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This article studies resemblances between academic postmodernism and today's popular contestations of the authority of science by means of a qualitative content analysis of 657 critical online comments on a Belgian newspaper article about the COVID-19 crisis that features a prominent Belgian virologist. The comments portray scientists as (1) prophets who pretend their knowledge to be superior to competing understandings of the world; (2) puppets who figure in hidden schemes that cannot stand the light of day; and (3) pinheads who lack the intellectual competence to give solid scientifically informed advice. While the first two critiques do at first sight resemble academic postmodernism, they are in fact informed by the markedly modern understanding that objective and neutral scientific knowledge is as feasible as it is desirable. What we find, then, are not contestations of the authority of science per se, but indeed of practices deemed deviant aberrations of science.

Despite growing interest in community-level science literacy, most studies focus on communities of interest who come together through particular science, environmental or health-related goals. We examine a pre-existing community-ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel-with a particular history and politics vis-à-vis science, technology, and medicine. First, we show how Haredi cosmologies and culture come together to critique science as an epistemology while engaging with science as a technology. Then, we demonstrate how community-based medical experts serve as both science-related knowledge mediators and gatekeepers. Whereas Haredi Jews are constantly critiqued for their low levels of individual secular and science education, these community-based webs of knowledge seemingly position Haredi individuals with knowledge that surpasses the average "secular" Israeli. This case study develops unique analytical tools in the growing field of community-level science literacy, while pushing forward conversations about self-ascribed experts, knowledge gatekeeping, and the socio-political contexts of group critiques of science.

This essay traces the connected histories of Portuguese and French anthropology in the late nineteenth century. By looking at a Portuguese scientific institution, the Carlos Ribeiro Society, it considers how French race science, known as anthropologie , was adopted and adapted across the European Latin world as a type of "stranger-science." That is: as an authoritative outsider scientific formation, installed into national terrain in accordance with insider strategies for turning foreign elements into native forms of scientific sovereignty and modernity. French anthropology's international diffusion becomes meaningful in the light of the Portuguese incorporating what was foreign and modern as a means to generate vitality, and authority endogenously in their own national context. Hence, addressing the circulation of stranger-sciences can pave the way for an original conceptualizing of the transnational life of race science across and even beyond the Latin world.

Using interviews with residents of Idaho (a rural northwest US state) who identify as skeptical of climate change, we examine how skeptics rationalize their doubts about climate science. Skeptics tend to question the reality and human causes of climate change by (1) raising concerns about incentive structures in science that could bias climatology, (2) doubting the accuracy of data and models used by climate scientists, and (3) perceiving some practices of climate science and scientists as exclusionary. Despite these concerns, skeptics exhibit deference to scientific authority when using scientific assessments to make policy decisions, including environmental policy. Understanding skeptics' concerns about climate science and areas where they support science-based policy, will lead to better dialogue between scientists, interest groups, policy makers, and the skeptical public, potentially clarifying avenues to communicate climate information and enact climate policy.