A G N O T O L O G Y The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance Edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger S t a n f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s S t a n f o r d , C a l i f o r n i a S t a n f o r d Univers i ty Press S t a n f o r d , C a l i f o r n i a © 2008 by the B o a r d of Trustees of the Leland S t a n f o r d Junior University. Al l r ights reserved. No part of this b o o k may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means , electronic o r m e c h a n i c a l , i n c l u d i n g p h o t o c o p y i n g a n d r e c o r d i n g , o r i n a n y i n f o r m a t i o n s t o r a g e o r retrieval system w i t h o u t the pr ior w r i t t e n permiss ion of Stanford Univers i ty Press. Printed in the United States of A m e r i c a on acid-free, a r c h i v a l q u a l i t y p a p e r L i b r a r y o f C o n g r e s s C a t a l o g i n g i n P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a A g n o t o l o g y : the m a k i n g and u n m a k i n g of i g n o r a n c e / edited by R o b e r t N. P r o c t o r and L o n d a Schiebinger. p . c m . Includes b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l references and index . I S B N 9 7 8 0 8 0 4 7 5 6 5 2 . 5 (cloth : a lk . paper) - I S B N 9 7 8 0 8 0 4 7 5 9 0 1 4 (pbk. : a lk . paper) 1 . I g n o r a n c e ( T h e o r y of k n o w l e d g e ) - S o c i a l a s p e c t s - C o n g r e s s e s . 2 . S e c r e c y - C o n g r e s s e s . I . Proctor, R o b e r t , 1 9 5 4 II. Schiebinger, L o n d a L. B D 2 2 1 . A 3 6 2008 O O I d c 2 2 2 O O 7 O 4 9 8 I I Port ions of the f o l l o w i n g c h a p t e r s have been prev ious ly publ ished as indicated: C H A P T E R 2 : Peter G a l i s o n , " R e m o v i n g K n o w l e d g e , " Critical Inquiry 31 ( 2 0 0 4 ) : 2 2 9 2 4 3 . © 2 0 0 4 , T h e Univers i ty o f C h i c a g o . Repr inted b y p e r m i s s i o n o f T h e Univers i ty o f C h i c a g o Press. C H A P T E R 4 : D . M i c h a e l s and C . M o n f o r t o n , " M a n u f a c t u r i n g Uncerta inty: C o n t e s t e d Science a n d the P r o t e c t i o n of the Publ ic ' s H e a l t h and E n v i r o n m e n t , American Journal of Public Health 95 (2005): S 3 9 S 4 8 . © 2005 A m e r i c a n Public H e a l t h A s s o c i a t i o n . C H A P T E R 5: N a n c y T u a n a , " C o m i n g to U n d e r s t a n d : O r g a s m and the E p i s t e m o l o g y of I g n o r a n c e , " Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 19 (2004): 1 9 4 2 3 2 . © 2004 by H y p a t i a , Inc. Repr inted by permiss ion of Indiana Univers i ty Press. C H A P T E R 6: L o n d a Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. © 2004 by L o n d a Schiebinger. Repr inted by permiss ion of H a r v a r d Univers i ty Press. C H A P T E R 7: A d r i e n n e M a y o r , Fossil Legends of the First Americans. © 2005 by Princeton University Press. Repr inted by permission of Princeton Univers i ty Press. C H A P T E R 1 0 : C h a r l e s W. M i l l s , " W h i t e I g n o r a n c e , " p p . 1 3 3 8 in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Shannon Sullivan and N a n c y T u a n a , eds. © 2007 State University o f N e w Y o r k Press. Repr inted b y permiss ion o f State Univers i ty o f N e w Y o r k Press. D e s i g n e d by Bruce L u n d q u i s t T y p e s e t at Stanford Univers i ty Press in 1 0 / 1 5 S a b o n Contents Preface vii 1. Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study) R O B E R T N . P R O C T O R 1 P A R T I S E C R E C Y , S E L E C T I O N , A N D S U P P R E S S I O N 2. Removing Knowledge: The Logic of M o d e r n Censorship P E T E R G A L I S O N 3 7 3. Challenging Knowledge: H o w Climate Science Became a Victim of the Cold War N A O M I O R E S K E S A N D E R I K M . C O N W A Y 5 5 4. Manufactured Uncertainty: Contested Science and the Protection of the Public's Health and Environment D A V I D M I C H A E L S 9 0 5. C o m i n g to Understand: O r g a s m and the Epistemology of Ignorance N A N C Y T U A N A 1 0 8 P A R T I I L O S T K N O W L E D G E , L O S T W O R L D S 6. West Indian Abortifacients and the M a k i n g of Ignorance L O N D A S C H I E B I N G E R 1 4 9 7. Suppression of Indigenous Fossil Knowledge: From Claverack, N e w York , 1705 to Agate Springs, Nebraska, 2005 A D R I E N N E M A Y O R 1 6 3 8. M a p p i n g Ignorance in Archaeology: The Advantages of Historical Hindsight A L I S O N W Y L I E 1 8 3 P A R T I I I T H E O R I Z I N G I G N O R A N C E 9. Social Theories of Ignorance M I C H A E L J . S M I T H S O N 2 0 9 10. White Ignorance C H A R L E S W . M I L L S 2 3 0 11. Risk M a n a g e m e n t versus the Precautionary Principle: Agnoto logy as a Strategy in the Debate over Genetically Engineered Organisms D A V I D M A G N U S 2 5 0 1 2 . Smoking O u t Objectivity: Journalistic Gears in the Agnoto logy Machine J O N C H R I S T E N S E N 2 6 6 List of Contributors 283 Index 289 Preface WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF IGNORANCE, and it is important to understand h o w this came to be and why. O u r goal here is to explore h o w ignorance is produced or maintained in diverse settings, through mechanisms such as deliberate or inadvertent neglect, secrecy and suppression, document destruction, unquestioned tradition, and myriad forms of inherent (or avoidable) culturopolitical selectivity. A g n o t o l o g y is the study of igno- rance making, the lost and forgotten. O n e focus is on knowledge that could have been but wasn't , or should be but isn't, but we shall also see that not all ignorance is bad. O u r primary purpose here is to promote the study of ignorance, by developing tools for understanding h o w and w h y various forms of k n o w - ing have " n o t come to be , " or disappeared, or have been delayed or long neglected, for better or for worse , at various points in history. Swimming as we do in oceans of ignorance, examples could be multiplied ad infini- tum. Contributors to this volume probe the secrecy maintained by mili- tary classification, the " d o u b t " peddled by manufacturers of carcinogens ("doubt is our product" ) , the denialist claims of environmental troglo- dytes, the nontransfer of technologies (such as birth control) from colonial outposts to imperial centers, the role of disciplinarity and media "balance routines" on agnogenesis, and certain aspects of racial and sexual igno- rance. The idea is that a great deal of attention has been given to episte- mology (the study of h o w we k n o w ) when " h o w or w h y we don't k n o w " is often just as important, usually far more scandalous, and remarkably undertheorized. This volume emerged from workshops held at Pennsylvania State Uni- versity in 2003 and at Stanford University in 2005, the goal of which w a s to come to grips with h o w ignorance has been understood, created, and ignored, linking these ideas also to allied creations of secrecy, uncertainty, confusion, silence, absence, and impotence-especial ly as these pertain to scientific activities. For financial support, we o w e a debt of gratitude to the Nat ional Science F o u n d a t i o n - a n d at Penn State, to the Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture initiative, the Institute for Arts and Humanities, the R o c k Ethics Institute, and the departments of History, English, and Anthropology. At Stanford we are also grateful to the His- tory & Philosophy of Science, the Suppes Center, the Humanities Center, M o d e r n T h o u g h t and Literature, and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. We are also thankful for administrative help provided by Rosemary Rogers , Michelle Cale , and Jeanette Jenkins. We are hoping this volume will be taken as opening a door to a broader realm of inquiry. We invite others to step through this door, and to explore the many other realms of ignorance that saturate and define our wor ld . A G N O T O L O G Y C H A P T E R I A g n o t o l o g y A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study) R O B E R T N . P R O C T O R We are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance. T h o m a s P y n c h o n , 1984 Doubt is our product. B r o w n & W i l l i a m s o n T o b a c c o C o m p a n y , i n t e r n a l m e m o , 1969 PHILOSOPHERS LOVE TO TALK ABOUT KNOWLEDGE. A whole field is devoted to reflection on the topic, with product tie-ins to professor- ships and weighty conferences. Epistemology is serious business, taught in academies the wor ld over: there is " m o r a l " and " s o c i a l " epistemology, epistemology of the sacred, the closet, and the family. There is a C o m p u - tational Epistemology Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, and a Center for Epistemology at the Free University in Amsterdam. A Google search turns up separate websites for "constructivist ," " feminist ," and "evolut ionary" epistemology, of course, but also " l ibidinal ," " a n d r o i d , " " Q u a k e r , " "Internet," and (my favorite) "erotometaphysical" epistemol- ogy. Harvard offers a course in the field (without the erotometaphysical part), which (if we are to believe its website) explores the epistemic status of weighty claims like "the standard meter is 1 meter l o n g " and "I am not a brain in a v a t . " 1 We seem to k n o w a lot about k n o w l e d g e . 2 W h a t is remarkable, though, is h o w little we k n o w about ignorance. 