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Undisciplined: When Ideology Trumps Science

Political scientists Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have written that the United States is experiencing a political era in which facts are fluid and the truth is subjective, and that the consequences of ideology trumping science can be devastating. And they wrote that back in 2017. This week we’ll talk to them about how their fears have shifted in the past four years.

Erika Allen Wolters is the associate director of the bachelor’s of science and public policy program at Oregon State University, where she studies, among other things, the intersection of science and policy.

Brent Steel is the director of the public policy graduate program at Oregon State University, where his research interests also include public policy and science.

Their book, "When Ideology Trumps Science: Why We Question the Experts on Everything from Climate Change to Vaccinations," is available wherever you buy your books.

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling Lifespan with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning Longevity Plan with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, Superlative, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.