Underuse Of Applied Science In Changing Societies
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Underuse of Applied Science in Changing Societies
This book discusses the fact that applied science is underused in modern societies. The problem is discussed both from external points of view (trust among lay people, attitudes among politicians) and from the inside (recruitment of researchers, research education, violations of scientific rules, financial processes). The book concludes with suggested solutions. Democracy is threatened in many countries in the free world. The same is true of applied science. It could be argued that in a world situation in which increasing numbers of people distrust politicians, applied science would be the sector people should turn to for advice. However, this seems to occur to a decreasing extent. Increasing numbers of results are produced by applied scientists and these results often diverge. In that situation, laymen tend to select the research results that confirm their own ideas. In such a situation one could ask whether it is meaningful to have applied science and to allocate money to it. There are threats to applied science coming from external sources, with politicians and higher administration increasingly disregarding applied science, but also from the inside. Researchers reporting results dishonestly or in exaggerated ways and researchers who avoid results that do not confirm their own hypotheses are eroding the trust in applied science. This book, which uses Sweden, a small European country with old and strong democratic and scientific traditions, as an empirical example, puts all the external and internal problems surrounding applied science in one context. Among the topics covered: Introduction, why do people not listen? Production and producers Research students How does applied science operate? Communication with society Examples of situations in which applied science should have been used more Solutions Conclusions Underuse of Applied Science in Changing Societies: Trust in Applied Science Among Lay People is an essential resource for researchers, research students, and research teachers in psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry, behavioral medicine, social medicine, psychology, sociology, social work, nursing, and public health. Societal actors also would find the book a useful resource for their work.
Hitler's and Stalin's Misuse of Science
S.D. Tucker delves into the Nazi and Soviet historical hijacking of science by extreme ideologies, revealing the dangerous consequences of pseudoscientific narratives in today's world. In today’s world, science itself, which we are constantly being told is a neutral vehicle for wholly objective ideas and theories, is increasingly being hijacked and abused by the toxic modern cult of identity politics, of both left and right. But should we be too surprised by any of this? No, because this exact same sorry process has happened time and again before, under the rule of totalitarian political cults like the Nazis and the Soviets, both of which vigorously promoted various pseudoscientific theories of ‘Aryan Science’ and ‘Marxist Science’ on the sole grounds that they were ideologically correct as opposed to being factually so. Nazi racial pseudoscience and belief in nonsense like the ‘World Ice Theory’, which claimed that stars did not really exist and were actually just reflections of the sun off giant floating space-icebergs, were widely encouraged in the Third Reich, and used for long-term military weather-forecasting purposes. Likewise, the ideas of the renegade biologist Trofim Lysenko, who developed a deluded ‘anti-capitalist’ theory of genetics opposed to Darwin’s, were responsible for widespread famine in the USSR when Stalin allowed him to apply them practically towards the nation’s crop-harvests. Those academics and functionaries who disputed these clearly false pseudoscientific notions often found themselves in deep trouble – or, ultimately, dead. In this incisive and challenging study, author S.D. Tucker explores the often weird and fanciful theories that were proposed and took hold under these extreme regimes – and in doing so sends a word of warning to the modern world of the internet and social media where similar bizarre ideas are expounded and consumed with frightening gullibility. Everywhere from Western universities, schools and hospitals to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, absurd stories of sexist glaciers, racist gravity, socialist trees and NATO-backed mutant extra-terrestrial potatoes are being promoted as items of politically mandated scientific fact by compliant collaborators and credulous social media followers. Pseudoscientific narratives are even now used to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, much as they were once used to justify the Nazi conquest of Europe or the spread of Communist revolution across the globe.
History and Future of Plants, Planet and People
This fascinating book presents the experiences and pooled knowledge of two very different conservation scientists; Pei Shengji from Sichuan, China and Alan Hamilton from London, UK. They have been drawn together over many years through working on some of the same conservation projects and have discovered that they overlap in their ideas about the sorts of work that needs to be done and how it can best be carried out. The book describes some of their own experiences, set within the contexts of their varied careers and the development of their thinking.