3 There is not even a wel l -known w o r d for its study (though our hope is to 1 change that), no fancy conferences or polished websites. This is particularly remarkable, given (a) h o w much ignorance there is, (b) h o w many kinds there are, and (c) h o w consequential ignorance is in our lives. The point of this volume is to argue that there is much, in fact, to know. Ignorance has many friends and enemies, and figures big in everything from trade association propaganda to military operations to slogans chanted at children. Lawyers think a lot about it, since it often surfaces in consumer product liability and tort litigation, where the question is often " W h o k n e w what , and w h e n ? " Ignorance has many interesting surrogates and overlaps in myriad w a y s w i t h - a s it is generated by-secrecy, stupidity, apathy, censorship, disinformation, faith, and forgetfulness, all of which are science-twitched. Ignorance hides in the shadows of philosophy and is frowned upon in sociology, but it also pops up in a great deal of popular rhetoric: it's no excuse, it's w h a t can't hurt y o u , it's bliss. Ignorance has a history and a complex political and sexual geography, and does a lot of other odd and arresting w o r k that bears exploring. A n d deplor ing-though we don't see inquiry in this area as necessar- ily having the goal of rectification. Ignorance is most commonly seen (or trivialized) in this way, as something in need of correction, a kind of natu- ral absence or void where knowledge has not yet spread. As educators, of course, we are committed to spreading knowledge. But ignorance is more than a v o i d - a n d not even always a bad thing. No one needs or wants to k n o w everything all the time; and surely all of us k n o w things we w o u l d rather others not know. A founding principle of liberal states is that om- niscience can be dangerous, and that some things should be kept private. Rights to privacy are essentially a form of sanctioned ignorance: liberal governments are (supposed to be) barred from k n o w i n g everything; in- quisitors must have warrants. Juries are also supposed to be kept ignorant, since knowledge can be a form of bias. There is virtuous ignorance, in the form of resistance to (or limits placed on) dangerous k n o w l e d g e . 4 The causes of ignorance are multiple and diverse. N o t many people k n o w that the biggest building in the world is a semi-secret facility built to produce explosive uranium-235, using enormous magnets, near a non- descript town in southern O h i o (Piketon); but that is for reasons that are different from why we don't k n o w much about the origin of life, or anything at all about time before the Big Bang circa 14 billion years ago. A n d there are many different w a y s not to know. Ignorance can be the flipside of memory, w h a t we don't k n o w because we have forgotten, parts of which can be restored by historical inquiries but most of which is forever lost. (And we often cannot say which.) Ignorance can be made or unmade, and science can be complicit in either process. T H E P U R P O S E O F T H E P R E S E N T V O L U M E is programmatic, to begin a discussion of ignorance as more than the "not yet k n o w n " or the steadily retreating frontier. We need to think about the conscious, unconscious, and structural production of ignorance, its diverse causes and conformations, whether brought about by neglect, forgetfulness, myopia, extinction, secrecy, or suppression. The point is to question the naturalness of ignorance, its causes and its distribution. W h y have so few Americans heard about the Nakba? W h y did epidemiologists miss the high levels of pellagra among early-twentieth-century African Americans? 5 H o w did World War I-era research into the reproductive effects of a lcohol become "scientifically uninteresting"? 6 W h y have today's geneticists developed a "collective am- nesia" about Francis G a l t o n ? 7 W h y do " w e " (many men and surely fewer women) k n o w so little about the clitoris (see Nancy Tuana, this volume), or laws of nature classified for national security, or indigenous abortifacients (see Londa Schiebinger, this volume), or the countless Xs or Ys or Zs that we cannot even name, given h o w low they fly under the radar? N o w , certain kinds of exploration require that we make distinctions; that is a reasonable first step into understanding. "Cutting u p " and "dividing into parts" is implicit in the etymology of scientia, which derives from the protoIndo-European skein, via the Latin seco and scindo (to cut), from which we get scissors and schism, scat and skin. There must be as many kinds of ig- norance as of knowledge-perhaps more, given how scant is our knowledge compared to the vastness of our ignorance. And though distinctions such as these are somewhat arbitrary, I shall make three to begin the discussion: ignorance as native state (or resource), ignorance as lost realm (or selective choice), and ignorance as a deliberately engineered and strategic ploy (or active construct). There are of course other ways to divide this pie, and sev- eral of the contributors to this volume provide alternative taxonomies. I G N O R A N C E A S N A T I V E S T A T E This may be the most c o m m o n w a y that scientists think about our topic: ignorance is like Kansas, a great place to be from. Knowledge grows out of ignorance, as a flower from honest soil, but the direction of movement is pretty much one way. Here, though, ignorance can also be a prompt