Pulling away from science, epistemic self-reliance, and the tale of Thabo Mbeki

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• Katherine Furman (University of Liverpool)
• Thursday 30 January 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr. Rosanna Dent.

When relations between science and society are going well, members of the public can straightforwardly use scientific information in their decision-making. When things go awry and trust breaks down, people seek out substitutions to fulfil the epistemic functions that trust in science previously satisfied. One way to do this is to adopt a DIY approach and ‘do your own research’.

Plenty has been written philosophically on the phenomenon of ‘doing your own research’, mostly from and about north American and western European contexts. The implied epistemic agent is typically someone who values autonomy in the extreme, is deluded about their own capacities, has a contrarian character, and may enjoy the novelty of figuring things out for themself. However, if we change the cases, ‘doing your own research’ may look different.

In this talk, I provide a detailed case study of Thabo Mbeki and his AIDS denialism. Thabo Mbeki was South Africa’s president from 1999 to 2008, and when he began his political career, he completely accepted the mainstream scientific position on HIV /AIDS. However, Mbeki began to distrust this science as he came to suspect that it was premised on racist values. He engaged in substantial independent evidence-gathering and developed AIDS policies on that basis, with tragic consequences. Mbeki’s story is undoubtedly a cautionary tale against ‘doing your own research’, but he is far-removed from the parody of an autonomy-obsessed agent, dabbling in science for the fun of it. He is deeply invested in the success of his country and its people, and he takes this role extremely seriously. In fact, it seems that it is the seriousness of his commitments that lead him astray.

Overall, this talk hopes to provide a slightly different story about ‘doing your own research’. It also aims to highlight how the selection of cases for philosophical analysis can substantially alter how we understand the phenomenon under study, and so choosing cases should be approached with care.

This talk is part of the Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science series.

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