Scientocracy: The Tangled Web of Public Science and Public Policy

by Patrick J. Michaels (Editor), Terence Kealey (Editor)

Overview

Science has long been the key to objective knowledge. Some of that knowledge, for instance, information about nutrition, climate change, hydrology, geology, and ecology, influences our daily decisions. Science also informs governments that seek to define risks and mitigate dangers. The popular notion is that science is a force for good and that knowledge derived from theory and experiment gives rise to technological advancement, improving everyone’s lives. This, however, is not always the case.

Science can be a force for good, and it has enhanced our lives in countless ways. But even a cursory look at science in the 20th century shows that what passes for science can be detrimental. Scientocracy documents only some of the more recent abuses of science that informed members of the public should be aware of.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948647502
Publisher:	Cato Institute
Publication date:	11/19/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	366
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Patrick J. Michaels is the former director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for 30 years. He is the author or editor of six books on climate and its impact, and he was an author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004. Michaels holds AB and SM degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago, and he received a PhD in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.
Terence Kealey is a visiting senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, where he served as vice chancellor until 2014. He is the author of The Economic Laws of Scientific Research and Breakfast Is a Dangerous Meal: Why You Should Ditch Your Morning Meal for Health and Wellbeing. Professor Kealey trained initially in medicine at Bart’s Hospital Medical School, London. He studied for his doctorate at Oxford University, where he worked first as a Medical Research Council Training Fellow and then as a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science.

Table of Contents

Contents 1. Introduction Patrick J. Michaels and Terence Kealey 2. Science and Liberty: A Complicated Relationship Terence Kealey and Patrick J. Michaels 3. Larding the Science: The Dietary Fat Fiasco Terence Kealey 4. Heads in the Sand: How Politics Created the Salt-Hypertension Myth Michelle Minton 5. Death: The Unintended Consequence of the War on Opoids Jeffrey A. Singer 6. Drugs: The Systematic Prohibition of U. S. Science Trevor Burrus 7. Medical Innovation and the “Government-Academic-Biomedical Complex” Thomas R. Stossel 8. Regulation of Carcinogens and Chemicals: What Went Wrong Edward N. Calabrese 9. Radiation Poisoning Patrick J. Michaels 10. Can Politics Turn Gold into Dross? The Story of Alaska’s Pebble Mine Ned Mamula 11. Endangered Science and the EPA’s Finding of Endangerment from Carbon Dioxide Patrick J. Michaels 12. EPA’s Conflicted Science on Fine Particulate Mortality Jason Scott Johnson