Faith in Fallacy A Century of State-Sanctioned Science Denial

About this book

Today, when global warming denial and vaccination denial are alarmingly prevalent, it is crucial to understand that throughout history, science denial at the state level has cost scores of millions of lives.

In the Soviet Union under Stalin, Lysenko's denial of genetics led to disastrous agricultural policies, resulting in the persecution and execution of dissenting scientists and widespread famine. A similar tragedy unfolded in Mao's China, where the wholesale adoption of Lysenkoism contributed to a famine that claimed an estimated 45 million lives. In Germany starting in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler made state policy of Nazi eugenics, a twisted theory which held that some races are superior to others. This led first to the murder of disabled persons, including children, and then to the smoking chimneys of the Holocaust. President Mbeki of South Africa conducted his own internet research and rejected a virtually unanimous scientific consensus to conclude that HIV does not cause AIDS and that folk remedies are preferable to anti-retroviral drugs, costing an estimated 330,000 deaths.

In this century, in Brazil and the United States, Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump rejected medical advice to downplay the danger of the COVID-19 virus and discourage protective measures, causing many unnecessary deaths. The two of them and today's Republican party reject the consensus among scientists that manmade global warming is true, thus choosing to deny and ignore the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. Doomsday has not yet arrived, but we can see it from here and time is running out.

Contents

Chapter 1. Humanity's Debt to Science
Chapter 2. Lysenko and the Origins of Soviet Pseudoscience
Chapter 3. Refashioning Heredity
Chapter 4. Pseudoscience Defeats Science
Chapter 5. Rise and Fall
Chapter 6. Big Brother, Little Brother
Chapter 7. Jewish Physics
Chapter 8. House of Shutters
Chapter 9. AIDS
Chapter 10. A Predictable Emergency
Chapter 11. Protective Measures
Chapter 12. Politicization of COVID-19 Denial
Chapter 13. Global Warming: The Ultimate Triumph of Science Denial?
Chapter 14. Roadmap to Doomsday
Acknowledgements
References

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Biography

James Lawrence Powell has been a college professor and president, a museum director at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, a twelve-year member of the U.S. National Science Board, and the author of several books explaining science to general reader. His most recent book is Unlocking the Moon's Secrets: From Galileo to Giant Impact (2023), from OUP. He holds a bachelor's degree from Berea College in Kentucky, a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Berea College and Oberlin College. Asteroid 9739 Powell is named for him. He has recently retired as Executive Director of Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity.