Unforgettable congressional hearings in 1978 revealed that fallout from American nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s had overexposed hundreds of soldiers and other citizens to radiation. Faith in governmental integrity was shaken, and many people have assumed that such overexposure caused great damage. Yet important questions remain--the most controversial being: did the radiation overexposure in fact cause the cancers and birth defects for which it has been blamed? Elements of Controversy is the result of a decade of exhaustive research in AEC documentary records and the full clinical and epidemiological literature on radiation effects. More concerned with uncovering the historical story than with assigning blame, Barton Hacker concludes that every precaution was taken by the AEC to avoid harming test participants or bystanders. And, he points out, the biomedical literature suggests that these precautions worked. Yet top officials in Washington--for whom the success of nuclear weapons was of overriding importance--had asserted that testing involved no risks at all. Discrepancies between unverifiable government claims and the revelations that some actual risk was present explain the origins and angry persistence of the controversies, Hacker argues. The Department of Energy delayed publication of Hacker's study for five years, and while his controversial book is sure to draw objections from both sides of the radiation-hazard debates, it will provide a much-needed guide to understanding their polemics. Unforgettable congressional hearings in 1978 revealed that fallout from American nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s had overexposed hundreds of soldiers and other citizens to radiation. Faith in governmental integrity was shaken, and many people have assumed that such overexposure caused great damage. Yet important questions remain--the most controversial being: did the radiation overexposure in fact cause the cancers and birth defects for which it has been blamed? Elements of Controversy is the result of a decade of exhaustive research in AEC documentary records and the full clinical and epidemiological literature on radiation effects. More concerned with uncovering the historical story than with assigning blame, Barton Hacker concludes that every precaution was taken by the AEC to avoid harming test participants or bystanders. And, he points out, the biomedical literature suggests that these precautions worked. Yet top officials in Washington--for whom the success of nuclear weapons was of overriding importance--had asserted that testing involved no risks at all. Discrepancies between unverifiable government claims and the revelations that some actual risk was present explain the origins and angry persistence of the controversies, Hacker argues. The Department of Energy delayed publication of Hacker's study for five years, and while his controversial book is sure to draw objections from both sides of the radiation-hazard debates, it will provide a much-needed guide to understanding their polemics.

Explores how we justify our beliefs - and try to influence those of others - both soundly and effectively.

Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.

Controversies may be particularly prominent in one or another culture. Yet, there is hardly any culture where they do not exist. This book assumes that the practice of controversy, along with its theorization, constitutes – in each of the cultures and disciplines where it develops – a tradition. Whether there are enough shared elements in these traditions to consider them as, fundamentally, universal or not is something that can only be determined on the basis of a rich sample of controversies and theorizations thereof belonging to different traditions. This is what this volume provides to the reader. By presenting side by side controversies from the East and from the West, from the ancient past up to the present, from different domains of scholarship and action, the reader is in a position not only to admire the widespread nature, role, and richness of the phenomenon, but also to begin to evaluate its variety as well as universality. While the editors have purposefully avoided comparative studies of traditions of controversy, in order to focus on each tradition so to speak from its practitioners' point of view, some of the chapters take a bird's eye view and exemplify how such studies can be systematically conducted. In a world that is globalizing itself at a fast pace, the awareness of the multiplicity of traditions of controversy is fundamental for ensuring both that the integration of the various perspectives is harmonious and that each one of them is granted its place in a plural universe.

Assembling an unprecedented range of considered responses to the noted contributions to philosophy made by Marcelo Dascal, this collection comprises the work of his many friends, colleagues and former students. Beginning with a series of articles on Dascal’s influential insights on philosophical controversy, this volume continues with explorations of Dascal’s celebrated scholarship on Liebnitz, before moving on to papers dealing with his philosophy of language, including interpretations by Dresner and Herring on the phenomenon of emoticons. Taken as a whole, they provide a compelling commentary on Dascal’s prolific and voluminous publications and include fresh perspectives on the theory of argumentation and the ethics of communication. The material collected here extends to political philosophy, such as Morris-Reich's paper exploring the ways in which German social scientists confront issues of antisemitism, the psychology of genius, and the origins of norms in society and culture. Much of the analysis is directly connected to, or influenced by, the philosophical themes, ideas and concepts developed throughout the years by Marcelo Dascal, while others have a looser connection to his work. All of them, however, attest to the remarkable and multifaceted philosophical persona of Marcelo Dascal, who is the guiding light of the rich conceptual dialogue running through this book. ​ ​

The notion of controversy space is the key element of the new model of scientific and philosophical change introduced in this book. Devised as an alternative to classical models, the model of Controversy Spaces is a heuristic tool for the reconstruction of processes of conceptual change in the history of science and philosophy. The first chapter of this volume outlines in its initial section the historical trajectory of the dialectical, adversarial approach to the progress of knowledge, from its ancient flourishing and its almost complete oblivion in modernity up to its contemporary revival. Then the main features that characterize the structure and dynamics of controversy spaces are identified and examined. In the rest of the book the reader will find a detailed, fascinating series of case studies that apply the CS model in a variety of scientific areas, ranging from physics to linguistics, as well as the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of historiography.

The story of the false entries, good-faith errors, retractions, and mistakes that occurred during the formation of the Periodic Table of Elements as we know it.