Agent Pamela D. Scoville writes to tell us of “the sale of the world rights of the new book Denying Science by John Grant to Dr. Mark Hall at Prometheus.” Hall calls the book a “very exciting project” that “could not be more timely.” It is scheduled to be published in Spring 2011, will be the fourth in Grant’s explorations of science and culture (following 2006’s Discarded Science, 2007’s Corrupted Science, and 2009’s Bogus Science).
Scoville offers this description of the book: Although we like to believe we’re living in a scientific age, our culture has in recent decades been characterized by a widespread antagonism toward science and the not always welcome messages it brings. Among countless other examples:
* warnings of imminent and potentially catastrophic climate change are depicted as a global conspiracy by the New World Order
* vaccinations are widely blamed for causing autism despite there being not a shred of evidence to support this claim and a plethora to indicate it’s a fallacy
* because he and Alfred Russel Wallace recognized the principle of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin is directly blamed for Auschwitz
* much research has demonstrated that abstinence education is a worthless method of reducing teenage pregnancies and STDs, yet government funds continue to be poured into it
This denial of scientific evidence, or even of the competence of science as a descriptor of the real world—a denial of reality, in short—is a phenomenon that no one seriously predicted outside the pages of satire.
It is clearly in large part inspired by fear of a dangerous world. But it is also fomented, through use of powerful publicity machines and very large sums of money, by short-termists in the corporate and political worlds who have difficulty seeing beyond the next quarter’s profits: most of us are unaware of the extent to which our attitudes and our perceptions of reality are being manipulated by these covert operations. Broad sections of the mainstream media actively connive in the disinformation effort. And for almost all of us it is impossible to keep track of all—or even a small fraction of—the science-denying activities being carried out by governments in our name.
Grant says “I couldn’t be more pleased that Denying Science has brought me to Prometheus, with that company’s long and illustrious tradition of promoting rationalism and fighting back against pseudoscience.”