Illegible performance: Constructing scientific credibility in the “post-truth” era

The sciences have historically secured social trust and authority through widely comprehensible performances of trustworthiness and of predictive and technological power. However, shifts in the structure and operations of the sciences; in the sociotechnical environment where public knowledge is constructed and contested; in the political goals of the sciences; and in the audiences to whom the sciences aim to speak have collectively left the sciences lacking public credibility concomitant to their public aspirations in areas like climate change and COVID-19 vaccination. As an alternative to pining for a science-dominated past that never was, I investigate the performances by which the sciences have achieved public credibility in the past and by which they might do so in the present and future. I articulate a contemporary set of performances by which the sciences may be able to demonstrate their value to broad sectors of society, emphasizing humility, responsiveness to public values and concerns, openness of interest, and situated rather than general utility. I hope that, by pursuing such performances, scientific institutions could rebuild, and, indeed, merit the broad-based trust to which they aspire.