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The War on Science
Book

The War on Science

Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It

Milkweed Editions, 2016 подробнее...


Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Innovative
  • Scientific

Recommendation

Journalist Shawn Otto persuasively argues that special interests, media personalities, corporate lobbyists and politicians with no respect for science and the scientific method have taken an uninformed populace hostage by discrediting and undermining science and facts. He believes that if science loses today’s “war on science,” it’s the end of knowing what is happening around you and to you. He traces the evolution of today’s mistrust of science to the beginning of the atomic age and then to the early 1960s, when a virus of doubt appeared under the bravura of the moon mission. The concept of objectivity further lost credibility in the face of postmodernism and the New Age. Thus began the undoing of science now seen in debates over climate change, health care and immigration, and in the marginalizing of scientists by US president Donald Trump’s administration. While always politically neutral, getAbstract recommends Otto’s well-researched, well-written, timely report. 

Take-Aways

  • Political and religious pushback against science threatens social and economic stability.
  • By the 2008 election, antiscience views on reproductive medicine, evolution and climate change had become political planks in the Republican Party platform.
  • In the “war on science,” public sentiment is a much stronger weapon than public policy.

About the Author

Journalist Shawn Otto also wrote Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America and the novel Sins of Our Fathers. A film producer (House of Sand and Fog), he co-founded ScienceDebate.org and produced its US presidential science debates. He won the IEEE-USA National Distinguished Public Service Award for elevating science in the US public dialogue.   


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    X. G. 4 years ago
    Interesting. Based on the journalist, scientific theories are not hypotheses that need to be updated progressively to fit our new understanding of reality around us.
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    i. i. 7 years ago
    Useful
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    D. M. 7 years ago
    Interesting read and agree that today's journalism lacks credibility with the public when it comes to important issues such as this. Lobbying interests need to take a back seat by politicians when it comes to the greater good of the public interest.

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