Bold Scientists: Dispatches from the Battle for Honest Science

by Michael Riordon

As governments and corporations scramble to pull the plug on research that proves that they are poisoning our planet and rush to muzzle the scientists who dare to share their disturbing data, it seems the powerful have declared a war on science.

Michael Riordon asks deep questions of bold scientists who defy the status quo including: an Indigenous biologist who integrates traditional knowledge and a trickster’s wit; an engineering professor who exposes the myths and dangers of fracking; a forensic geneticist who traces children stolen by the military in El Salvador; a sociologist who investigates the lure and threat of mass surveillance; a radical psychologist who confronts psychiatry’s dangerous power; and a young marine biologist who risks her career to defend science and democracy.

Who controls science and at what cost to the earth and its inhabitants? Can we change? This is unspun science for dangerous times.

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

Reviews

[Marina]

Informative for someone like me, who only had a base-level knowledge of climate change and its causes, but I found it hard to wade through in places; could've benefited from some better editing for structure and flow. Also, the chapter about mental health and psychology didn't seem particularly science/evidence-based at all. It just seemed like someone who'd had some bad personal experiences with the psych field talking with someone else who'd also had some bad experiences with the psych field — all well and good, but it was being billed and sold as 'real/honest science'.