Knowra Agnotology Agnotology Agnotology is the study of how ignorance and doubt are produced, maintained, or spread through cultural practices, institutions, and deliberate withholding or distortion of knowledge.
Manufactured uncertainty : The strategic creation or amplification of doubt to weaken confidence in established evidence. It describes a central way organized campaigns produce ignorance without disproving evidence.
Robert N. Proctor : An American historian of science who developed agnotology as a framework for studying ignorance. Proctor coined and developed the term while studying the tobacco industry's production of doubt.
Tobacco industry playbook : A strategy of funding research, emphasizing uncertainty, and contesting regulation to defend tobacco sales. It is a canonical case of using uncertainty to delay acceptance of strong evidence.
Scientific consensus : A broad agreement among specialists about a scientific claim, based on accumulated evidence. Manufactured doubt can make settled expert agreement appear unresolved.
Epistemology : The philosophical study of knowledge, justification, belief, and their limits. Agnotology shifts attention from how knowledge is justified to how ignorance is made.
Strategic ignorance : The deliberate choice to avoid, suppress, or limit knowledge for a purpose. It shows how institutions and individuals can maintain ignorance through selective attention.
Londa Schiebinger : An American historian of science whose work examines gender, science, and the production of knowledge. Schiebinger co-edited the collection that helped establish agnotology as a research program.
Merchants of Doubt : A 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway on scientists who challenged evidence in public controversies. Its cases show how a small network repeatedly used doubt to resist scientific conclusions.
Public understanding of science : The knowledge, attitudes, and interpretations of science held by people outside specialist communities. Agnotological processes influence which scientific findings reach public understanding.
Sociology of knowledge : The study of how social relations and institutions shape the production and circulation of knowledge. Agnotology gives this broader inquiry a focused account of socially produced nonknowledge.
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