for knowledge, insofar as we are constantly striving to destroy i t-fact by fact. Ignorance has both an ontogeny and a phylogeny: babies start out ignorant and slowly come to know the world; hominids have become sapient over mil- lions of years from the happy accident of upright posture and not knowing what to do with our idle hands. (I personally favor the theory that bipedalism enabled us to "put things in quotes" with our newly freed fingers.) Ignorance in this sense of a primitive or native state is something to be fought or overcome; we hope and plan for it to disappear over time, as knowledge triumphs over foolish superstition. Ignorance is not necessar- ily evi l-it can be innocent (as knowledge can be sin). But it seems to be something we are all supposed to want to g r o w out of, to put behind us, in the process of generating (or acquiring) knowledge. Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth century had a rather brutal w a y of putting it: ignorance w a s "the mother w h o must die for science to be b o r n . " 8 And foolish ignorance abounds. Jay Leno makes good sport interview- ing people w h o don't k n o w whether the Earth has one or t w o moons , or w h a t day of the week G o o d Friday lands on. M o r e serious is the fact that 52 percent of all Americans answer " y e s " when asked whether "the earliest humans lived at the same time as the d i no sa u r s . " 9 Science educators (and all thinking people) w o r r y about the fact that about half of all Americans believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, among them several former and living presidents. Ronald Reagan once proclaimed in a televised speech that America w a s great "because it has never k n o w n slavery"; ignorance seems to k n o w no bounds. Ignorance in this sense of "native" or "originary" state implies a kind of deficit, caused by the naivete of youth or the faults of improper education-or the simple fact that here is a place where knowledge has not yet penetrated. Ignorance is compared to innocence or, in the secular variant, knowledge in its infancy, with ontogeny more or less recapitulating phylogeny. 1 0 Scientists often cherish this kind of ignorance, using it as a prompt to inquiry. There is the familiar grant application version: we k n o w this and that but not yet this other thing-so fund me please! Fill this gaping hole (which also happens to be my pocketbook)! Less cynical renditions are familiar from the history of philosophy: Socrates taught that the truly wise are those w h o realize h o w little they know; knowledge of one's ignorance is a precondition for enlight- enment. The modern twist has ignorance as something to be escaped but also as a kind of rejuvenating force, since it is only by asking the right ques- t ions-by knowing wherein fruitful (that is, eradicable) ignorance lies-that we can ever come to knowledge. 1 1 Creative intellects are ignorance experts: they k n o w where it can be found, and h o w to make it go away. Moderni ty gives this a greater sense of urgency, insofar as ignorance becomes a kind of vacuum or hol low space into which knowledge is pulled. Science rushes in to fill the void, or rushes out to greet the wor ld , if we re- call the birthing metaphor of Kepler. Psychoanalytics aside, we could give various names to this theory of ignorance. I have called it native ignorance, because the notion is of a kind of infantile absence by virtue of primitiv- ity, a dearth or cavity that is rectified (filled) by growth or b ir th-though other metaphors are used. Light floods the darkness, keys are found to unlock locks, ignorance is washed away, teaching uplifts out of ignorance, which is thereby destroyed or chased, and so f o r t h . 1 2 Ignorance here is seen as a resource, or at least a spur or challenge or prompt: ignorance is needed to keep the wheels of science turning. N e w ignorance must forever be rustled up to feed the insatiable appetite of sci- ence. The world's stock of ignorance is not being depleted, however, since (by wondrous fortune and hydra-like) two new questions arise for every one answered. Some veils of ignorance are pushed aside but others a lways pop up, saving us from the end of inquiry. This regenerative power of ignorance makes the scientific enterprise sustainable. The nightmare would be if we were somehow to run out of ignorance, idling the engines of knowledge production. We need ignorance to fuel our knowledge engines. Science is sustainable because ignorance proliferates, a triumph not foreseen by early champions of modernity. Bacon and Descartes both envisioned a time in the not so distant future-perhaps within their o w n l i fet imes-when all scientific problems would be s o l v e d - b u t later M o d e r n s k n e w a good thing when they saw it, and h o w to keep it going. A vast literature exists on h o w to escape from ignorance, including the recognition that learning often implies a process of "unlearning" (try any of the 542,000 Google hits for this term). But there is also the apprecia- tion that the distribution of ignorance is unequal, hence the digital divide, remedialisms of various sorts, and so forth. Technologies can cause the proliferation of ignorance: "the public seems to be awakening to the fact that in the midst of the ' information' explosion, there has been an ' igno- rance' explosion as w e l l . " 1 3 Media analyst Sut Jhally in 1 9 9 1 made head- lines when he found that people were misinformed about the Gulf War in direct proportion to h o w much TV they had watched on the topic . 