If there are secrets to long life and good health, then most of us would wish to know them. If there are products or treatments, supplements or procedures, that would cure our illnesses or ameliorate our symptoms and suffering, then many of us would spend liberally to avail ourselves of the benefits. If our friends, siblings, parents, spouses and, perhaps most of all, our children are confronted with chronic illnesses, severe and considerable daily challenges, acute pain or discomfort, then we will be highly motivated to pursue avenues that promise relief for those we love. Our tendencies here are natural and appropriate. They also make us vulnerable to exploitation.

There is a long history of people who have peddled elixirs and assured customers that their products will cure incurable conditions, prolong life, rejuvenate, revitalize and vivify. Of course, such miracle products come at a price, but the benefits promised are often sufficiently alluring – and potential customers often sufficiently desperate – that collectively we continue to spend billions of dollars on products that can claim, at best, highly questionable therapeutic value. In fact, not only do we part with sums of money we can ill afford, but in some cases we subject ourselves to procedures that are more likely to induce harm than benefit. The claims made by the manufacturers of these products may be nonsense, but if they are dressed in enough technical jargon, promoted by individuals with enough charisma, recommended by celebrities of sufficient stature, given credibility by media outlets that should know better and align closely enough with common wisdom, then the nonsense will often go unnoticed.

There is little doubt that we could all profit from adopting a more critical and careful attitude towards the purported virtues of various expensive cosmetics, herbal supplements, revolutionary diets or so-called complementary and alternative medicines. Nevertheless, the promotion of products through dubious or absurd claims doesn't typically escalate to the level of creating a scientific controversy. We'll retain our focus on ostensibly created controversies, so this chapter will be concerned with instances when mainstream sciences have come under more direct attack and where the promotion of alternative treatments enters the narrative only more peripherally.

In the next two sections, we'll consider cases from the medical sciences.

Insofar as cigarette companies funded research principally to protect industry interests, rather than launching a sincere effort to properly evaluate the health risks associated with their product, we might come to regard their behaviour as unscientific. It is a common feature within discussions of Creation science, evolutionary biology, environmental and health sciences, the search for extra-terrestrial life, ghosts, Bigfoot and so on, that some or other practice, theory, method or conclusion is admonished for mimicking science but falling short of scientific ideals. The prestige that modern society affords science practically guarantees that impassioned debates will erupt over whether some discipline or other does or does not belong. Such sentiments might suggest that the most important task in this book should be that of defining what exactly science is.

Furthermore, it feels quite natural to suppose that, given a little time and ingenuity, we should be able to define science, and thereby distinguish it from other ways of knowing and understanding the world. We talk about science as if the word picks out a single, unified subject, method or discipline. Our schools and universities are organized as if more specialized fields and subject matter either unambiguously do or do not belong to the sciences. We describe a history that appears to enforce the same, general attitude. That history typically begins with Nicolaus Copernicus who, in 1543, published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in which he presented his heliocentric model of the solar system. Although it took almost a century before heliocentricism was widely accepted among scholars, that date is often identified as the start of the Scientific Revolution and the birth of modern science. The phrase itself – ‘the birth of modern science’ – implies that something new appeared, something that has subsequently grown and developed, but, again, some thing that we might hope to identify and define.

One source of trouble for our project arises, however, when we notice that defining science in a historical, or institutional, sense is quite distinct from the project of understanding science as our most reliable means of acquiring knowledge. To illustrate, suppose that we find a reasonable definition for what Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and their intellectual descendants have been doing. We announce that science requires fidelity to these particular methods and assumptions. Suppose now, however, we are presented with studies that don't fit the definition.

Scientists often disagree. As we saw in Chapter 4, dissent may be reasonable, appropriate and even desirable. If competing approaches to questions of mutual interest each enjoy some measure of empirical success, then we might hope that they would all receive continued attention, approximately commensurate with their perceived degrees of success and promise. Reasonable scientific disagreement can help clarify the topics under dispute and may function as a stimulus for new research and a conduit for progress. Sciences might not technically require controversy in order to advance, but they are certainly familiar bedfellows.

The details surrounding most scientific debates never reach the public ear. The finer technical points concerning how best to measure, interpret or analyse particular results may be largely incomprehensible to those who lack relevant training. Some apparent scientific controversies, by contrast, receive enormous public attention, whipping up great storms of sound and fury. Journalists lavish the issues with great attention. Popular books are written. Proponents for competing views stage public debates, appear on popular radio and television shows and oversee labyrinthine websites which link to new studies that sound authoritative and important, provide commentary that seems erudite and informed and offer criticisms of alternative scientific conclusions that appear grave and compelling. These appearances of controversy, often surrounding socially important issues, might be regarded as evidence that genuine disagreement exists within the relevant scientific community. As we know, however, sometimes appearances are deceptive.

Deceptive appearances can pave the way to significant problems. If those who are most qualified to evaluate an issue are in broad agreement about the correct conclusions to draw from available evidence, but the public perception is of experts deeply divided, then the talents and labours of our experts are in danger of being lost. Ignoring those who are most qualified to judge an issue can only be detrimental. In the final section of the book, we will look at several examples where many claim that the relevant sciences are being baselessly ignored. In this chapter, we will consider in more detail the very concept of a created, or manufactured, controversy. Among the questions we will address are the following.