Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science

Author Maya Goldenberg in conversation with Angela Potochnik

Author Maya Goldenberg joins us for a conversation about her new book, Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science.  Professor Goldenberg will be in conversation with Angela Potochnik, professor of philosophy and inaugural director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati.

This virtual program is hosted in partnership with the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati, as well as the Philosophy of Science Association.

Free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Maya J. Goldenberg is associate professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. Her research centers on the philosophy of science and medicine, with interest in the connection between science and values.

Angela Potochnik is professor of philosophy and inaugural director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati. Her research addresses the nature of science and its successes, the relationships between science and the public, and methods in population biology. She is the author of Idealization and the Aims of Science (2017) and coauthor of Recipes for Science (2018), an introduction to scientific methods and reasoning.

The public has voiced concern over the adverse effects of vaccines from the moment Dr. Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox vaccine in 1796. This book explores vaccine hesitancy and refusal among parents in the industrialized North. Although biomedical, public health, and popular science literature has focused on a scientifically ignorant public, the real problem, Goldenberg argues, lies not in misunderstanding, but in mistrust. Goldenberg ultimately reframes vaccine hesitancy as a crisis of public trust rather than a war on science, arguing that having good scientific support of vaccine efficacy and safety is not enough.