1 4 Radio w a s early on criticized as a vehicle for propaganda (spreading ignorance, as w a s often said), and Walter Benjamin discussed the quaint idea from the 1920s that film could lead to a kind of dictatorship of the imagination, via an enforced railroading of the eye (versus the freedom purportedly al lowed by static graphic arts). 1 5 The Internet has certainly fostered the spread of fictions along with facts-as when South Africa's president T h a b o M b e k i "during a late-night Internet surfing session" happened on, and became convinced by, a website challenging the view that H I V w a s the cause of A I D S . 1 6 The president's views were later used to justify a s l o w d o w n in ef- forts to combat exposure to the virus. O u r interest here, though, is less in remediation than in what N a n c y Tuana has called the "l iberatory m o m e n t " - w h i c h brings us to a more subtle form of agnotology. I G N O R A N C E A S L O S T R E A L M , O R S E L E C T I V E C H O I C E ( O R P A S S I V E C O N S T R U C T ) This second variant recognizes that ignorance, like knowledge, has a po- litical geography, prompting us to ask: W h o k n o w s not? A n d w h y not? Where is there ignorance and why? Like knowledge or wealth or poverty, ignorance has a face, a house, and a price: it is encouraged here and dis- couraged there from ten thousand accidents (and deliberations) of social fortune. It is less like a vacuum than a solid or shifting b o d y - w h i c h travels through time and occupies space, runs roughshod over people or things, and often leaves a shadow. W h o at Hiroshima did not k n o w to leave the city that day, and turned into a shadow on the asphalt? Part of the idea is that inquiry is a lways selective. We look here rather than there; we have the predator's fovea (versus the indiscriminate watch- fulness of prey), and the decision to focus on this is therefore invariably a choice to ignore that. Ignorance is a product of inattention, and since we cannot study all things, some by necessity-almost all, in fact-must be left out. "A w a y of seeing is also a w a y of not seeing-a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B . " 1 7 A n d the wor ld is very b i g - m u c h bigger than the w o r l d of Descartes and Bacon, with their hopes for an imminent finish to the project of science. A key question, then, is: h o w should we regard the "missing matter," knowledge not yet k n o w n ? Is science more like the progressive illumination of a well-defined box , or does darkness g r o w as fast as the light? Both images are c o m m o n . Selectivity is often conceived as transient, evanescent, a kind of " n o i s e " in the system or scatter about the line, with bias s lowly being rectified. Science is like m o w i n g your lawn: y o u can choose any place to start, but things end up looking pretty much the same. I w a s recently faced with a succinct (albeit unpleasant) version of this in a peer review of a grant proposal of mine to the Nat ional Science Foundation. This rather disgruntled hooded "peer" was unhappy with my request for funds to study the history of paleoanthropology, given my fail- ure to recognize, as he or she put it, that science w a s biased "only in the past, but not in the present." In this undialogic context I did not have the opportunity to respond to this wonderfully self-refuting chestnut, which soured as soon as it was uttered; I couldn't point out that errors often do languish, projects go unfunded, opportunities are lost, the dead do not spring back to life, and justice does not a lways prevai l-even in science. This is a different sense of selectivity: that knowledge switched onto one track cannot a lways return to areas passed over; we don't a lways have the opportunity to correct old errors . 