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+--- Thread: *Science is apolitical* - A propaganda product of the Cold War? (/thread-6591.html)
*Science is apolitical* - A propaganda product of the Cold War? - C C - Jan 3, 2019
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4114
Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science, Audra J. Wolfe, Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2018, $29.95 Buy at Amazon
EXCERPT (review): . . . But, as Wolfe explains in the text that precedes that observation, the notion that science is free from politics has the most political of origin stories. US intelligence organizations crafted that message as part of anti-Communist propaganda campaigns both at home and abroad. In other words, March for Science organizers who insisted that it was possible for science to be apolitical were in fact making themselves spokespeople for old propaganda.
Is the propaganda wrong? [...]
"Freedom’s Laboratory" is at turns unsurprising and terribly shocking. While it is hardly news that [...] US government entities believed in the importance of cultural propaganda during the Cold War, what caught me off guard was the sheer number of scientists whom I recognized and what they were up to. For example, I knew that James Webb [...] was a homophobe who went to great lengths to ensure that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people were excluded from NASA employment. But I was unaware of his [...] role in Cold War politicking as a leading advocate [...] of psychological warfare. [...]
Wolfe highlights an interesting contrast between Soviet scientists, who were disproportionately active in human rights organizing relative to their countrymen, and US scientists, who arrived at human rights work relatively late in the game. In both cases, most scientists went along with their governments, but it was Soviet scientists and not Americans who were more likely to use their scientific training to question what their government was feeding them and demanding of them. I wish the book had spent more time on those Soviet–US contrasts because of their relevance to current conversations about how a sense of political urgency arises—or doesn’t—in scientists....
MORE: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4114
RE: *Science is apolitical* - A propaganda product of the Cold War? - Syne - Jan 3, 2019
(Jan 3, 2019 08:00 PM)C C Wrote: In both cases, most scientists went along with their governments, but it was Soviet scientists and not Americans who were more likely to use their scientific training to question what their government was feeding them and demanding of them.
Considering the 100 million deaths due to Soviet communism, there was a much large impetus for them to question their government. It's not a surprise.