Society and the scientific community initially rejected Snow’s hypothesis, and even when the evidence turned out to support his ideas, psychological and historical biases delayed his theory from being accepted. This forced him to use a two-pronged approach; he used` data to convince the scientists and elaborate, innovative maps* to convince the committees and the general public (Johnson, 186). This to me is an example of the interconnected relationship between the opinions of society and the opinions of science. This is similar to the class discussion we had about societal bias affecting early hospital/clinic cases of HIV. The book also makes the claim that the visual mapping techniques used by Snow can create maps that are superior to a map that simply “shows you where streets intersect” (Johnson, 219-20). This implies that, through technological innovations, maps can evolve with different communities to reflect ‘insider-secrets’ of the neighborhood. When applied to science, a hyper-connected, updated, and information-filled society could lead to more rapid acceptance of new theories, or could lead to more subgroups and delay agreement even further.
Do you have any examples of times when bias has significantly affected the overall acceptance of solid scientific theories?
Do you think that quickly expanding technology that aims to connect people all over the world is beneficial or harmful in our society, or is there information saturation?
*You can look at a Voronoi Diagram here if you want.
-kathryn joy evans