1 8 Research lost is not just research delayed; it can also be forever marked or never recovered. Londa Schiebinger describes a clear instance of agnotology of this sort in her essay for this volume. The background here is that for three or four centuries fol lowing the first transits of the Atlantic and circumnavigations of Africa, European monarchs and trading companies sent out ships in search of fame or fortune, conquering and colonizing but also capturing knowledge and wealth from far-flung territories. N o t all knowledge gained in the peripheries flowed back to the center, however. The passage was unequal in that only certain kinds of goods were imported, while others were ignored. Abortifacients in particular were excluded: African and Eu- ropean w o m e n knew many different w a y s to prevent childbirth, but these were judged irrelevant to the kind of knowledge/extraction projects favored by the colonizing Europeans. The potato w a s fine, as was quinine from the bark of the Cinchona tree (for malaria), but not the means by which (white) w o m e n might have prevented conception or caused abortion. Eu- ropean governments were trying to g r o w their populations and conquer new territories, for which they needed quinine but not the peacock flower (the abortifacient described by Sibylla Maria Merian in 1 7 1 0 ) . Methods of contraception or abortion were low on the list of priorities, and the plants used for such purposes by the indigenes were simply ignored. It may well be that no decision was ever made to ignore or destroy such knowledge. It is not hard to imagine an "overdetermined" mix of delib- erate and inadvertent neglect, though the boundary between these t w o is not a lways clear. The mechanisms involved in producing or maintaining ignorance can change over time, and once things are made u n k n o w n - b y suppression or by a p a t h y - t h e y can often remain u n k n o w n without fur- ther effort. Once lost or destroyed, a document or a species or a culture does not spring back to life. Diego de Landa must have k n o w n this when he burned the M a y a n royal libraries at M a n i on the Yucatan in 1 5 6 2 , de- fending this act of cultural vandalism with the argument that such codices contained only "superstitions and lies of the devil ." This bridges into our next form of agnogenesis: the deliberate production of ignorance in the form of strategies to deceive. I G N O R A N C E A S S T R A T E G I C P L O Y , O R A C T I V E C O N S T R U C T The focus here is on ignorance-or doubt or uncertainty-as something that is made, maintained, and manipulated by means of certain arts and sciences. The idea is one that easily lends itself to paranoia: namely, that certain people don't want you to k n o w certain things, or will actively w o r k to organize doubt or uncertainty or misinformation to help maintain (your) ignorance. They know, and may or may not want you to k n o w they know, but you are not to be privy to the secret. This is an idea insufficiently explored by philosophers, that ignorance should not be viewed as a simple omission or gap, but rather as an active production. Ignorance can be an actively engi- neered part of a deliberate plan. I'll begin with trade secrets, moving from there in the next three sections to tobacco agnotology, military secrecy, and the example of ignorance making (or maintenance) as moral resistance. There have always been lots of reasons to keep things secret-for love, for war, for business, for every conceivable human desire or enterprise. 1 9 Thought itself, of course, is secret until expressed in perishable verbal form, or in the more durable medium of print or some other enduring mode of capture. Secrets are as old as human thought and perhaps older still, judging from the fantastic variety of animal techniques of deception, ranging from insect camouflage to predators stashing their prey to the myriad disguises of herbivores. Recall h o w the white underbellies of deer and most other ungulates help turn these animals into non-objects by canceling shadows. Science and trade are often said to be (or forced) open, but secrecy plays an important role in both realms-think of peer review, or the jeal- ous guarding of discoveries until publication. Science and industry are increasingly interwoven, with R & D pursued under cloaks of privacy to maintain some business advantage. Science even in the best of circum- stances is " o p e n " only under highly ritualized constraints. The point of confidential peer review, for example, is to guarantee objectivity-here a kind of balanced fairness-to al low one's peers to criticize without fear of recrimination. Blinded review comes at a cost, however, since it means that an a u t h o r - t h e recipient of criticism in this instance-cannot "con- sider the source." Reviewers can also act without taking responsibility for their opinions, except insofar as an editor or grant officer takes this into account. 