Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy

FEATURING MICHAEL J. THOMPSON – There is a tremendous irony in President Donald Trump’s use of his Twitter account to deny the science of global warming. The very means that he uses to communicate with millions of Americans is possible because of the same sort of reasoning through which climate scientists have declared a global emergency.

We are deeply dependent on the technologies ushered in by great scientific advances and yet our societies are succumbing to inherently irrational and anti-science positions – from climate denialism and a skepticism of vaccines, to a dismissive attitude towards scientists and science-based decisions in general.

Michael J. Thompson, professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at William Paterson University, founding editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, and the author of four books and editor of eight books. He has edited the new book Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society.

**This segment was originally broadcast on January 8, 2019.