Recent examples of attacks on science such as climate change denial demonstrate the danger of attacks on science. However, the negative impacts of these attacks must be weighed against other considerations, including the freedom of speech and religious expression, and the assertion that some criticism is healthy for the scientific field. The viewpoints in this volume consider the impacts of attacks on science, whether these attacks can be stopped, and how they can be prevented. Readers will evaluate the role of the internet in propagating and legitimizing these attacks.
An “insightful” and in-depth look at anti-science politics and its deadly results (Maria Konnikova, New York Times–bestselling author of The Biggest Bluff). Thomas Jefferson said, “Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” But what happens when they aren’t? From climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense, we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress—and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the very idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded war on science, and the results are deadly. Whether it’s driven by identity politics, ideology, or industry, the result is an unprecedented erosion of thought in Western democracies as voters, policymakers, and justices actively ignore scientific evidence, leaving major policy decisions to be based more on the demands of the most strident voices. This compelling book investigates the historical, social, philosophical, political, and emotional reasons why evidence-based politics are in decline and authoritarian politics are once again on the rise on both left and right—and provides some compelling solutions to bring us to our collective senses, before it's too late. “If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage and shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.”—The Guardian
An argument that what makes science distinctive is its emphasis on evidence and scientists' willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science. McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science.
Based on a series of regional meetings on university campuses with officials from the national security community and academic research institutions, this report identifies specific actions that should be taken to maintain a thriving scientific research environment in an era of heightened security concerns. Actions include maintaining the open exchange of scientific information, fostering a productive environment for international scholars in the U.S., reexamining federal definitions of sensitive but unclassified research, and reviewing policies on deemed export controls. The federal government should establish a standing entity, preferably a Science and Security Commission, that would review policies regarding the exchange of information and the participation of foreign-born scientists and students in research.
No professional group in the United States benefited more from World War II than the scientific community. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists enjoyed unprecedented public visibility and political influence as a new elite whose expertise now seemed critical to America's future. But as the United States grew committed to Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and the ideology of anticommunism came to dominate American politics, scientists faced an increasingly vigorous regimen of security and loyalty clearances as well as the threat of intrusive investigations by the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities and other government bodies. This book is the first major study of American scientists' encounters with Cold War anticommunism in the decade after World War II. By examining cases of individual scientists subjected to loyalty and security investigations, the organizational response of the scientific community to political attacks, and the relationships between Cold War ideology and postwar science policy, Jessica Wang demonstrates the stifling effects of anticommunist ideology on the politics of science. She exposes the deep divisions over the Cold War within the scientific community and provides a complex story of hard choices, a community in crisis, and roads not taken.
In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.
Modern science is under the greatest and most successful attack in recent history. An industry of denial, abetted by news media and "info-tainment" broadcasters more interested in selling controversy than presenting facts, has duped half the American public into rejecting the facts of climate science—an overwhelming body of rigorously vetted scientific evidence showing that human-caused, carbon-based emissions are linked to warming the Earth. The industry of climate science denial is succeeding: public acceptance has declined even as the scientific evidence for global warming has increased. It is vital that the public understand how anti-science ideologues, pseudo-scientists, and non-scientists have bamboozled them. We cannot afford to get global warming wrong—yet we are, thanks to deniers and their methods. The Inquisition of Climate Science is the first book to comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, their extensive industry funding, and their failure to provide any alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming. In this book, readers meet the most prominent deniers while dissecting their credentials, arguments, and lack of objectivity. James Lawrence Powell shows that the deniers use a wide variety of deceptive rhetorical techniques, many stretching back to ancient Greece. Carefully researched, fully referenced, and compellingly written, his book clearly reveals that the evidence of global warming is real and that an industry of denial has deceived the American public, putting them and their grandchildren at risk.
Why the social character of scientific knowledge makes it trustworthy Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don't? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength—and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.
The widely acclaimed response to the postmodernists attacks on science, with a new afterword. With the emergence of "cultural studies" and the blurring of once-clear academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In Higher Superstition scientists Paul Gross and Norman Levitt raise serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and social scientists on the "academic left." This edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.
