ABSTRACT
Tobacco is the classic case of an industry that engaged in an active strategy to generate uncertainty, doubt, and ignorance through advertising, misleading press releases, support for “decoy” research, establishment of research institutes, and funding of supportive research. In terms of understanding the production of ignorance, the Bayer-honey bee case complicates the thinking about companies and the production of ignorance. Adhering to Good Laboratory Practice may lead to ignorance about the subtler, long-term and interactive effects of synthetic chemicals on honey bees. A mechanism that Bayer has used to define the terrain of knowledge and ignorance about Colony Collapse Disorder has effectively been to coopt beekeepers by recruiting them to participate in collaborative research. Bayer is empowered in the effort to produce ignorance (or minimally, uncertainty) by the fact that it has the established norms and practices of toxicological science—the institutionalized epistemic form—on its side.
