Author: Ziauddin Sardar
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Why do the popular perceptions of science and scientists differ so radically from the scientists’ own self-image as brilliant pioneers deserving of admiration, funding and blind trust?
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The by-products of science, such as nuclear waste and chemical pollution, are destroying ecosystems on local, regional and global scales. So, science brings us benefits as well as costs.
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In the United States in the late 1940s, teenage boys were fed radioactive breakfast cereal, middle-aged mothers were injected with radioactive plutonium and prisoners had their testicles irradiated – all in the name of science, progress and national security.
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The inspiration came from the founder of Social Darwinism, Francis Galton (1822–1911), who had proposed such a photo archive for the British population.
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What scientists actually do has been extensively dissected by historians of science, examined by sociologists and anthropologists of science, analysed by philosophers of science, and scrutinized by feminist and non-Western scholars.