"Scientific constructivism in the age of anti-science" channels scholarship in literature, environment, and science and technology studies (STS) towards addressing aspects of the epistemological crisis in truth that intensified during the Trump administration. The binary that emerged during many of the protests in support of science and the reality of climate change put "science/truth" on one end and "making/fake news" on the other, which we saw reflected in activist signage. However, what this binary leaves out is a third way of narrating the relationship between science and knowledge: scientific constructivism.

This panel draws on Barbara Herrnstein Smith's distinction between "social constructionISM" and "social constructiVISM" in Scandalous Knolwedge, wherein the "making" of science is not what makes it "made up," but rather what grants science its agency, power, and authority when assembled in particular ways and affirmed through processes of testing and peer review. This more careful relationship to epistemology in science navigates the "Scylla and Charybdis" of truth/lies and belief/fact, and instead examines processes of what Bruno Latour calls "science in the making," in all its emphasis on the collective production of scientific knowledge that doesn't fall back on belief alone. Constructivism, in other words, provides important conceptual tools for the analysis of anti-scientism discourse and narratives as they circulate today.

By engaging with scholarship in scientific constructivism, this panel will examine contentious issues in "anti-science" that include the climate crisis, COVID-19 and vaccinations, and geoengineering. Papers will examine "climate denial" in conversation with Bruno Latour's Down to Earth (Anne McConnell), conspiracies around chemtrails and geoengineering in relation to Holly Jean Buck's discussions of geoengineering as a narrative problem (Derek Woods), and how Dr. Anthony Fauci has been "read" in popular media (Alexandra Rahr). Rather than take these issues separately, this panel will position its audience to attend to "anti-scientism" as the broader umbrella phenomenon, and to consider how scientific constructivism may offer better forms of public science literacy, echoed by Naomi Oreskes in her recent book Why I Trust Science.

This panel is co-sponsored by the Ecocriticism/Environmental Humanities Forum (Melody Jue and Allison Carruth) with the Literature & Science Forum (Priscilla Wald). We have accepted three papers, each to be no longer than 20 minutes. This should easily leave 15+ minutes for discussion.