Bad-Faith Dissent

This chapter explores whether the presence of bad-faith motive is a reliable criterion to identify normatively inappropriate dissent (NID). Rather than appropriate epistemic motives to help advance scientific knowledge, bad-faith motives involve some other objectionable goal: to confuse the public, stall policies that the dissenters dislike, promote particular ideological views, or safeguard profits. This chapter evaluates various ways to explain why bad-faith motives could result in dissent that fails to promote or that impedes scientific progress and it assesses their plausibility. It concludes that in spite of the intuitive appeal of attending to motivations, they cannot serve as a criterion to reliably identify NID.