Good news reduces trust in government and its efficacy: The case of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine announcement

The announcement of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine success on November 9, 2020 led to a global stock market surge. But how did the general public respond to such good news? We leverage the unexpected vaccine announcement to assess the effect of good news on citizens’ government evaluations, anxiety, beliefs and elicited behaviors in the US and the UK. While most outcomes were unaffected by the news, trust in government and elected politicians (and their competency) saw a significant decline in both countries. As the news did not concern the governments, and the governments did not have time to act on the news, our results suggest that the decline of trust is more likely explained by the psychological impact of good news on reasoning style. In particular, we suggest two possible styles of reasoning that might explain our results: a form of motivated reasoning and a reasoning heuristic of relative comparison.

Reason versus Ian Hacking’s styles of scientific reasoning

There is a view in contemporary philosophy of science according to which scientific methodology itself is subject to radical change as part of scientific progress. According to this view, change in science is not confined to accepted theories. The core principles of scientific theory appraisal, including the rules and categories used to rank and confer truth-values on theories, are also said to be subject to radical change as science develops. In this paper, I examine Ian Hacking’s (1975; 1980; 1982; 1983; 1985; 1996; 1999; 2012) version of this no-invariant-methodology thesis. I argue that, just like Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigms,” Larry Laudan’s “research traditions,” and Imre Lakatos’ “research programmes,” Hacking’s “styles of reasoning” fail to give an adequate account of scientific progress.

Styles of reasoning for mathematics education

Although reasoning is a central concept in mathematics education research, the discipline is still in need of a coherent theoretical framework of mathematical reasoning. With respect to epistemological problems in the dominant discourses on proof, mathematical modelling, and post-truth politics in the discipline, and in accordance with trends in the philosophy of mathematics and in mathematics education research in general, it is argued that it is necessary to give a relativist account of mathematical reasoning. Hacking’s framework of styles of reasoning is introduced as a possible solution. This framework distinguished between at least six different styles of reasoning, many of which are closely connected to mathematics, and argues that these frameworks define what we accept as decidable assertions, as justifications for such assertions, and as possible objects of such assertions. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the framework for chosen fields of mathematics education research, which may motivate more focussed studies in the future.

The strange case of urban theory

Recent debates in urban theory have centred on the problem of whether universal concepts can have applications to particular places. These debates could benefit from more serious attention to how urban thought involves styles of analogical reasoning closer in spirit to casuistry than to explanatory theory. The difficult status of ‘the case’ in urban studies is explored through a consideration of different types of universality in this field, leading to a re-consideration of ideas of experimentalism and wicked problems. Further attention should be given to the multiple styles of reasoning through which urban knowledge is produced and circulated.

The paradoxes of practical research: The good intentions of inclusion that exclude and abject

There is an alluring, daunting, and haunting desire for practical knowledge in the contemporary social and education sciences about school change. This desire is not new: it haunts the turn of 20th century social sciences to change urban conditions and populations, and appears today in international school assessments and professional education. The article explores the paradoxes of practical research through a history of the present. Different historical lines activated in contemporary research are discussed: (a) the object of practical knowledge is making kinds of people; (b) the sciences about changing the present embody desires about the potentialities of society and people that research is to actualize; and (c) the “useful, practical knowledge” paradoxically embodies comparative styles of reasoning that inscribe inequality in the search for equality. The argument focuses on science as “an actor” in governing. It argues that governing in modernity occurs less through brute force (although it is still present) and more through the principles that order and classify conduct. The sciences of the modern school are central in this governing. The article methodologically draws on social and cultural histories, science and technology studies, and studies of the politics of knowledge.