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Short abstract

This paper examines how invasion biologists decide which knowledge to trust or ignore. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it develops a reception-oriented model of scientific trust, showing how evaluation practices shape scientific work on possible ecological threats.

Long abstract

This paper examines epistemic practices in invasion biology by analyzing how scientists make decisions about using epistemic resources. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in two invasion biology research groups (2–3 months each) and ten expert interviews, I investigate how scientists evaluate and receive knowledge in everyday research practice.

Building on these empirical findings, I develop a reception-oriented model of scientific trust. Rather than treating trust as an individual attitude or as a property of knowledge itself, the model conceptualizes trust as an interpretative scheme that orientates decisions about the use of epistemic resources. The model considers how scientists assess data, methods, collaborators, and institutional contexts when deciding whether knowledge becomes usable within their own work.

The paper argues that invasion biology is shaped not only through knowledge production, but also through practices of reception that determine which knowledge is integrated or ignored. By foregrounding reception as a part of active epistemic practices, this study highlights how scientific knowledge is continuously negotiated through everyday decisions about credibility and usability.

Invasion biology provides a particularly productive site for examining these dynamics, as the field operates at the intersection of ecological uncertainty, public controversy, and future-oriented environmental governance. The findings show how trust-based reception practices shape the interpretation of ecological change and which forms of intervention become thinkable or legitimate.

The paper contributes to STS debates on scientific trust and epistemic regimes. It further shows how reception practices participate in shaping possible futures of living with ecological change and so-called invasive species.