How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
by Michael Specter
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2009
304 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
In Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of science more today than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad - that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn't always in our best interest.
We live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically modified grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. In the United States a growing series of studies show that dietary supplements and "natural" cures have almost no value, and often cause harm. We still spend billions of dollars on them. In hundreds of the best universities in the world, laboratories are anonymous, unmarked, and surrounded by platoons of security guards - such is the opposition to any research that includes experiments with animals. And pharmaceutical companies that just forty years ago were perhaps the most visible symbol of our remarkable advance against disease have increasingly been seen as callous corporations propelled solely by avarice and greed.
As Michael Specter sees it, this amounts to a war against progress. The issues may be complex but the choices are not: Are we going to continue to embrace new technologies, along with acknowledging their limitations and threats, or are we ready to slink back into an era of magical thinking? In Denialism, Specter makes an argument for a new Enlightenment, the revival of an approach to the physical world that was stunningly effective for hundreds of years: What can be understood and reliably repeated by experiment is what nature regarded as true. Now, at the time of mankind's greatest scientific advances-and our greatest need for them - that deal must be renewed.
"Denialism weighs the available facts about these new foods’ safety and usefulness. But Mr. Specter’s argument depends on data that cannot be quantified; that’s what makes his book so provocative. How do we weigh the demonstrable hazards of any food against the intangible concept of widespread famine? How do we compare illness that is linked to vaccine (if indeed it is linked, since this is one more flashpoint for “Denialism”) with the amount of illness that vaccine averts? “Nobody celebrates when they avoid an illness they never expected to get,” Mr. Specter points out. Nor do they often recognize that caution can be risk by another name." - New York Times, Janet Maslin
"Specter’s most important point is his most irresistible one. The only thing scarier than new technologies is refusing to have a healthy, informed, and civil discussion about them." - The Boston Globe, Anthony Doerr
"His writing is engaging and his sources are credible, making this a significant addition to public discourse on the importance of discriminating between credible science and snake oil." - Publishers Weekly
"Many, especially the skeptical and the scientifically inclined, will find arguments that trade on generalities, ignore subtleties, and caricature the opposition suspect. Thus, Specter's book is unlikely to ring true to the believer in science or to convert the unbeliever. Not recommended." - Library Journal
"Specter's spirited approach to his subject is admirable, but his brush is far too broad and his disdain far too deep." - Kirkus Reviews.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Michael Specter writes about science, technology, and global public health for The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1998. Specter previously worked for the The New York Times as a roving correspondent based in Rome and before that as the Times's Moscow bureau chief. He also served as the national science reporter for The Washington Post as well as the New York bureau chief. He has twice received the Global Health Council's Excellence in Media Award, as well as the Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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