This book examines how scientists around the world embrace their responsibility as citizens, and how science is being used and abused by non-scientists in public spaces. As right-wing politicians, conspiracy theorists, and modern robber barons assault science in the current moment, it is time for the rhetoric of science to reconceptualize itself as a crisis/care discipline. The essays in this volume help us do that by scrutinizing particular cases of science activism, examining the public modalities of resistance that scientists are increasingly taking up as they modify their public engagement to fit evolving rhetorical situations. These essays also reveal how the authority of science is being distorted and exploited by non-experts in ways that are more dangerous than ever in the shadow of climate change and global pandemics. The book ends with a look at new possibilities for collaboration between local communities and scientists and a reflection on how a rhetorical conception of ethos can help us comprehend the negotiation of asymmetries between experts and laypeople in the current era.
Scientists, Politics, and the Rhetoric of Public Controversy features contributors from four countries (Canada, Denmark, Norway, the United States) and all career stages, many of whose works have moved the study of rhetoric and science forward for years. Scientists, Politics, and the Rhetoric of Public Controversy is a must-read collection that reflects the present and reimagines the future. (E. Johanna Hartelius, Quarterly Journal of Speech, November 18, 2025)







