Reconsidering the Role of Scientific Research in Anti-Toxics Rhetoric through Perspective by Incongruity

Abstract

Scientific research that illustrates links between toxins and cancer are largely absent in public discourse; yet correcting this deficiency is an insufficient solution to promoting precautionary policy. By design, the scientific method avoids questions of ethics. This article examines how biologist Sandra Steingraber navigates elevating the importance of scientific research on cancer while showcasing such research as an insufficient basis for change. I argue that her use of perspective by incongruity in her acclaimed memoir, Living Downstream, enables her to accomplish this task. This article forwards perspective by incongruity as a means to usefully complicate public understandings of scientific research.