SCIENCE SKEPTICISM TEMPORAL AND RELIGIOUS AGENCY IN VACCINATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE CONTROVERSIES

Mistrust towards mainstream science and evidence-based expertise, or “science skepticism”, is embedded in postmodernity. Vaccine hesitancy and climate change skepticism are both forms of rejecting expertise and searching for alternative bodies of knowledge. In this sociological research, I studied the social construction of skeptical discourses on vaccination and climate change. One of the key findings of this research is that vaccine hesitancy and climate change skepticism, as skeptical discourses, do not support the postmodern claim for a plurality of knowledge. Skeptics of vaccination and climate change do not contest the epistemic advantages of science, but they strongly reject mainstream science and official authorities. Instead, they support experts who are marginal within the scientific community and promote their contrarian claims as factually true. Discourses on vaccination and climate change that are skeptical of mainstream science are socially constructed using three types of resources: selective trust, temporal agency, and religious agency. This is a key similarity that contributes to expanding the knowledge on the social construction of skepticism and the specific strategies used to reject mainstream science. Another similarity is that skeptics of both vaccination and climate change structure their discourse around themes that are anchored in systemic problems causing risks and vulnerabilities for society at large and for particular social categories. Numerous problems and vulnerabilities emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as regards public health measures and economic disruptions, thus consolidating the vaccine-hesitant discourse and skepticism of a just green transition. In terms of dissimilarities, the climate-skeptical discourse is underdeveloped in Romania in comparison with the vaccine-hesitant discourse. This is related to the neglect manifested by Romanian public authorities and media representatives on this topic, contrasting with policy proposals and public debates on vaccination. My research contributes to overcoming the knowledge deficit model by showing that skepticism of mainstream science is not an individual problem caused by deficient cognitive processes but is a socially constructed phenomenon that gains legitimacy because of societal problems and systemic dysfunctions.