The pseudoscientist ‘priest’: religiously selling nanotechnology

Abstract

Nanotechnology is the pinnacle of high technology, increasingly coveted by non-scientist buyers seeking science fiction rather than fact. This B2B ethnography deepens our understanding of scientist sellers rejecting orthodox technical sales talk, in order to guide culturally distant non-scientist buyers into more similar sense via religious pseudoscience (scientism). Although heretical, scientism is a powerful proselytising tool, enabling (pseudo)scientist sellers to reimagine themselves as powerful ‘priests’, while obligating buyers to have faith in their teachings, or face excommunication from the ‘church’ of nanotechnology. Within this sales-based ‘theocracy’, the metaphoric methodological ‘God’ Science is the ultimate form of validation, duplicitously manipulated, and overtly drawn on to facilitate the diffusion of poorly understood ‘salvific’ innovations, while supporting an apocryphal religion for high-technology sales.