Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Recommended requisite: course 105A. Exploration of tangled issues linking science to contemporary post truth crisis. Drawing on ideas and frameworks from sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political psychology, and science and technology studies, consideration of range of materials including theoretical and empirical academic texts as well as commentaries and documents speaking to current events. Consideration of demarcation of science from pseudoscience, conditions turning scientific disagreement into public controversy, science's relationship to different publics and political cultures, crises of trust in contemporary science and efforts to reconstruct scientific integrity, and weaponization of science and pseudoscience in misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories. Through engaging these complex matters, students become better armed to understand and advance productive relationships between science and political life. Letter grading.

Units: 4.0