Understanding science denial from Bourdieu's fields theory and the transverse science perspective

The phosphoethanolamine episode, one of the first and most institutionalized cases of scientific denialism, is the subject of this article as it illustrates political interference in science. We study the case from published studies, official documents, materials produced by the press, as well as posts on social networks, through field theory and the transverse science perspective, which point to the relationships between fields that go beyond internal criteria. As a result, we can understand scientific denialism as a transversal phenomenon of interpenetration between fields. We discuss denialism as a result of the weakening of the boundaries of the scientific field, pointing to its heteronomy, and we try to illustrate how this case extrapolated the internal dynamics of the scientific field, bringing transversal dynamics as important forces of dispute in this episode (such as legal and media) and we show the interpenetrating relationships between the scientific field and other social microcosms.