Science, Nonscience, and Nonsense: Approaching Environmental Literacy - Softcover

Zimmerman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801857740 ISBN 13: 9780801857744

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 1997

Synopsis

As the role of science and technology in everyday life grows more pervasive and complex, it has become ever more difficult for a scientifically "illiterate" public to make informed judgements. In this text, Michael Zimmerman takes on a wide range of falsifiers, disinformation specialists, and charlatans to provide readers with the scientific background necessary to evaluate environmental and other current issues that increasingly may be a matter of life and death. Zimmerman begins by showing just what science is - and how the criteria of skepticism and falsifiability distinguish it from pseudo-science and mysticism. He offers analyses of bad science - from lottery "systems" and creationism to graphologists and homeopaths, from food and product safety scams to outright scientific fraud. In each case he shows exactly what to watch for - how the most outrageously false claims often contain a grain of truth, and how valid scientific findings may be distorted or selectively quoted to serve the ends of government, business, or special interest groups.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Zimmerman is dean of the College of Letters and Science and professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801857740
• ISBN 13: 9780801857744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220