Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009) 112

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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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Discussion

Response to Collins about ‘one point’ that is absent from my review of his book
Yves Gingras
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, CP 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8, Canada

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Collins’ curious response to only ‘one point’ in my long review
of his book (Gingras, 2007a), in fact discusses something that is
completely absent from it! Not citing any precise sentence but
simply stating that ‘the claim [he strongly objects to] can be found
in a paragraph or two around pages 278–279’, Collins says that I
‘claim’ there that ‘scientists were justified in withholding informa-
tion’ from him and were even ‘to be commended when they with-
hold those data from public scrutiny’ (Collins, 2008, p. 151). The
key words here are ‘justified’ and ‘commended’ and, curiously, they
cannot be found in my text! In fact, in the two paragraphs that
Collins points his finger to, I observed that ‘Collins offers no
sociological explanation [of the scientists’ choice not to collaborate
with him] other than finding their behaviour surprising’ and then I
briefly suggested one such sociological explanation (Gingras,
2007a, p. 279) which takes into account the perceptions of the
actors involved, an interpretation that, by the way, Collins says is
probably ‘correct’ (Collins, 2008, p. 152). Since I know very well
that ‘the ought does not follow from the is’ (ibid., p. 151), I explic-
itly write that: ‘The point here is not to determine whether they
were right or wrong in their perception and in their decision not
to collaborate with a sociologist, but rather to note that Collins
seems blind to that aspect of his interactions with them. As he can-
not understand why they behaved as they did, he is left with
making moral judgements about their behaviour’ (Gingras,
2007a, p. 279). It should be obvious to any careful reader that I
never ‘endorse their action’ as Collins seems to suggest
(Collins, 2008, p. 152). In fact, Collins’s response to my review pro-
vides another instance of the difficulty some scholars seem to have
in reading texts carefully and in controlling their writings (syntax
and semantics) so that they say what they mean and avoid hyper-
bole (Gingras, 2007b). These brief remarks should suffice to show
that the ‘claim’—which could, according to Collins, have had
‘appalling implications’—is a pure invention and that readers
should be reassured that the ‘future of social science’ as well as
that of ‘civilisation’, for the sake of which Collins took up the
pen, are—as far as I am concerned—still safe.
References
Collins, H. (2008). Response to one point in Gingras’s review of Gravity’s shadow.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 39, 151–153.
Gingras, Y. (2007a). Everything you did not necessarily want to know about
gravitational waves. And why. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38,
268–282.
Gingras, Y. (2007b). ‘Please, don’t let me be misunderstood’: The role of
argumentation in a sociology of academic misunderstandings. Social
Epistemology, 21, 369–389.

E-mail address: gingras.yves@uqam.ca

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