ABSTRACT
This chapter offers illustrative studies that have addressed some of the ways in which powerful actors who are threatened by research engage in efforts to construct public ignorance about that work, often targeting journalists to advance their causes. It considers how journalists respond to these efforts, and some of the factors that influence how, in violation of the ideals of journalism but, ironically, in keeping with what we know about newswork, journalists can become agents in the social construction of scientific ignorance. The chapter focuses on two of the now-many strands of research on the social construction of scientific ignorance that have emerged—one that documents the social construction of scientific ignorance through a process of claimsmaking, and the other that documents the social construction of ignorance through efforts to suppress threatening or uncomfortable science.
