Science Left Behind: Feel-good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-scientific Left - Hardcover

Berezow, Alex; Campbell, Hank

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1610391640 ISBN 13: 9781610391641

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2012

Synopsis

To listen to most pundits and political writers, evolution, stem cells, and climate change are the only scientific issues worth mentioning—and the only people who are anti-science are conservatives. Yet those on the left have numerous fallacies of their own. Aversion to clean energy programs, basic biological research, and even life-saving vaccines come naturally to many progressives. These are positions supported by little more than junk-science and paranoid thinking.Now for the first time, science writers Dr. Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell have drawn open the curtain on the left€™s fear of science. As Science Left Behind reveals, vague inclinations about the wholesomeness of all things natural, the unhealthiness of the unnatural, and many other seductive fallacies have led to an epidemic of misinformation. The results: public health crises, damaging and misguided policies, and worst of all, a new culture war over basic scientific facts—in which th

About this title

About the Author

Alex B. Berezow is the editor of RealClearScience. His work has appeared on CNN, and in USA Today, Forbes, and The Economist among other publications. In 2010, he earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington. Originally from southern Illinois, he currently lives in Seattle.

Hank Campbell is the founder and editor of Science 2.0, the world's largest independent science communication community. Prior to that, he was a senior executive at three physics software companies. He graduated from Duquesne University and was formerly a U.S. Army officer.

Reviews

The authors spend a fair amount of time at the outset of this unsettling book explaining that they don’t have a political agenda, but the book’s subtitle, combined with its stated purpose—“to inform you about a disturbing trend among highly influential progressive activists who misinterpret, misrepresent, and abuse science to advance their ideological and political agendas”—might lead some readers to conclude otherwise. Leaving politics aside, though, there is much here to recommend. The science is clearly explained, and the issues surrounding the science laid out with clarity. There are a lot of hot-button topics here: environmentalism, genetically modified organisms, organic food, product testing on animals, solar power, clean energy, and more. The authors explore the issues in detail, working very hard to give the appearance of political neutrality, and the book does an excellent job of opening readers’ minds to the possibility that these issues aren’t as cut-and-dried as they might have been led to believe by politicians and the media. Open-minded readers, those who don’t mind being asked to reassess their long-held beliefs, should find much here to think about and debate. --David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1610391640
• ISBN 13: 9781610391641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320