The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump

by Clifford D. Conner

Overview

The tragedy of American science is that its direction is determined by private profit rather than by the desire to improve the human condition. As a result, Conner argues, Big Science has been irredeemably corrupted by Big Money. This corruption threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the medicines we take.

The Tragedy of American Science explores how the U.S. economy’s addiction to military spending distorts and deforms science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. The primary motive driving American science and technology has become the search for new and more efficient ways to kill people. This transforms science from the classic ideal of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and antihuman opposite. That those trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times.

While the underlying problems may appear intractable, Conner compellingly argues that replacing the current science-for-profit system with a science-for-human-needs system is not an impossible, utopian dream. But to get there, we’ll need to grapple with this important history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642591279
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Clifford D. Conner is a historian of science at the School of Professional Studies, CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of A People’s History of Science (Bold Type Books, 2005) and biographies of three revolutionaries: Jean Paul Marat, Arthur O’Connor, and Colonel Despard.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Table of Contents
Epigraph
Introduction

PART 1: THE CORPORATIZATION OF AMERICAN SCIENCE
1 The Big Fat Lie
2 The Green Revolution
3 From Green Revolution to Gene Revolution
4 The Tobacco Strategy
5 Fraudulent Pharma
6 Spitting in the Well We Drink From
7 Atoms for Peace?
8 The Academic-Industrial Complex
9 Think Tanks and the Betrayal of Reason
10 The Dismal Science is Certainly Dismal, but is it Science?

PART 2: THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICAN SCIENCE
11 Science Harnessed to the Chariot of Destruction
12 A-Bombs and H-Bombs
13 Non-nuclear Technologies of Death
14 Bombers, Missiles, and Antimissiles
15 Video-Game War
16 Lethal Autonomy
17 Is Cyberwarfare Really a Thing?
18 American Exceptionalism and the Ultimate Perversion of the Behavioral Sciences

PART 3: HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS…
19 The Explosive Birth of Big Science
20 Operation Paperclip: The Nazification of American Science
21 The RAND Corporation: From "Fuck You, Buddy" to Doomsday

PART 4: ...AND THE ONLY WAY OUT
22 Is a Science-For-Human-Needs Possible?

Acknowledgements
Suggestions for Further Reading
Notes

Editorial Reviews

The history that Conner has laid bare impels all of us, as citizens or working scientists, to avoid the Faustian bargain of American exceptionalism.” —Science for the People Magazine

“Clifford Conner’s examination of the military and corporate capture of science in the US could not be more relevant. He makes the urgent case that human needs, and not profits or militarism, should guide scientific inquiry.” —Sarah Lazare, In These Times

“The Tragedy of American Science makes a strong case for freeing science from the fetters of capital and rededicating it for the good of humanity.” —Against the Current

“I highly recommend this book and consideration of what I take to be its main message: science could have worked wonders if properly used (and if a bit of military budgets were spent on something useful) and perhaps it still can.” —World Beyond War 

“We should read [Conner's] book as a political economy of science because science is embedded in a perverse set of cultural constraints and incentives allowing it to be misused and manipulated in a way that endangers our democracy. Conner views science writ large, encompassing theory (disciplinary science) as well as technology... The most rewarding part of the book...is Conner’s analysis of military science since World War II. Among the scientific and technological military projects discussed by Conner, which are rarely investigated in today’s popular press, are cluster bombs, Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles, drones, cyberwarfare, the SDI, and nanotechnologies, those ‘tiny insect-mimicking drones that operate in swarms, sneak into private dwelling spaces of targeted victims, and blow their heads off with microexplosive bombs...’’ —Science, Technology & Human Values

“American political and intellectual culture today, including scientific culture, is in a state of decay. The denial of human-caused climate change, the destruction of scientific records by the government, the attack on public education, and most recently, the Center for Disease Control’s banishing words such as ‘scientific-based’ and ‘evidence-based’ are significant indications of this. The policies of the masters of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex are ruinous. We can fight back by discrediting their junk ideas and magical thinking. Cliff Conner’s book helps immensely in this effort.” —Michael Steven Smith, Co-host, Law And Disorder Radio

“Clifford Conner’s remarkable study does so much more than simply ask and answer how American science has become weaponized over the past century. The Tragedy of American Science is a thorough and vividly engaging account—a history of science that draws deeply on social and geopolitical analysis, and with excellently crafted case studies. It is a call to rethink the myths of American exceptionalism that, under the guise of scientific altruism and U.S. foreign policy, have cultivated a science-for-profit system. Despite its unflinching disdain for the corporatization of research, policy, and practice, Conner’s story is not a pessimistic one. Instead, with keen insight, wit, and an empathetic eye on the future, Conner helps rescue the promise of science from the tragedy it has become.” —Jacob Blanc, author of Before the Flood: the Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil

“Cliff Conner has brought together journalists, advocates, leakers, and litigators to restore the principles of free inquiry from its perversions by the big lies of Big Food, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big War. The method is true and it is simple: they lift the big rock, and let fresh air and sunlight expose the little, nasty, squirmy things underneath.” —Peter Linebaugh, author of Red Round Globe Hot Burning 

Praise for Conner’s A People’s History of Science:

“Cliff Conner’s A People's History of Science is a delightfully refreshing new look at the history of science. I know of nothing like it...” —Howard Zinn

“A People's History of Science sticks up for little guys... Clifford D. Conner finds the fingerprints of the common man on humanity’s great advances.” —New York Times Book Review

“Conner writes clearly and skillfully shows connections as he ranges across time periods and disciplines from medicine to art to astronomy.” —Publishers Weekly

“[An] eloquently written book is accessible to lay readers and equally valuable for scholars. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“Valuable...” —Booklist

From the Publisher

2020-03-29
An angry polemic about how American science has deteriorated catastrophically.

Science historian Conner dates the onset from the 1942-1945 Manhattan project, the first “big science” project in which the government spent massively on developing the atom bomb; after this, science became big business. In a series of grim chapters, the author describes the “corporatization” and militarization of American science. Nutrition science is especially debased. Incompetent research, industry-sponsored hype, bribery, and obliging regulators produce wildly contradictory dietary guidelines. Unsurprisingly, “Coca-Cola Company has been particularly culpable in its efforts to misdirect nutrition science regarding sugar.” With the help of well-paid scientists, tobacco companies held off government action for decades, and fossil fuel industries have successfully adopted their techniques to quash efforts to reduce global warming. Denouncing the “green revolution” in agriculture, Conner points out that it has vastly increased food production but that politics and war—not lack of food—cause famines today. He adds that its costly fertilizer and seed enrich large farmers and impoverish poor ones and that the additional chemicals pollute waterways. Military research is an easy mark because so much is genuinely horrible. It’s old news that during World War II, Nazi and Japanese researchers performed sadistic experiments on prisoners. American leaders welcomed them in the hopes of acquiring their expertise. When it comes to weapons that kill innocents, military researchers display an unnerving lack of sympathy, and civilian superiors, Democrat as well as Republican, tend to go along. The author urges vigorous government regulation independent of corporate influence—a no-brainer but spotty in previous administrations, to say nothing of the current one—and 100% government funding and control of research. Though this was a disaster in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, Conner gives high marks to Cuba. Many democracies exert far stricter government control, which smacks of socialism, a poisonous word to American ears.

An indictment of American science so critical that it seems beyond hope.

Kirkus Reviews