Fool Me Twice

My review of Shawn Otto's new book, Fool Me Twice
Fighting the Assault on Science in America
, is up over at the relatively new sustainability-oriented blog/resource site, Planet 3.0. Here's how I start:

Shawn Otto is a big name in the campaign to restore science to its rightful place as a major player in the public sphere. He spearheaded the first "Science Debate" effort in 2008 to get the presidential candidates to address scientific issues, and has been working, tirelessly but not entirely successfully, it would seem, since then to keep the home fires burning. The frustration that comes with failure -- the best the group could do back then was elicit written responses to a list of science-oriented questions from Barack Obama and John McCain -- evidently got him thinking about why Americans care so little about science. Fool Me Twice is the result.

Like the books that preceded this one (Chris Mooney's The Republic War on Science, Al Gore's Assault on Reason, Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's Unscientific America and Randy Olson's Don't be such a scientist!), it's long on description and short on prescription. The subtitle, Fighting the Assault on Science in America, implies the latter...

Whole review here.

More like this

Top “Ten” Recent Books (focusing on 2012 but including the last few years) on Climate, Science denialism, Energy, and Science Policy are (including one Post Warming novel) are: Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us by Maggie Koerth-Baker Climate Change Denial…
The term “War on Science” comes from multiple sources, one being Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” (see below) and another, the made up “War on Christmas,” a term attributed to Bill O’Really. Throw in a little “Culture War” rhetoric and I think we have a good basis for the origin…
Don't be SUCH a scientist by Randy Olson 195 pages, Island Press In my review last year of Randy Olson's 2008 film, Sizzle, I wrote that I wanted to like it. I'm exactly the kind of viewer who will eat up anything a marine biologist has to say about communicating science and climate change. But…
In 2008, I was visiting the Nobel Conference held annually at Gustavus Adolphus college in Minnestoa. The conference was on Human Evolution. The college provided space in a large room for people to have their lunch, and while I was having lunch on the first day, I noticed a table off to the side…