Bold Scientists: unspun science for dangerous times
Bold Scientists: Dispatches from the Battle for Honest Science
“A gripping tale of heroic scientists working in the public interest despite powerful opposition. At once, both tremendously hopeful and profoundly disturbing.” - Thomas Duck, Associate Professor, Physics & Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie
Scientists who defy the status quo and ask hard questions are under siege by Harper Inc, and similar regimes elsewhere in the west. The stakes couldn’t be higher – the battle for honest science and real democracy can only deepen. As global elites accelerate their plunder of a dwindling earth, and the rest of us get hungrier and more desperate, the struggle for justice and freedom is bound to escalate. It is waged on many fronts, in boardrooms and corridors of power, streets and squares, on the internet and social media, and ultimately in our heads.
Science and technology are elemental to all of this – the gobbling, the battle, and our heads. Questions need to be asked, urgently. Hard questions: the heart of this book.
Deep, wide thinkers in several countries. Among them:
an Indigenous biologist who integrates conventional science with traditional knowledge and a trickster’s wit an engineering professor, formerly consultant to the oil/gas industry, who now exposes the myths and dangers of fracking a natural scientist who counters the dominant science-as-conquest paradigm with a Goethean practice of science-as-dialogue a sociologist who investigates the lure and threat of ever-expanding mass surveillance a radical psychologist who tackles psychiatry’s dangerous power to control dissent a young marine biologist who risks her career to defend science and democracy
Michael Riordon is a Canadian writer and documentary-maker for almost four decades. A primary goal of his work is to recover voices of people who have been silenced in the mainstream, written out of the official version. His focus embraces queer folk across Canada, First Nations youth, Mozambican farmers, inmates in Canadian prisons, traditional healers in Fiji, and Guatemalan labour activists.
His previous book, Our Way to Fight, explores the lives and work of people fighting for justice and freedom in Palestine-Israel.
Each of these voices adds an essential fragment to the evolving human story, our collective work-in-progress. Together they challenge the noisy monotone of the official version, and celebrate the riotous diversity of life.Michael also leads courses, workshops and seminars for community organizations, trade unions, schools, colleges and universities.
Books available for purchase at the event and signing.
Event details: - Doors open at 6:50 pm; - Free admission; - Accessible on demand via portable ramp; washrooms not accessible; - Please avoid using strong-scented products due to sensitivities.
Tasty refreshments will be served (non-alcoholic) with Zatoun olive oil and za’atar dip.
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