Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [120]
p. 5 According to the US Office of Technology Assessment, the average science professor trains around twenty PhD scientists: ‘Federally Funded Research’, US Office of Technology Assessment, p. 219, available at www.fas.org/ota/reports/9121.pdf
p. 5 ‘the postures we choose to be seen in’: P. Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (Methuen, 1969), p. 26.
p. 5 Feyerabend published a book called Against Method: P. Feyerabend, Against Method (New Left Books, 1975). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy contains some entertaining anecdotes about Feyerabend: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/feyerabend
p. 6 Feyerabend was soon declared the ‘worst enemy of science’: T. Theocharis and M. Psimopoulos, ‘Where Science Has Gone Wrong’, Nature, vol. 329, p. 595 (1987). This essay by two physicists was prompted by financial strictures placed on British science; the blame was laid at the feet of four philosophers of science.
p. 7 ‘nothing short of deliberate fraud’: R. Westfall, ‘Newton and the Fudge Factor, Science, vol. 179, p. 751 (1973).
p. 7 taunting his colleagues about his ‘secret knowledge’: Newton wrote many of his papers in a code that remained undeciphered until John Maynard Keynes worked out the cipher in the 1930s.
p. 9 The ensuing investigation eventually cleared the scientists involved: F. Pearce, ‘Climategate Inquiry: No Deceit, Too Little Cooperation’, New Scientist, 7 July 2010, available at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19143-climategate-inquiry-no-deceit-too-little-cooperation.html
p. 9 In February 2010, a poll commissioned by the BBC: ‘Climate scepticism “on the rise”, BBC poll shows’, BBC online news, 7 February 2010, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8500443.stm. A good source on the issues associated with climate polls is climatesock.com: see, for example, http://www.climatesock.com/2011/01/what-do-we-do-when-two-good-polls-say-opposite-things/
p. 9 ‘People now find it conceivable that scientists cheat and manipulate’: F. Pearce, ‘“Climategate” Was “a Game-Changer” in Science Reporting, Say Climatologists’, Guardian, 4 July 2010, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/04/climatechange-hacked-emails-muir-russell
p. 9 A study carried out in March: M. Schwartz, ‘Majority of Americans Continue to Believe that Global Warming Is Real’, available at http://woods.stanford.edu/research/majority-believe-global-warming.html
p. 9 This was confirmed in June: Cardiff University, ‘Public Perceptions of Climate Change and Energy Futures in Britain’, available at http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/home2/docs/UnderstandingRiskFinalReport.pdf; Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, ‘Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in June 2010’, available at http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/ClimateBeliefsJune2010(1).pdf; Stanford University’s ‘Global Warming Poll’ is available at http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/Global-Warming-Survey-Selected-Results-June2010.pdf
p. 9 February’s increase in climate scepticism had died away: J. Krosnick, ‘The Climate Majority’, New York Times, 8 June 2010. It’s worth noting that there was a great deal of controversy over Krosnick’s claims – see, for example, http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2010/06/reflections-on-jon-krosnicks-global.html
p. 10 ‘the expert and the god’: J. Bronowski, The Common Sense of Science, p. 142.
p. 10 we will ‘know the mind of God’: S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988), p. 193.
p. 13 ‘Nearly all scientific research leads nowhere …’: P. Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (Methuen, 1969), p. 31.
p. 14 ‘… there is nothing underneath our feet’: D. Sarewitz, Frontiers of Illusion (Temple University Press, 1996), p. 15.
CHAPTER 1
p. 15 ‘our main “discovery” was the Earth’: The quote comes from a letter that William Anders, the photographer, wrote to New Scientist: ‘Seeing the Earthrise’, New Scientist,