GES Colloquium | NO LIVE STREAM THIS WEEK

“Antiscience Zealotry?” Values, Epistemic Risk, and the GMO Debate

Speaker: Justin Biddle, Georgia Tech

Abstract:

In this presentation, I argue that the controversy over GM crops is not best understood in terms of the supposed bias, dishonesty, irrationality, or ignorance on the part of proponents or critics, but rather in terms of differences in values. To do this, I draw upon and extend recent work of the role of values and interests in science, focusing particularly on inductive risk and epistemic risk, and I attempt to show how the GMO debate can help to further our understanding of the various epistemic risks that are present in science and how these risks might be managed.

Bio:

Justin B. Biddle is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on fields such as philosophy of science, technology, and medicine; bioethics; food studies; ethics of emerging technologies, and science and technology policy. Conceptually, his research explores the relationships between three sets of issues: (1) the role of values in science, technology, and medicine; (2) the epistemic implications of the social organization of research, and (3) ethics and policy. He has explored these relationships primarily in the areas of biomedical research and agricultural biotechnology. He received a MA and PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre Dame and was later a Distinguished Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Prior to arriving at Georgia Tech, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Bielefeld University in Germany.