Disqualified: The Stigmatization of Knowledge

How do we use science to stigmatize, and how do we in turn stigmatize science? Every day, people are treated differently based on their views of climate change, vaccines, or evolution. Science is increasingly used in social conflicts, as groups as varied as political parties and extremist groups use fact claims to discredit one another. In Disqualified, Michael Halpin argues that disqualification is a unique form of stigma^–^against facts, science, and knowledge^–^that has enabled the weaponization of science in academic, ideological, and political conflicts. Drawing on insights across social psychology, sociology, and science studies, Halpin uses psychiatry's ongoing neuroscientific revolution to demonstrate how policy makers and elite researchers use disqualification to steer their field towards legitimacy by elevating brain science while stigmatizing psychiatry as outdated and unscientific. Yet psychiatry is not alone in its struggle for legitimation. Analyzing the cases of incels, vaccines, and more, the book ultimately expands our understanding of disqualification and why scientific claims, and the people behind them, become discredited. By connecting stigma to power relations and social inequality, Disqualified forwards new questions and concepts for thinking about science in society and argues that stigma is one way that science, knowledge, and truth are controlled.