ABSTRACT
The recent catastrophic disasters of the twenty-first century have fueled a growing body of literature in science and technology studies (STS) on the relationship between science and the social dynamics of disaster prevention, management, and recovery. From the accidental release of nearly five million barrels of oil from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010 to the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the need for improving our understanding of how technoscience is implicated in the way political institutions prepare for and deal with disasters has never been clearer. As Fortun and Frickel (2012) note,“disaster has been a blind spot in STS.” It remains to be seen whether our existing understandings of science and society are applicable to the unique and often chaotic conditions surrounding disasters.Thus, while there are some studies on the impact of regulatory responses to disasters (for example, Frickel et al. 2009), as well as citizen participation in science postdisaster (for example,McCormick 2012), STS would benefit from greater understanding of the use of science and technology in the recovery from disruptive events. Toward this end, we examine the use of seafood testing procedures following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.We find that beyond simply generating knowledge, the seafood testing program served multiple purposes, from attempting to boost consumer confidence in Gulf seafood to making science accessible to seafood workers. In short, science was used as an institutional tool to reduce uncertainty generated by the disaster for both consumers and producers of seafood. Despite these aims, the testing garnered widespread negative reactions in the media, reflecting a culture of public distrust of government that had emerged in the aftermath of the disaster. In crisis settings, the credibility and legitimacy of science and technology become especially
contested as various stakeholders compete for the regulatory and cultural authority to define the scope of the problem and design potential strategies for management and recovery (Clarke 1991, Fortun and Frickel 2012, Freudenburg 1997). A similar phenomenon can be seen in development contexts in which stakeholders contest the costs and benefits of embracing risky new technologies (Amir, Chapter 17 of this book). In extreme situations, including environmental disasters in economically developed nations and rapid economic growth in emerging nations, when new forms of science and technology must be rapidly created and deployed, existing rules and standards governing the use of technoscience, as well as established cultural
scripts reinforcing their legitimacy, may be lacking. In the absence of preexisting norms and rules, modern science and technologies have the potential to exacerbate anxiety by asking the public to have faith in unproven measures.Thus, in the process of institutionalizing unfamiliar approaches to technoscience it is important for scientists and regulators to be aware that the uncertain context in which new or modified forms of science are introduced can lead to contestation of their credibility and legitimacy. We examine challenges to the legitimacy of new science in response to a disaster, specifi-
cally the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.This oil spill was the largest in the history of the United States, releasing 200 million gallons of oil and causing environmental harm to ecosystems and economic disruption in coastal communities dependent on seafood and tourism industries. In the wake of this catastrophe, governmental agencies and scientists implemented sensory testing, in which participants used their sense of smell and taste to determine the presence of petroleum-based oil in seafood.This attempt to institutionalize the science of sniff testing as a legitimate disaster response was met with both public ridicule and enthusiasm by various stakeholders. It thus provides a useful case study for assessing both the contestation of novel scientific practices in a disaster situation and the strategic use of science in managing public responses to disasters. One of the primary purposes of the testing was to calm the fears of consumers wary of eating Gulf seafood due to possible oil-related contamination. For communities along the Gulf coast who were already struggling with oil cleanup, lost tourism, and fishery closures, a nationwide boycott of Gulf seafood would be economically disastrous. Sensory testing provided a highly visible and easy to understand form of seafood inspection accessible to the general public, accompanied by government-approved messages that the seafood was safe to eat. The deployment of sensory testing also included community outreach programs that trained
people working in the seafood industry to use their noses to detect oil in seafood. Seafood workers in coastal communities lived with daily uncertainty about what the ultimate effects of the oil spill would be, such as whether they would lose their jobs due to fishing restrictions or perceived contamination of seafood resulting in lackluster sales.The sniff test science empowered people to use their own skill sets and recover some amount of control in an uncertain situation through an easy-to-learn scientific procedure (Otwell 2012). In these two ways – reassuring consumers and providing tools to seafood workers – the use of sensory testing after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill serves as an example of “comfort science” wherein scientific processes are undertaken with the goal of reassuring a concerned public in the aftermath of environmental disruption.
