Accommodating Science Fahnestock Summary

In the article “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts” Jeanne Fahnestock (1998) examines what happens to scientific research when it is translated to appeal to a wider audience. In order to assess what happens to this research, Fahnestock compares “paired communications” (332) – the original research paper and a version that has been interpreted for a wider audience. The evidence these comparisons reveal suggests that facts tend to change in three different ways when translated for a wider audience – through “genre shift”, “statement types” and “stasis theory” (Fahnestock 332).
In terms of a “genre shift”, Fahnestock argues that the genre of writing changes based on the audience one is writing for. She focuses on two of Aristotle’s forms of oratory to define the genres in play – forensic and epideictic (332-333). Fahnestock classifies scientific reports as forensic – their main focus is on proving and defending facts (333). The typical audience of these reports tend to have the requisite background knowledge to understand the context of the research. However, the broader audience often lacks this contextual knowledge to be fully aware
Stasis theory explains how “issues naturally develop in public forums” by positing four questions: “What exactly happened and who did it?”; “What was the nature or definition of the act?”; “What is the quality of the act, or, in other words, what were the mitigating or aggravating circumstances?”; “Who has jurisdiction in this case and what action is called for?” (Fahnestock 345). The first question is the nature of scientific research, and is where scientific discourse hovers. Public audiences tend to look for the value in the results of research rather than engage in the debate over whether it is fact, wanting to know “why” rather than “what”, and want to know if anything needs to be done about it (Fahnestock