IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 8

Book Reviews
A. David Wunsch

Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future
By Donald R. Prothero. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2013, 369 pages

lobal warming is the
second largest hoax
"
ever played on the
American people."
T hu s s p o ke t he
chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public
Works - his elevation to the top
made possible by the Republican
Party victory in the 2014 U.S. general election. The biggest hoax,
in case you are interested, is the
American belief that the Constitution decrees the separation of
church and state. Inhofe asserts
there is no separation: America is a
Christian nation.
To educate us, the chair has
authored the treatise The Greatest
Hoax: How the Global Warming
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,
which explains how a cabal of lefties, government hacks, and selfserving scientists has conspired to
raise taxes, reduce freedom and
extend the reach of government
under the cover of phony claims
about global warming. Inhofe's scientific credentials are a bachelor's
degree in economics.
Denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting a belief in
man-made (anthropogenic) climate
change is just one bête noir for Prothero, a retired professor of geology.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2425571
Date of publication: 19 June 2015

He recalls for us those politicians
of the Bush-Reagan era, chemical
energy executives and electric power
moguls, who worked to deny that
the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain,
and DDT, were anything to worry
about. In the fullness of time, science had its way, as will most likely
be the case with climate change.
The open question is when this will
occur - will it be soon enough to
prevent disaster. At present, about
80% of the American public believes
that climate change is real - an
impression you would not gain from
American right-wing radio.
When Prothero casts his eye
on science denial in medicine, he
applies an apt phrase, "health care
by anecdote," using it for parents
who refuse to allow their children to
be inoculated against such diseases as mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) because of the mistaken
belief that such vaccinations can
lead to the child's developing autism.
This canard started when a British
doctor, Andrew Wakefield, published
a paper in a medical journal proclaiming a causal link between MMR
vaccinations and autism. His results
failed to be confirmed by his peers
and it was soon discovered that he
had a financial interest in undermining the existing vaccine. Although
his professional reputation is now
nil, his thinking has followers in the
United States where adherents not
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only place their own children at risk
but also jeopardize newborns and
children too young to be vaccinated
who are exposed to the offspring of
the so called "anti-Vaxxers."
Surveying quack medical beliefs,
Prothero quickly dispatches homeopathy but he moves on to the
appalling case of the denial of the
link between AIDS infection and
the HIV virus. The Prime Minister of
South Africa in the period 1999 to
2008, Thabo Mbeki, claimed that
poverty, not HIV was the cause of
AIDS. That Mbeki was so successful in preventing the spread of safe
sex practices, as well as application
of the drugs used to treat AIDS,
originates in part from his ruling
a country that was mistrustful of
western medical practices. Gradually, western medicine penetrated
and helped bring down Mbeki.
The strangest aspect to the South
African story is that Mbeki received
support from a respected professor
of biology. This was Peter Duesberg
of U.C. Berkeley who had published
papers asserting that the HIV virus
is harmless and that AIDS had other
causes like recreational drug use.
Subsequently, this was discredited
by his scientific peers and Berkeley
even considered investigating him on
charges of scientific misconduct. The
evidence now in favor of the HIV-
AIDS link and the treatment based
on this nexus are now so established
∕

june 2015

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