TRANS-SCIENTIFIC GENRES OF SCIENCE COMMUNICATION Kaplan and Radin (2011) describe another kind of genre at work:

para-scien-tific. Scientists use these para-scientific genres to argue, to persuade, but they do so outside of the gatekeeping mechanisms one might find in, for example, peer-reviewed journals. Kaplan and Radin examine the trade journal debate between K. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley in Chemical & Engineering News, about what possibilities nanotechnology may hold. Because Chemical &

Engineering News is a trade journal, and not subject to the same institutional gatekeeping through peer review that one would find in a research journal, Kaplan and Radin suggest that this kind of publication is a site where bound-ary work may occur and can be described as “para-scientific media.”

Carolyn R. Miller and I took up this idea of para-scientific communication and broadened the definition to include emerging genres of online science communication (Kelly & Miller, 2016). In our account, para-scientific genres are those genres that function alongside conventional genres of science com-munication in that they borrow scientific authority and knowledge structures from the realm of science, but they operate outside the conventional models of gatekeeping and reporting found in internal science communication. In other words, para-scientific genres borrow some features from the internal discourse of science without the whole complex of features upon which the epistemic authority of science depends. However, these genres, unlike popu-lar science genres, often forego the rhetorical accommodations outlined by Fahnestock (1986), such as appealing to “wonder,” as previously noted. Rather, the para-scientific genres are concerned with the construction, collection, arrangement, or application of scientific knowledge in spheres of discourse formally external to, but somehow involved with, the scientific community (and, I will argue, catalyzing new communities).

The work of nuclear physicist Alvin M. Weinberg is helpful in theorizing how these genres are not sanctioned, not entirely stabilized, and not entirely

within the network of scientific genres. In 1972 Weinberg published “Sci-ence and Trans-Sci“Sci-ence” in the journal Minerva, coining “trans-sci“Sci-ence”; he expanded on this work in his 1987 “Science and Its Limits.” In 1992, he fol-lowed up this work again with a book entitled Nuclear Reactions: Science and Trans-science, devoted to the issues he had raised decades earlier. In these works, the idea of trans-science describes difficult interactions among science, technology, and society; questions arise that have a factual scientific answer, but that science cannot answer. Put in Weinberg’s (1972) terms, trans-science describes questions that are within the epistemological domain of science and are “questions of fact and can be stated in the language of science,” but they are also “unanswerable by science; they transcend science” (p. 209). Adopt-ing Weinberg’s term, I also adopt some of this thinkAdopt-ing as the epistemologi-cal grounds for trans-scientific genres. These genres may use the language of science, they may discuss matters of scientific fact in that language, but they also transcend sanctioned scientific discourse because they must attend to not only the epistemological but also the axiological. That is, these genres tran-scend the narrow epistemological grounding of typical scientific discourse, which has been crafted in the service of scientific methods and the progress of what Kuhn (1970) calls “normal science” (the kind of research that builds up a theory once the general theoretical framework has been established).

Instead, these genres of science communication expand the epistemologies to which they are accountable, and notably engage in axiological programs, thus entering the difficult problem space that Weinberg outlines. That is, this is a problem space where the answers to scientific questions of fact also mean engaging questions of value, which may be dependent on certain cultural, social, or community norms. For example, questions about the probability of an improbable but catastrophic nuclear disaster would require a refocusing of efforts away from some other problem and a decision about what is valu-able. In this example, part of the problem is that it is well nigh impossible to calculate all the scenarios. So, what is the probability of a nuclear disaster on the East Coast of the United States? This is a trans-scientific question because of the numerous factors a risk analyst¹⁶ would have to account for, requiring significant resources to research all the possibilities; as such, it would be nec-essary to make a calculation of where such resources ought to be allocated (that is, a social or economic, not strictly scientific, decision). Concretely, it is possible to determine several likely scenarios and calculate the risks of disaster. However, risk assessment is never exhaustive because such an effort

16. See also Danisch and Mudry (2008) on the rhetoricity of risk assessment and how it reconfigures publics’ relationships with objects of scrutiny.

would outstrip the resources to perform such an assessment. Further, at some point, taxpayers providing the funds for the assessment would be furious at the expense and the diminishing returns on a continued calculation of risks.

Someone needs to assess not only risk but also the degree to which risks will be measured. Weinberg (1972) offers an analogy to simplify the importance of broader engagement through trans-science, saying, “The obvious point is contained in the saying that he whose shoe pinches can tell something to the shoemaker” (p. 218). Aristotle argued a similar position in Politics: “The maker might not be the only or the best judge, but where those who do not possess the art also have some knowledge of its works. The maker of a house, for example, is not the only one to have some knowledge of it, but the one who uses it judges better than he does, and the one who uses it is the household manager; and a pilot judges rudders better than a carpenter, and the diner, not the cook, is the better judge of a banquet” (Aristotle, 2013, III, 1282a, ln 18–24).

While experts have significant domain knowledge, and indeed are crucial to these conversations, when we talk about science in society, we are talking about the implications of science for society itself. In a democratic nation, Weinberg suggests, these implications are going to be taken up in more open, deliberative spaces.

How can Weinberg’s discussions of epistemological grounding of sci-ence and the axiological matters of trans-scisci-ence help address the problem of emerging genres of science communication? Reconsider the description of para-scientific genres above—genres that operate “alongside traditional genres of science communication in that they borrow scientific authority and knowl-edge structures from the realm of science but operate without the gatekeeping and traditional reporting forms of internal science communication” (Kelly &

Miller, 2016, p. 221). Perhaps, instead, trans-scientific genres can be said to operate alongside conventional genres of science communication. Trans-sci-entific genres borrow values from science, such as the factual and reproduc-ible nature of science that establishes its authority. These genres, however, also borrow values from the larger cultures within which the genres operate, such as the right to make health decisions as an individual or for one’s family. For trans-scientific genres, then, established forms of gatekeeping and reporting of science need to be set aside to allow for an expanded deliberative space. In this way, trans-scientific genres are concerned with the construction, collection, arrangement, or application of scientific knowledge to promote more inclusive deliberation about complex techno-scientific problems and their social corol-laries. These trans-scientific genres are the same as the “para-scientific genres”

Miller and I previously considered (Kelly, 2014, 2016; Kelly & Miller, 2016; A.

R. Mehlenbacher, 2017), following Kaplan and Radin (2011). But the change of

phrase here is somewhat more pragmatic. Although “para-scientific” is a pro-ductive way to think about the range of genres employed in scientific spheres of discourse, the prefix “para-” (meaning “alongside”) paired with “science”

can invoke some unintentional readings and implications. Most notably, a number of pseudoscientific organizations and research agendas have adopted

“para-scientific” as a descriptor. “Trans-scientific genres,” in contrast, is a con-venient category to set apart some of the new and evolving forms of online science communication from conventional genres, such as scientific research articles or research grant proposals or popularizations, without unintention-ally confusing those with pseudoscience.

Because what I am characterizing as trans-scientific genres are so new, there are a number of challenges in studying them—among them, challenges in the instability of the genres, or proto-genres, under investigation. How does one go about studying genres that are less likely to be highly conventionalized, or that may be rapidly evolving, or that are difficult to situate in a particular community of practice? In the next section, I bring together rhetorical genre studies as well as approaches from allied fields in genre studies to build a methodological approach to investigate these challenging genres. As well, I draw from recent critiques and discussions in rhetorical studies of science in an effort to build a robust approach that balances the close, deep reading of rhetorical approaches with somewhat larger data sets.