Abigail Salyers' Presentation on Science & Society

As part of our ongoing speaker series supported by the Ford Foundation's Division of Knowledge, Creativity & Freedom, I am pleased to announce that the subject of our next presentation is the ANTHRAX CRISIS (and policy issues it raised), which will be held this Friday, October 24, at 1:30 p.m. in the Peterson Conference Room (231 Gregory Hall). The distinguished speaker will be Professor Abigail Salyers, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and in the School of Medicine, UIUC. Professor Salyers was President of the American Society for Microbiology in 2001-2002. In 2002 she was the College of Medicine's Faculty Member of the Year and is currently a Center for Advanced Study Professor.

"Scientists and Society"
Abigail Salyers, Department of Microbiology and School of Medicine, UIUC

ABSTRACT The "two cultures" view of science and the humanities has been thoroughly discredited on the academic level, yet this view persists in the public view of science and scientists. A recent editorial in the Washington Post, in which biologists are portrayed by implication as independent souls who are not used to being accountable to societal (read governmental) controls, is yet another example of an underlying public uneasiness about the true motives of scientists. During the aftermath of the anthrax bioattack of 2001, when Professor Salyers was in the unpleasant position of talking to numerous reporters as the President of the American Society for Microbiology, the same undercurrent of suspicion on the part of the reporters was also evident. In her presentation, Salyers examines the strange dichotomy that has developed over the past century, in which a public that has benefited tremendously from the discoveries of scientists nonetheless distrusts them. She focuses on contemporary rather than historical examples of public ambivalence about science, and gives a scientist's view of what has happened and what can be done to solve the problem.