CompleteMartialArts.com - Silencing Science
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List Price: $8.00
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Manufacturer: Cato Institute
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.483
EAN: 9781882577729
ISBN: 1882577728
Label: Cato Institute
Manufacturer: Cato Institute
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 68
Publication Date: 1999-01-25
Publisher: Cato Institute
Studio: Cato Institute
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Editorial Reviews:
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Science has been a major contributor to the health and wealth we enjoy today, but not everyone is happy with it. Science can get in the way of social and environmental activists, politicians, lawyers, and government regulators. This book is a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual for the concerned citizen annoyed by pesky science. The authors describe more than 20 efforts of individuals and organizations to stop science in its tracks using techniques ranging from defunding scientific research to squashing scientific debate to substituting junk science for real science. Their witty descriptions illuminate the mischief that has followed successful and all-to-real efforts to thwart true science and offer stark reminders of the risks that follow when real science is silenced.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: You're a stupid liberal if you don't believe his gospel
Comment: The only reason I even read his completely biased books is to see if he mentions the energy, pharmaceutical or pesticide corporations that fund his think tank operations. Guess what, he never once mentions any of them. He doesn't want you to know that his writings are purchased, processed and proliferated by multi billion dollar corporations to reduce public disgust of big industry's poisons and pollution.
Steven's method to discredit real scientists is very similar to the way a time share salesman would convince you that buying a timeshare is actually saving you money. He basically takes a bunch of statistical numbers and twists them around in a way that would be virtually impossible dispute, similar to the way the timeshare salesman attempts to convince you that the price of the timeshare and maintenance fee would be less than just going out and renting a hotel every time you vacation. It sounds valid when you hear the argument but as time goes on you realize it was total BS.
But that is exactly what Chevron, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Lorillard Tobacco, National Pest Control Association, Philip Morris Companies, Procter & Gamble, asbestos and pesticide manufacturers (just to name a few) pay him to do. He is paid big bucks to label legitimate scientists and make it appear that they are the ones being paid to come up with anti industry scientific conclusions.
Steven is a lawyer not a scientist. He attacks real scientists research the same way a trial lawyer would attack his adversary in court, with words. He doesn't use the objective "scientific method", he just looks for loopholes in the research that runs counter to big business interests. If he wanted to he could create a powerful argument that the law of gravity is just your imagination. And you could feel like you're superior because you are privy to "inside" information. This is essentially why people believe his perversions of reality. He doesn't use the scientific method; he uses the method of labeling you a liberal loser if you don't agree with his ranting.
Steven Milloy is funded by billion dollar corporations to convince you that their polluting ways are not harmful to your health or the environment. So if you actually believe that mercury, global warming, PCBs, second hand smoke, chemicals coming from coal burning corporations, etc. are actually hazardous to you or the environment, then you're just a bleeding heart liberal. That's the objective of his writings.
If you think I'm just making all of this up, do a google search on Steven Milloy with any one of the corporations I have mentioned and you can see all of the legitimate web sites that expose his true agenda. Look up his name at disinfopedia.com and you can read a full explanation of his history as a lobbyist and what "think tank" affiliations he has.
A couple of good books I would recommend that expose this kind of adulterated scientific propaganda are, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry and Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, both by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very libertarian, but tiny and incomplete.
Comment: Any rational and freedom-loving person will agree with the thrust
of this book. That said, I got three unpleasant surprises when
it arrived.
1) It's only 66 pages. More of a pamphlet than a book.
2) It does not go into detail on most of the past controversies
in which science was (allegedly) silenced. You're left to try to
research them yourself (mostly without even any references).
3) The sarcastic tone in which it is written (as an alleged
manual for "how to silence science") completely omits to address
the question of whether any of the villains it names actually had
the motive of wanting to silence science (as opposed to, for
instance, legitimate reasons for doubting the validity of that
science). It seems to me that any book that makes such a nasty
accusation, and does so on the ground that "science deserves to
be heard" at that, should at least make some serious attempt to
prove that accusation. This has not been done.
Summary: This book is worth having if only to begin discussion
of an important topic. But buy it used (it's not worth the new
price) and don't treat it as the last word on anything.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Biased Liberal Science Is Nonsense
Comment: Promoting a liberal agenda is not what science should do. It should promote the truth and freedom, and free enterprise, and not bias. Too bad those slimy evil liberals hijack science for their own sick agenda, like one world government or anti capitalist. This book shows how they are ALL WRONG!
Customer Rating:
Summary: silence
Comment: I am a skeptical professional scientist looking for alternate views on how science should be conducted. This book is a joke, and a short one with big margins, that isn't funny. It may be valuable if you are considering writing a book and want to feel encouraged by how bad you can be and still get published. The authors get close to some significant worries about the misuse of science, but come nowhere near capturing our interest, preoccupied as they are with getting the 59 pages written. It took me an hour to read; it can't have taken them more than a weekend to write. We'd love to silence bad science, but would settle for silencing charlatans like these two.
Customer Rating:
Summary: silence
Comment: I am a skeptical professional scientist looking for alternate views on how science should be conducted. This book is a joke, and a short one with big margins, that isn't funny. It may be valuable if you are considering writing a book and want to feel encouraged by how bad you can be and still get published. The authors get close to some significant worries about the misuse of science, but come nowhere near capturing our interest, preoccupied as they are with getting the 59 pages written. It took me an hour to read; it can't have taken them more than a weekend to write. We'd love to silence bad science, but would settle for silencing charlatans like these two.
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