Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives

by Michael Specter

Overview

In this provocative and headline-making book, Michael Specter confronts the widespread fear of science and its terrible toll on individuals and the planet.

In Denialism, 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.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143118312
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/26/2010
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Specter writes about science, technology and global public health for the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1998. 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Vioxx and the Fear of Science 23

2 Vaccines and the Great Denial 57

3 The Organic Fetish 103

4 The Era of Echinacea 147

5 Race and the Language of Life 187

6 Surfing the Exponential 225

Afterword 265

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 277

Bibliography 285

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

Specter is both provocative and thoughtful in his defense of science and rationality—though he certainly does not believe that scientists are infallible. 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

“A lucid and insightful book about a very frightening and irrational phenomenon—the fear and superstition that threaten human science and progress. A superb and convincing work.”—Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker staff writer and author of Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point

“Denialism tells stories I know well, at least in outline. But Michael Specter very valuably gathers them under one roof and gives them a name. Specter describes the increasing public willingness to deny the hard-won facts of science in favor of myths and shoddy investigation. In the process, the denialists are enabling disease and poverty, denying the advances of science to those in need.”—David Baltimore, president emeritus, Biology California Institute of Technology

“We are bombarded with information and misinformation about the foods we eat, the medicines we take, the water we drink, the very air we breathe. Michael Specter shows us how to accurately assess the impact of science on these and other essential elements of our daily lives. Written in clear and accessible language, this uniquely valuable book explains an often confusing world."—Jerome Groopman, M.D., Recanati Professor, Harvard Medical School, author of How Doctors Think

From the Publisher

As a longtime New Yorker staff writer specializing in science issues, Michael Specter has recognized a growing trend among Americans to distrust institutions and view science as belonging to this category -- or, even worse, as a political constituency or a self-seeking lobby. In Denialism, he describes how science's traditional functions as information provider and lifesaver have been undermined by heated controversies involving everything from childhood vaccines and research involving animals to stem-cell research and global warming. As relevant as this morning's news.

In this hotly argued yet data-filled diatribe, Mr. Specter skips past some of the easiest realms of science baiting (i.e., evolution) to address more current issues, from the ethical questions raised by genome research to the furiously fought debate over the safety of childhood vaccinations.
—The New York Times

Janet Maslin

From New Yorker staffer Specter, a sarcasm-drenched denunciation of all who will not kneel at the altar of science. "Denialists," as Specter calls such people, "shun nuance and fear complexity, so instead of asking how science might help resolve our problems, they reject novel strategies even when those strategies are supported by impressive data and scientific consensus." Never mind that consensus once supported the idea of an Earth-centric universe and of epilepsy as a sign of demonic possession, and never mind Specter's own lack of nuance in lumping climate-change deniers, GM-food opponents, anti-vaccination activists and other such types into a single category. Are those who worry about the prospect of eating genetically altered food really on a par with Holocaust deniers? Specter seems glad to equate them, and to accuse any such worriers of being glad to condemn African villagers to lives of famine and misery. Are organic foodies evil? Apparently so ("the Western cult of organic food is nothing more than a glorious fetish of the rich")-never mind the fact that nonorganic farming is an innovation scarcely a century old and that eating fossil fuel is not very good for anyone. Specter rolls a few fuzzy-math dice along the way-at one point he gives the appearance that the 2,000-odd Americans who died of aspirin poisoning in 2008 were merely victims of bad luck-and he advances a few straw-man lines of argument that would make a college-composition student blush. Readers will need to be comfortable with the idea that Big Pharma loves them, corporate culture cares, industrial agribusinesses are in it for the public good and bacteriologists stand next to the Godhead. Denialism, it wouldseem, includes denying that science has ever caused harm. Specter's spirited approach to his subject is admirable, but his brush is far too broad and his disdain far too deep.

Kirkus Reviews