About this item
"Climate change is a hoax--and so is coronavirus." "Vaccines are bad for you." These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. They are not merely uninformed--they are misinformed. They cite cherry-picked evidence, rely on fake experts, and believe conspiracy theories. How can we convince such people otherwise? How can we get them to change their minds and accept the facts when they don't believe in facts? In this book, Lee McIntyre shows that anyone can fight back against science deniers, and argues that it's important to do so. Science denial can kill.Drawing on his own experience--including a visit to a Flat Earth convention--as well as academic research, McIntyre outlines the common themes of science denialism, present in misinformation campaigns ranging from tobacco companies' denial in the 1950s that smoking causes lung cancer to today's anti-vaxxers.
About the Author
Lee McIntyre is a philosopher from the Boston area who writes fiction and nonfiction aimed at the general public. Though trained as a scholar, his writing seeks to engage a wide audience in philosophical topics that are relevant to current events. He has also edited several anthologies for philosophy teachers and scholars.His most recent book is The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019) . He is also the author of Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018) , Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (Routledge, 2015) , Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006) , and Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences (Westview, 1996) . McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and has taught previously at Colgate, Tufts, Simmons, and Boston University. A black belt martial artist, he lives with two German Shepherds and the rest of his family just outside Boston.
