The Role of Patience in Arguments About Vaccine Science.

Coleman, Miles C.

We value dialogue deeply. In public disagreements over science, however, ideals like “parsimony” and “objectivity” can create false justification for refusing dialogue. We impatiently proclaim the “facts” of scientific consensus, treating them as nonrhetorical objects, letting the science “speak for itself.” This essay makes a case for patient discourses of science, willing to acknowledge even the concerns of “pseudoscientific” publics, like vaccine denialists. Anthimeria is discussed as a practice for patiently “playing” with the tokens of expression associated with ours and others’ epistemological commitments, in order to embrace opportunities of knowing and relational being-together through the most “becoming of terms.”

PATIENCE; VACCINATION; SCIENCE & ethics; RHETORIC; ARGUMENT

Western Journal of Communication, 2018, Vol 82, Issue 4, p513

1057-0314

Academic Journal

10.1080/10570314.2017.1294708