Section 2 of Stengers first essay starts to ask why it is that scientists have ended up blind to their arrogance with respect to the public and why they seem so keen to circle the wagons and rely on their supposed authority over the facts when pushed into public debate, rather than exercising the critical skills they so manifestly have. She poses this at the outset of the section as a question of why more scientists don't step forward to challenge those scientists who say things like, "GMOs are the only safe scientific solution to a growing population". This is clearly not a 'scientific' statement, no matter how much impressive molecular genetics went into it. So why don't we frequently see scientists police their own by shouting down this sort of abuse of their authority?
In fact, why it is so surprising and controversial when one does? For example, why does Cliff Mass receive threats from The Stranger when he tries to show us actual data that makes it seem pretty unlikely that global warming has anything to do with this year's Pacific Northwest forest fires? He's not saying global warming doesn't exist. He's not saying that there are no real effects yet. He's not saying we should do nothing to change emissions regulations until we can prove that it's causing more wildfires. He's just pointing out that every time people in downtown Seattle see smoke, there will be another series of newspaper articles attributing the fires to global warming, but that this supposed connection, made in the name of the 'scientific consensus' around global warming, doesn't look to be very scientific at all and is not borne out by the actual facts (eg. there seem to be fewer fires than there were 100 years ago). For pointing out what he considers an abuse of the authority of science, and backing up his critique with a rational and scientific argument, he is regularly pilloried, rather than engaged with. Why is that?
Stengers explanation for this phenomenon is basically that scientists are not naive. They know that there are all sorts of 'unscientific' forces that shape the agenda, conclusions, and ultimate impact of their work. They know where the money comes from and what the governments and corporations and tenure review boards ask for in exchange. They know how the sausage is made.
They can't, however, talk about that openly, because they fear that if the public were to become aware of the ways in which science 'is made', they would lose confidence and reduce scientific proposals to simple expressions of particular interests. 'People' must continue to believe in the fable of 'free' research, driven by curiosity alone towards the discovery of the mysteries of the world (the kind of candy that helps so many well-meaning scientists to set about seducing childish souls).
In short, scientists have good reason to be uneasy, but they can't say so. They can no more denounce those who feed them than parents can argue in front of their children. Nothing should upset the confident belief in Science, nor should 'people' be urged to get involved in questions they are not, in any case, capable of understanding.
In other words, the arrogance that culminates in the strict separation of scientific fact from mere public opinion is a defensive mechanism for scientists. Their call to be left alone to do 'pure' research is a last ditch effort to reclaim what they see as a lost golden era when science went its own way, heroically, but dispassionately, uncovering the mysteries of the universe. I think she understands this longing for the past on a number of levels. It's about a historic age where science was less bureaucratic and more open. It's about a age of life (say, 2 months into the start of a PhD program) when you still don't know how the sausage is made and think you're setting off on a wonderful intellectual adventure to pursue the 'big questions'. And it's even about an age when the boys had the run of the place and their dutiful wives didn't ask them to come home from the lab for dinner (she introduces this gender idea in the next essay, I'm not doing it justice here, but it's clearly thematically connected). Basically, she thinks scientists circle the wagons because they feel threatened. And guess what, she agrees: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you don't have enemies!
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