Erik M. Conway

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Erik M. Conway (* 1965 ) is an American historian and non-fiction author whose field of work is the history of science . He is employed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , a research facility that is part of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Live and act

Conway doctorate at the University of Minnesota and was then at the Langley Research Center of NASA in Hampton (Virginia) employed. He later became a historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena .

His main research interests include the interactions between government policy, scientific research and technological change. Among other things, he conducted research on aerospace topics as well as atmospheric and climate research.

In 2010, together with the science historian Naomi Oreskes, he published the book Merchants of Doubt , which was translated into several languages ​​and was also published in German in 2014. The reviews of "Merchants of Doubt" were mostly "enthusiastic". The work is a "fascinating and important" study ( Philip Kitcher in Science ) and "a book that all ecologists and environmental scientists should read" ( David Lindenmayer in Austral Ecology ). It is now considered a standard work on organized climate change denial by industry lobbyists .

The book is about a group of American physicists who, on behalf of the George C. Marshall Institute , a conservative think tank with close ties to the Republican Party and business, consciously tried to question scientific knowledge in various areas of environmental research . Although initially normal researchers who had published regularly in specialist journals, since the 1970s they turned more and more in the direction of conservative interests and engaged in targeted lobbying during the Reagan administration and George HW Bush . They used the same tactics on a number of different issues. This included a very high media presence, the discrediting of researchers and their results, the targeted use of false information, measures to spread confusion and the doubting of the seriousness of scientific findings, even if they found great confirmation in science.

Fonts (selection)

  • Naomi Oreskes , Erik M. Conway: The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Columbia University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0231169547 .
    • German translation: From the end of the world: Chronicle of a heralded doom. Oekom, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-865-81747-1 .
  • Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-596-91610-4 .
    • German translation: The Machiavellis of Science. The network of denial. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-527-41211-2 .
  • Erik M. Conway: Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History (New Series in NASA History) . Johns Hopkins University Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-801-88984-4 .
  • Erik M. Conway: High-Speed ​​Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945-1999 (New Series in NASA History) . Johns Hopkins University Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-801-89081-9 .
  • Erik M. Conway, Blind Landings: Low-Visibility Operations in American Aviation, 1918-1958 . Johns Hopkins University Press 2006, ISBN 978-0-801-88449-8 .
  • Michael S. Reidy, Gary Kroll, Erik M. Conway: Exploration and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Science and Society) . ABC-CLIO 2006, ISBN 978-1-576-07985-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Christian Rohr , The Machiavellis of Science. The network of denial. In: Physics in our time 46, Issue 2, 2015, p. 100, doi : 10.1002 / piuz.201590021 .
  2. ^ Philip Kitcher , The Climate Change Debates . In: Science 328, No. 5983, 2010, 1230-1243, doi : 10.1126 / science.1189312 .
  3. ↑ David Lindenmayer ; Book Review Merchants of Doubt. How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming . In: Austral Ecology 37, 2012, 15, doi : 10.1111 / j.1442-9993.2012.02367.x .
  4. ^ Klaus-Dieter Müller : Science in the digital revolution. Climate communication 21.0 . Wiesbaden 2013, p. 46.
personal data
SURNAME Conway, Erik M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH 1965