Category - No 6

Abortion Controversy: Is A Fetus A Person?

This battle of the experts obscures a critical point. Whether a fetus is or is not a person is a moral and not a scientific question. Determining whether a fetus is a person is not like determining whether a newly-discovered plant is edible or inedible. It is instead like determining whether it is morally acceptable...

Star Wars: Mirrors of Reality

The Star Wars series may be one of the last visual indulgences of this style of thinking. For we, as a society, are being confronted with our limitations. We feel the pinch of depleting resources and the occurrence of events like Three Mile Island and Love Canal have made some people realize that since we will be on...

Re-Examining the Anthropological Records: Old Bones Shatter Hunter Myths

Political from inception, concepts of “man the hunter” and “the killer ape” are no less political in conclusion and application. They are also dishonest, speculative and often untrue. But even if “man” (never “woman”) were a hunting animal during the dawning years of our lineage, even if this hunting lifestyle had...

Beyond the Margin of Error: The Bias of Science

Overall, Brian Martin's book provides a valuable tool for demonstrating how scientific work is tied up in social and political forces. The book should be of particular value in academic courses which deal with the nature of the scientific process and I hope it will serve as a model for analyses of topics such as...

Women Fight Back: The Politics of Female Genital Mutilation

It is intolerable that AID, whose programs are financed by tax dollars, has continued to ignore the wishes expressed by African and Middle Eastern Health Departments, and that they have refused to collaborate in international actions sponsored by WHO and UNICEF. The unwillingness of AID and other national and...

Black Hills Gathering: People Unite for Survival

This essay is reproduced here as it appeared in the print edition of the original Science for the People magazine. These web-formatted archives are preserved complete with typographical errors and available for reference and educational and activist use. Scanned PDFs of the back issues can be browsed by headline at...