Knowledge Resistance: Understanding and Managing Avoidance of Insights from the Others

Knowledge resistance refers to knowledge claims being neglected without serious arguments or counterevidence. Current research on knowledge resistance is compartmentalised in ‘rival’ scientific approaches. By analysing how knowledge resistance is defined, described and explained in social science (SOC), economics (ECON), and evolutionary science (EVOL) applied to environmental and health-related harm, and by designing debates across these rival disciplines about knowledge resistance, this project aims to identify weak points & potential lessons between the human science disciplines for understanding and handling knowledge resistance. The project's theoretical basis is ‘social rationality’, contending that knowledge improvement and truth-seeking are subordinate to ‘deeply social’ interests in social bonding, cultural distinction, and esteem. Oftentimes knowledge improvement and deeply social interests converge. When they don't, social rationality implies that the deeply social interests are likely to ‘win’. Empirically, a comparative analysis is done of scientific publications reflecting knowledge resistance concerning environment and health. Six focus group discussions are conducted with 40 human scientists in SOC, ECON & EVOL at Oxford University. An integrative framework is developed for understanding knowledge resistance, a framework useful for debating and managing such resistance in academia and in society at large, wherever such resistance obstructs welfare.

Knowledge resistance refers to knowledge claims being neglected without serious arguments or counterevidence. Current research on knowledge resistance is compartmentalised in ‘rival’ scientific approaches. By analysing how knowledge resistance is defined, described and explained in social science (SOC), economics (ECON), and evolutionary science (EVOL) applied to environmental and health-related harm, and by designing debates across these rival disciplines about knowledge resistance, this project aims to identify weak points & potential lessons between the human science disciplines for understanding and handling knowledge resistance. The project's theoretical basis is ‘social rationality’, contending that knowledge improvement and truth-seeking are subordinate to ‘deeply social’ interests in social bonding, cultural distinction, and esteem. Oftentimes knowledge improvement and deeply social interests converge. When they don't, social rationality implies that the deeply social interests are likely to ‘win’. Empirically, a comparative analysis is done of scientific publications reflecting knowledge resistance concerning environment and health. Six focus group discussions are conducted with 40 human scientists in SOC, ECON & EVOL at Oxford University. An integrative framework is developed for understanding knowledge resistance, a framework useful for debating and managing such resistance in academia and in society at large, wherever such resistance obstructs welfare.