Concern has recently arisen over the quality of American education and our declining scientific and research orientation. Debates are emerging about what direction public universities should be taking as we head into the twenty-first century. Why and to what extent should society know about science? This book will help readers come to an informed understanding about the place of science and technology in today's world.

Although many pundits attempt to draw a clear line separating the endeavors of science from those of "pseudoscience," Henry H. Bauer's Science or Pseudoscience, now in paperback, reveals that the distinction is both equivocal and misleading. Setting aside science's snowy mantle of truth, pseudoscience--or anomalistics--is presented not as the opposite of science, but as something that develops parallel to it. Using examples including polywater, ball lightning, and cold fusion, Bauer explores the diffuse and porous borders between orthodoxy and scientific heresy. Reminding us that geniuses are...

Thanks to enormous funding for educational programs, the whole world "knows" that HIV causes AIDS. But is what we know compatible with the facts? This book challenges the conventional wisdom on this issue. Collating and analyzing, for the first time, the results of more than two decades of HIV testing, it reveals that the common assumptions about HIV and AIDS are incompatible with the published data. Among the many topics explored are the failings of HIV testing, statistical evidence that HIV is neither sexually transmitted nor increasingly prevalent, and problems caused by the differing...

Description:
Like UFOs, Big Foot, and the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness monster continues to fascinate us by the persistence of its mystery. While many authors have focused upon the search for Nessie, Bauer is the first to present a detailed and balanced look at the history of the controversy surrounding this search.

Bauer is much more concerned with examining the sociological, psychological, and philosophical aspects of the Loch Ness controversy than with proving or disproving Nessies existence. He shows that the Nessie phenomenon has much to tell us about how we acquire our beliefs,...

Description:
In this lighthearted yet serious look at the trials and tribulations of an academic dean, Josef Martin recounts stories that may astonish many members of the academic community but will sound hauntingly familiar to other deans. He describes the deans role in such matters as tenure decisions, budgeting, affirmative action, and coping with ""unreasonable demands"" of faculty members, department chairs, vice presidents, parents, and students. His characterizations of typical faculty members will delight academics--except, perhaps, when they read about...

 This book discusses the ways in which science, the touchstone of reliable knowledge in modern society, changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century, becoming less trustworthy through conflicts of interest and excessive competitiveness. Fraud became common enough that organized efforts to combat it now include a federal Office of Research Integrity. Competent minority opinions are sometimes thereby suppressed, with the result that policy makers, the media and the public are presented with biased or incomplete information. Evidence tending to challenge established...