Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt
When:
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2024 7:00p -
9:00p
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2024 7:00p -
9:00p
Where:
Museum of Science, Boston
1 Science Park
Boston, MA 02114
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Date Idea, Good for Groups, Lectures & Conferences, Social Good
Event website:
https://www.mos.org/explore/subspace/rescuing-science
Award-winning science communicator and theoretical cosmologist, Paul M. Sutter returns to the Museum to celebrate his newest release!
Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt is the product of Sutter's long career in the scientific community, both inside and outside academia. Interweaving his own experiences as an astrophysicist with broader trends observed by himself and others, Sutter roots the current distrust of science within the academic science community itself. Throughout this book, Sutter reveals a community that has come to disregard the broader public, is obsessed with winning grants, ignores political landmines, limits the entrance of minorities, and permits fraud in the pursuit of notoriety.
Sutter tackles these and other issues through the lens of a vicious cycle, where public mistrust and misunderstanding of science leads to fewer funding opportunities, which leads to more competition within science, which leads to a rise in fraud, which circles back to greater mistrust. Each chapter addresses one of the vices the academic science community has allowed to perpetuate, the sum of which he likes to an illness of the soul of science. He also explores the historical context of each issue in order to identify its root causes. Sutter concludes each chapter by providing actionable solutions for both the nonscientific and scientific communities, as well as what he regards as an ideal and healthy scientific approach, which will lead to a greater public trust.
This program is free, thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute.
