ABSTRACT

An editorial in the journal Nature warned climate scientists that they must acknowledge that, like it or not, they are in a street fight. Climate scientists have been the targets of a well-funded, orchestrated campaign to discredit them and their work. In this talk, I will raise the question of what scientists can do in the face of such tactics and what we, as citizens aiming to remain well-informed on matters of importance, can do.

SPEAKER PROFILE

Wayne Myrvold is a philosopher of science, whose work is chiefly concerned with the philosophy of physics, and, in particular with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. He has interest in confirmation theory (or perhaps, better, in the relation between theory and evidence), and has done work on this in a Bayesian context. He has a long-standing interest in the philosophy of biology which has yet to result in any published contributions to that field.

He has been a member of the Philosophy Department at Western since 1997. In AY 2004-2005, he spent half of a sabbatical year at the University of Oxford, and in AY 08-09 spent a fully year there as a visiting Departmental Lecturer in the Philosophy of Physics. In the Winter Term of 2011 he was visiting faculty in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an Affiliate Member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is a member of the Time and Universe research cluster. He is also Subject Editor for Quantum Mechanics for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is on the Editorial Board for Philosophy of Science

Read more about Wayne Myrvold.

VIDEO

This event is co-sponsored with the Department of Philosophy and the London Public Library.