Episode 20: Climate scientist Michael Mann and vaccine researcher Peter Hotez discuss their book “Science Under Siege,” examining how plutocrats, petrostates, press, pros, and propagandists undermine scientific truth. They reveal how wealthy individuals fund anti-science campaigns, authoritarian regimes spread climate denial, and mainstream media enables false equivalency between facts and conspiracy theories.The conversation covers the deadly consequences of vaccine misinformation, the Serengeti strategy of targeting individual scientists, and why 200,000 Americans died needlessly from COVID. Mann and Hotez argue this assault on expertise threatens democracy itself, while offering solutions for scientists to become more visible public advocates for truth.

Purchase their book: Science Under Siege

About Professor Michael Mann

Dr. Michael Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He was selected by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002, was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Union in 2012. He made Bloomberg News‘ list of fifty most influential people in 2013. He has received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the AAAS, the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union and the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society.

About Professor Peter Hotez

Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc (hon) is a vaccine scientist, biochemist, and pediatrician who has led or co-led the development of vaccines for parasitic infections – hookworm, schistosomiasis, Chagas disease – currently in clinical trials, and several coronavirus vaccines, including two low-cost COVID vaccines for global health so far administered to 100 million children and adults in India and Indonesia. He currently serves as the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine & Professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. He is a vaccine advocate and science explainer who has authored several single-authored books with Johns Hopkins University Press, including Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, Preventing the Next Pandemic, and The Deadly Rise of Anti-science.