Why science writers should forget Carl Sagan and read Thomas Kuhn: On the troubled conscience of a journalist

The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine: Writing Recent Science

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 15-30

  Davidson, Keay ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 80052765914     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203323885     Document Type: Chapter

References (19)

1. Stephen G. Brush, "Should the History of Science Be Rated X"? Science 183 (1974): 1164-1172.
2. Jacques Loeb, "Sensational Newspaper Reports as to Physiological Action of Common Salt," Nature 60 (February 14, 1901): 372.
3. A medical writer, Rorvik wrote a book, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man (New York: Pocket Books, 1978), which claimed that scientists had cloned the first human with funding from a millionaire.
4. For details, see William J. Broad, "Court Affirms: Boy Clone Saga Is a Hoax," Science 213 (July 3, 1981): 118-119; and
5. Broad, "Publisher Settles Suit, Says Clone Book Is a Fake," Science 216 (April 23, 1982): 391.
6. The "Sokal hoax" refers to the publication of physicist Alan Sokal's infamous essay "Transgressing Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"-a sophisticated mockery filled with spurious references to postmodernist theory-in the journal Social Text 46/47, vol. 14 (Spring/Summer 1996): 217-252
7. and his own disclosure of the episode in Lingua Franca (Alan Sokal, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," Lingua Franca [May/June 1996]: 62-64) that same year.
8. Dudley Shapere, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 383-394;
9. Israel Scheffler, Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967).
10. Keay Davidson, "No Easy Link Between Genes, Behavior," San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2001, sec. A, p. 3.
11. For reviews, see David A. Hollinger, "Star Power," New York Times Book Review, (November 28, 1999): 15;
12. David H. DeVorkin, "Carl Sagan: A Life," Physics Today 53, no. 9 (September 2000): 64;
13. and "Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan: Biographies Echo an Extraordinary Life," American Scientist 88, no. 1 (January-February 2000): 74.
14. Keay Davidson, "Saving the Universe by Restricting Research; Astrophysicist says Technology has Potential to Annihilate," San Francisco Chronicle, April 14, 2003, sec. A, p. 6;
15. Martin Rees, Our Final Hour (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
16. Lewis Elton, "Einstein, General Relativity, and the German Press, 1919-1920," Isis 77 (1986): 95-103;
17. Alistair Sponsel, "Constructing a 'Revolution in Science': The Campaign to Promote a Favourable Reception for the 1919 Solar Eclipse Experiments," British Journal for the History of Science 35, no. 4 (2003): 439-467.
18. Marshall Missner, "Why Einstein Became Famous in America," Social Studies of Science 15 (1985): 267-291.
19. Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, "Science, Nature and Control: Interpreting Mechanics' Institutes," Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 31-74.