2 0 A similar weakness plagues Wikipedia-style publishing, though preservation of page histories makes it at least theoretically possible to minimize vandalism (the bigger problem here is the perpetual "balance of terror" produced on controversial topics such as intelligent design). Scientific secrecy long predates peer review. Alchemy and astrology were often advertised as occult sciences, in the sense of harnessing dark powers but also of being practiced in the dark, hidden from view. 2 1 T h e t w o senses were intertwined, since the principles sought were supposed to lie behind or beyond ordinary kinds of knowledge that flourished in the light. M u c h of early modern science was also guild-like, insofar as "secrets of the trade" were taken for granted. Trade secrets were guarded to con- trol access to a particular kind of technique, resource, ritual, or market. M u c h of the rhetoric of the so-called Scientific Revolution w a s directed toward eliminating secrecy, to open up practices to inspect ion-whence the omnipresent rhetorics of " l ight ," "clarif ication," and eventually "en- lightenment." Alchemy done in the light became chemistry. Trade secrets are still a vital part of manufactur ing, 2 2 however, and it is probably not far from the mark to say that older forms of secrecy have simply been replaced by newer ones. A great deal of modern chem- istry is tied up with industrial production, making it hard to speak of an open exchange of ideas. Three or four people are supposed to k n o w the formula for C o c a C o l a , locked in a vault in Atlanta; the same is true for the spices used in Kentucky Fried Chicken (in Louisville) and many other celebrated consumables . 2 3 Publication is one w a y of claiming intellectual property, but ideas are also often shared " o p e n l y " only within some re- stricted social space. Mil itary technologies are an obvious example, but there is a great deal of private speech inside law firms, hospitals, govern- ments, and every other kind of institution, for w h o m knowledge is not just power but danger-which is w h y institutional amnesia may be as valued as institutional memory. Within academia, scholars will often keep certain ideas secret or limit their circulation to avoid improper use; and it is only after publication that circulation becomes difficult to control. Information flows are also limited for legal or PR purposes, or for reasons of national security. The apparent free flow of ideas celebrated in academia is actually circumscribed by the things that make it onto the public table; I taught at Pennsylvania State University for almost a dozen years before I stumbled onto a department called "Undersea Warfare," which is also about h o w long it took for me to learn that Penn State w a s the official university of the United States Marine Corps . I don't k n o w h o w many of my former colleagues were aware of either of these closely held facts. But there are other w a y s ignorance is crafted, and one of the most dra- matic examples stems from the black arts of tobacco manufacturers. Tobacco Industry Agnotology One of my favorite examples of agnogenesis is the tobacco industry's efforts to manufacture doubt about the hazards of smoking. It w a s primarily in this context (along with military secrecy) that I first began exploring this idea of manufactured ignorance, 2 4 the question again being " W h y don't we k n o w what we don't k n o w ? " The none-too-complex answer in many instances w a s "because steps have been taken to keep you in the dark!" We rule y o u , if we can fool you. No one has done this more effectively than the tobacco mongers, the masters of fomenting ignorance to com- bat knowledge. Health fears are assuaged by reassurances in the form of "reasonable d o u b t " - a state of mind with both PR and legal value. The logic is simple, but it also has some devious twists and turns. I'll deal here only with the U.S. case, though the duplicity project is n o w being fran- chised globally to buttress the continued sale of 5.7 trillion cigarettes per annum, enough to circle the Earth some 13,000 times. Market ing has a lways involved a certain persuasion bordering on de- ception, insofar as laundry soap is pretty much the same throughout the world. The tobacco industry early on recognized health concerns as market impediments, which is w h y L & M Filters were offered as "just what the doctor ordered," Camels were said to be smoked by "more doctors ," and so forth. The industry w a s barred from making such claims in the 1950s and moved to more subtle inducements, associating smoking with youth, vigor, and beauty, and later freedom, risk, and rebellion. For a time in the 1980s, when health infringements centered around secondhand smoke, we were told that smoking w a s a form of free speech. The industry likes to have it both w a y s : smoking is patriotic yet rebellious, risky yet safe, calming yet exciting, and so forth. Market ing tools of a novel sort were introduced in the early 1950s, fol lowing the explosion of evidence that cigarettes were killing tens of thousands every year. Responding to this evidence, the industry launched a multimillion dollar campaign to reassure consumers that the hazard had not yet been "proven." Through press releases, advertisements, and well-funded industry research fronts, epidemiology was denounced as "mere statistics," animal experiments were said not to reflect the human condition, and lung pathologies revealed at autopsy were derided as anecdotes without "sound science" as backing. Cigarette manufacturers often invoked the laboratory as the site where the "controversy" w o u l d be resolved, k n o w i n g that it w a s difficult to mimic human smoking harms using animal models. Small animals just don't contract cancer from breathing smoke; it takes twenty or thirty or more years for human smokers to develop cancer, and rats don't live that long. A n d even when cancers were successfully produced in mice (by painting tobacco tars on their shaven backs), the industry admitted only the presence of "mouse carcinogens" in smoke. Cigarette apologists worked in a conveniently tight logical circle: no evidence was good enough, no experiment close enough to the human condition. True proof was hard to have short of experimenting on h u m a n s - b u t do you really want us to experiment on humans? W h a t are y o u , some kind of Nazi? We don't yet k n o w what evil genius came up with the scheme to associ- ate the continued manufacture of cigarettes with prudence, using the call for "more research" to slow the threat of regulation, but it must rank as one of the greatest triumphs of American corporate connivance. 2 5 The idea was that people would continue to smoke so long as they could be reassured that " n o one really k n o w s " the true cause of cancer. The strategy w a s to question all assertions to the contrary, all efforts to "c lose" the controversy, as if closure itself were a mark of dogma, the enemy of inquiry. The point was to keep the question of health harms open, for decades if possible. Cancer after all w a s a complex disease with multiple causes, all of which would have to be explored without rushing to any kind of judgment. We owed as much to those poor souls suffering from this terrible scourge, we had to keep an open mind, leaving the question of causation open. Do you want to close d o w n research? Can' t you keep an open mind? Establishing and maintaining "the tobacco controversy" w a s a key element in the industry's PR strategy from the beginnings of the modern conspiracy in the 1950s. Controversy was like hope, something you (they) wanted to keep alive. Interminable controversy had an immediate value in keeping smokers smoking and legislators pliable. It eventually also had a legal value, insofar as the industry could claim it had never denied the hazards, but had only called for further evidence. The idea of " n o proof" becomes one of the t w o main pillars of the industry's defense against law- suits, the other being common knowledge: everyone has a lways known about the dangers, so smokers have only themselves to blame for what- ever illnesses they may contract. Universal awareness w a s matched with open controversy: everyone knew that cigarettes are harmful, but no one had ever proven i t . 2 6 The strategy is a clever one, though it does require that we adopt a rather broad rift between popular and scientific knowledge. In court, the industry's experts do some fancy dancing to make this w o r k , pointing to historical examples of " f o l k " w i s d o m predating scientific knowledge, with more "caut ious" confirmations coming only later. Folk healers use an herb to effect a cure, but it takes some time for doctors to accept this and grasp h o w it w o r k s . So while popular belief may recognize that tobacco is hazardous, the science has been much harder to nail d o w n . In court, the industry's experts like to emphasize the continuance of "legitimate scientific d o u b t " long past even the Surgeon General's report of 1 9 6 4 . Kenneth Ludmerer, a St. Louis medical historian and frequent witness for the industry, recently claimed under cross-examination that there w a s " r o o m for responsible disagreement" with the hazards consensus even after the Surgeon General's report. Indeed, he says, "There's a lways room for d isagreement ." 2 7 A crucial issue in many lawsuits is whether the industry acted respon- sibly in denying any proof of a hazard. " C o m m o n k n o w l e d g e " and "open controversy" come to the rescue, the hoped-for point being that since every- one has a lways k n o w n that cigarettes are dangerous, the manufacturers can't be faulted for failing to w a r n . The establishment of controversy in the scientific community is also crucial, though, because it gives cigarette makers yet another excuse for negligence in failing to warn. W h y did the industry not w a r n smokers of a hazard? Because the issue had not been settled! No proof w a s f o r t h c o m i n g - s o the industry maintained, duplici- t o u s l y 2 8 - s o we cannot say it acted irresponsibly. 2 9 The tobacco industry w a s rarely innocent in any of these respects, since its goal at many points w a s to generate i g n o r a n c e - o r sometimes false k n o w l e d g e - c o n c e r n i n g tobacco's impact on health. The industry w a s trebly active in this sphere, feigning its own ignorance of hazards, while simultaneously affirming the absence of definite proof in the scien- tific community, while also doing all it could to manufacture ignorance