•  8
    Book review: The Crisis of Expertise (review)
    European Journal of Social Theory 24 (2): 306-310. 2021.
  •  4
    Explanations and excuses in French sociology
    European Journal of Social Theory 24 (3): 374-393. 2021.
    The terrorist attacks that struck France in 2015 had reverberations throughout the country’s intellectual fields. Among the most significant was a widespread polemic that turned around whether sociological explanations of the attacks amounted to excuses and justifications for terrorists. When prominent politicians and pundits made allegations of this nature, sociologists reacted in three main ways: most denied the allegations, others reappropriated the derogatory label of excuse, while others st…Read more
  •  6
    Social science as apologia
    European Journal of Social Theory 24 (3): 319-337. 2021.
    The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologet…Read more
  •  3
    Book review: The Crisis of Expertise (review)
    European Journal of Social Theory 24 (2): 306-310. 2021.
  •  2
    How Social Scientists Make Causal Claims in Court: Evidence from the L’Aquila Trial
    Science, Technology, and Human Values 42 (3): 346-380. 2017.
    This paper contributes to two topics that have received insufficient attention in science and technology studies: the social dimensions of causal reasoning and how the knowledge-making site of expert testimony affects the production and reception of social scientific knowledge. It deals with how social scientists make causal claims when testifying as expert witnesses in trials where causal claims are relevant, using as a case study the so-called L’Aquila trial, in which experts were summoned by …Read more
  •  24
    Order and Conflict Theories of Science as Competing Ideologies
    Social Epistemology 32 (3): 175-195. 2018.
    Science is sometimes depicted, both in scholarly and lay accounts, as a consensual and orderly progression in the direction of truth; at other times, it is portrayed as an arena in which lone geniuses struggle against rivals and authorities to impose unconventional interpretations of reality. The paper introduces the concept of ‘order-conflict dichotomy’ to stabilize the content of these definitions. It then shows, through an in-depth analysis of the Irving trial, an English libel suit involving…Read more