THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN SCIENCE

"I highly recommend this book and consideration of what I take to be its main message: science could have worked wonders if properly used (and if a bit of military budgets were spent on something useful) and perhaps it still can." —World Beyond War "American political and intellectual culture today, including scientific culture, is in a state of decay. The denial of human-caused climate change, the destruction of scientific records by the government, the attack on public education, and most recently, the Center for Disease Control's banishing words such as “scientific-based” and “evidence-based” are significant indications of this. The policies of the masters of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex are ruinous. We can fight back by discrediting their junk ideas and magical thinking. Cliff Conner's book helps immensely in this effort." —Michael Steven Smith, Co-host, Law And Disorder Radio "Clifford Conner's remarkable study does so much more than simply ask and answer how American science has become weaponized over the past century. The Tragedy of American Science is a thorough and vividly engaging account—a history of science that draws deeply on social and geopolitical analysis, and with excellently crafted case studies. It is a call to rethink the myths of American exceptionalism that, under the guise of scientific altruism and U.S. foreign policy, have cultivated a science-for-profit system. Despite its unflinching disdain for the corporatization of research, policy, and practice, Conner's story is not a pessimistic one. Instead, with keen insight, wit, and an empathetic eye on the future, Conner helps rescue the promise of science from the tragedy it has become." —Jacob Blanc, author of Before the Flood: the Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil