FACTS, FAKE FACTS, AND NON-FACTS: METHOD IN THE INSCRIPTION, REPRESENTATION, AND DISTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN PROFESSIONAL AND PUBLIC SPHERES

Course Description

What distinguishes a scientific paper from a science fiction story in the form of a scientific paper? What distinguishes a reliable news story from an unreliable? In each instance they may look the same, but central to the character of the knowledge expressed is method--how states of affairs in the world come to be experienced, collected, and inscribed within the texts. Further, the credibility and value of those representations depends on how relevant readers judge those processes. Even imaginative tales with their pleasures depend on how readers locate the juncture between the experienced, reportable world and the ideas that generate alternative universes.

This course will examine the differing characters of the methods used to represent the world within disciplines, professions, and popular domains, with the underlying methodological thinking that leads to the different kinds of representation. Our aim will be understand more deeply the nature of written knowledge and how people go about writing and evaluating it. We will also explore how people intentionally or unintentionally create representations that have the appearance of credibility but that deceive. We will also examine cases where things once considered facts are no longer considered as such. Among the domains we may explore are academic disciplines from the sciences to the humanities, journalism, law, popular science, and fiction. Each student will develop a research project in a domain they are interested in.

This course should be of interest to students in journalism, in the sciences and other research disciplines, in public communication of science, non-fiction and fiction writing.