Practices and the Erosion of Trust 96

9. Values in Science and the Erosion of Trust 115

10. Where Disagreements Can Lie: Attending to Values in Policy 129

11. Lessons Learned and New Directions 143

The Fight Against Doubt

Dissent and Its Discontents

2 The Fight Against Doubt

Dissent and Its Discontents 3

4 The Fight Against Doubt

When scientific evidence is relevant for policy or action, these negative

Dissent and Its Discontents 5

social conditions that actually contribute to making NID more damaging. We

Laying the Groundwork

In a book concerned with dissent about scientific claims, it is important to be

6 The Fight Against Doubt

Dissent and Its Discontents 7

stalling of public policies—​for example, regulations of CO2 emissions that

8 The Fight Against Doubt

the duration of many studies, or the limited endpoints utilized, legitimately

Dissent and Its Discontents 9

We take it that the degree of “reliability” to which it is appropriate

10 The Fight Against Doubt

we believe that differences between stakeholders are of relevance when trying

Overview of the Book

Dissent and Its Discontents 11

consequences of NID, strict identifying criteria might well be unnecessary.

12 The Fight Against Doubt

Dissent and Its Discontents 13

obligations and as a source of information to guide public beliefs. We show

14 The Fight Against Doubt

Dissent and Its Discontents 15

16 The Fight Against Doubt

How this Book Is Different

Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann

stalling of public policies—for example, regulations of CO2 emissions that