How to do things with insecure extensions

Abstract

The multi-purpose of publicizing a scientific consensus includes a communicative strategy by which scientific institutions accommodate the weighty social and economic demands to demonstrate they are collaborating and cooperating with non-scientific sectors of society, relying on a wide range of spokespeople and representatives to carry out the delivery of their consensus in formal, institutionally arranged, professional and impersonal public settings. I investigate the conditions and presuppositions that make it possible for a research consortium to contribute indirectly to public discourse beyond the presentation of empirical data and theoretical speculations routinely associated with knowledge-producing collectives. The baptismal action of researchers in selecting a designative name to announce a new discovery of virus species and species variants does not follow the rigorous regulations that standardize all names of taxonomic categories in other biological sciences as well as higher order taxa in virology. It is argued here that the lack of clarity in the denotation of the term ‘Ebola’ (in epidemiological reports from West Africa throughout 2014–2016) serves the purpose of shifting a receptor’s understanding of a statement from its explicit assertive point to an implicit declarative, commissive, directive or expressive, covertly delivered point. Specialists of nomenclature concerned with quality assurance regard this lapse in standardization as a consequence of human fallibility demanding urgent intervention. Here it is proposed instead that the occlusive effect of a technical descriptive name may serve an important communicative function.