> I thought I noted that there have always been internal critiques from
> scientists... and I'd bet we'd agree that UCS is a group of scientists more
> or less outside the mainstream of the scientific establlishment.
Actually I wouldn't, not by a long shot. It might be the perspective of what I've worked in, but nothing I've read from them has seemed based on controversial readings of the state of knowledge. I'll grant that there is, at least traditionally, a reluctance to get involved when one's subject matter becomes a political football and distracts from interesting problems, but that tendency isn't what it used to be.
Are there some counter examples that come to mind?
> I'm also
> sure that Progressive experts in all fields have a tendency to treat all
> challenged to their authority as hysterical and anti-science.
What do you mean by "Progressive experts"?
> I'm not sure what you mean by science studies in your last paragraph, I was
> thinking of the work of Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Joan Fujimura, Steve
> Epstein, Daniel Kleinman, Susan Leigh Star, Brian Wynne, etc. these folks
> don't use science as a club.
I don't mean that people in science studies -- I'm not familiar with most of the names here -- use science as a club. My point is in my admittedly casual exposure to perhaps a vulgar version science studies is it often conflates scientists for people *outside* the respective field unjustly accusing critics of particular technologies being hysterical and anti-science, examples of the latter I make a hobby of collecting.
-- Andy