IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 10

more directly tied to the U.S. failure to have a single payer health
care system like that in most of
Europe, where longevity is greater
and infant mortality rarer.
James Inhofe might stand as a
proxy for all that Prothero loathes: a
Republican Christian fundamentalist
from a bible belt state, beholden to
the financial interests of the oil and
gas interests who form the backbone
of his financial contributors. Prothero speculates that science denial
on the part of fundamentalists and
evangelicals derives from an innate
"dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty, fear of death,
fear of change, less openness to new
experiences, less nuanced thinking..." At this point, his own thinking becomes speculative and, yes,
unscientific. Would a devout Christian conservative fear death more
than an agnostic or a non-believer?
And why does Prothero characterize science-denying conservatives as believers in "individualism,"
while describing science-accepting
liberals as "communitarians." The
former are described as "people
who value the individual over society ... believe we are responsible
for our own lot..." while, he says,
the latter emphasize "common
good over individual welfare."
Yet one is struck by the sense
of community in such conservative
faiths as the Mormons or the Amish.
Almost everyone has some sense
of community, be it a church, book
group, pool hall, or scientific society.
However, I am indebted to Prothero for pointing to a new (for me)
web site which would appear to
give voice to his enemy: the Conservapedia. A google search brings
it up in a trice. Finding their page
on global warming creates the feel-

the United States. There is a role
for science skeptics.
There are areas at the intersection of science/technology and
public policy that Prothero sweeps
under the rug. Prothero states quite
wrongly that only "a tiny subset" of
progressives are opposed to nuclear power and fracking. These are
contentious issues with credible scientific evidence on both sides.
Prothero has written 32 books
and there are signs of hasty work in
the present one, e.g., Thomas Kuhn,
who gained fame with his famous
Structure of Scientific Revolutions 50 years ago, did not invent
the term "scientific revolution." Prothero's simplistic observation that
"the longest life expectancies in the
United States are in New York City
because their laws make smoking
very rare and discourage many other
unhealthy habits" is not supported
by his source. Finally there is his
remark that "...liberals tend to dominate universities (except, perhaps
in some departments such as engineering or business where the thinking is highly structured and the field
is relatively unchanging)." As someone who has been around electrical
engineering departments for over
half a century I can say with complete confidence that a graduate of
1960 wouldn't recognize the program in her old school now. English
departments still teach their Shakespeare and Milton.

ing of being a stranger in a strange
land. For example:
"The global warming theory
is the liberal hoax [2] that the
world is becoming dangerously warmer due to the emission
of greenhouse gases, such as
carbon dioxide, methane, and
nitrous oxide. Liberals have
used the theory of man-made
global warming to seek rationing by government of life-saving energy production and
consumption.
T h e m o s t a c c u ra t e
data-from satellites-confirms that there has been
virtually no global warming since 1998" [3].
There a re histor ica l issues
that Prothero fails to address. In
much of the 20th century, a significant portion of the scientific community was wrong. From
1900-1940 the eugenics movement was popular both among
scientists, the general public, and
the U.S. Congress. There were
successful major efforts to sterilize the feeble minded. Distinguished scientists funded from
such august places as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution advanced the cause
of eugenics and racial pur ity;
potential immigrants from what
were seen as substandard populations in Europe (southern Europeans, Jews, Italians, Poles, and
Irish) were blocked by Congress
from entering the United States in
the 1920s. Scientifically trained
people including Alexander Graham Bell and Luther Burbank lent
their names to these causes -
a sorry chapter in the history of

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

Author Information
A. David Wunsch is Book Review
Editor of this magazine. He is Professor Emeritus in the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Dept., University of Massachusetts Lowell. His
email address is adwunsch@uml.
edu.

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june 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015