Science on the Verge

Content

Science on the verge, written by Alice Benessia, Silvio Funtowicz, Mario Giampietro, Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Jerome Ravetz, Andrea Saltelli, Roger Strand, and Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, with a preface by Dan Sarewitz, follows different threads of the present science's crisis (lost reproducibility, collapsing peer review, perverse metrics, evidence based policy's dysfunctions, techno-science and his hubris, science as metaphysics ...) and presents a first systematic analysis of the main causes of the present predicaments.

Reviews

From Joseph A. Tainter, Professor of Sustainability, Utah State University, "Scientists working in the policy arena are often naïve about the impact of their findings. Producing rational results, scientists expect their research to be rationally accepted. The fundamental problem is that humans are not rational. We are emotional thinkers. Science on the Verge exposes many of the fallacies in science applied to societal problems. No matter how good the science, public issues are always ideological and political."

From Judith Curry, climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology writing on her blog "This book is a very rich resource for grappling with the problems with science in the 21st century – the articles themselves, as well as the extensive references. I expect to be using this book as a resource for a number future blog posts. This book deserves a wide audience, and I hope this blog post will help increase its reach."

A post on the book can be found at blog of the International Social Science Council in Paris. See also this article on The Guardian.