They claim that the spread of these and other untestable belief systems in society may destabilize science by skewing science education and diminishing public support for experimental research.
"There is a widespread, powerful, corrosive hostility toward science," declares Paul R. Gross, University Professor of Life Sciences and director of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia. "It's really toward scientists, by the way, but the confusion is universally made between scientists as persons and the body of knowledge that survives called science."
Postmodernist members of those disciplines engaged in science studies--sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, for example--counter that their critiques are, for the most part, friendly efforts to understand and not to undermine science and scientists. And some alternative medicine proponents say they welcome the role science plays in evaluating therapies.
Last month in New York, about 200 scientists and scholars concerned about the perceived growth in anti-science ...
