Peter Hotez & Eric Topol - Discuss “Science Under Siege” book
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So I am just absolutely thrilled to have my friend and colleague, Dr. Peter Hotez with me today. He has a book with Michael Mann, which is extraordinary, Science Under Siege. The timing is beyond belief. And we're going to get into that book. I think it's exceptionally important given where we are right now. I'm going to just talk a little bit while we get people joining because lots of people are joining this. It's such an important discussion. Peter and Michael described an anti-science superstorm. with the three things coming together, the climate crisis, the pandemic, and the anti-science, which is just getting stronger and stronger, and it isn't being helped at all by the world of AI, leading to, as what they say, a potential for infinite disinformation.
So now that we're getting some folks on board, Peter, Why don't you tell us a bit about your sense of the anti-science superstorm and what motivated you and Michael to put this book together, which is obviously a prescient piece of work.
Well, first of all, Eric, thank you. Thanks for having me on. And thank you for all your support over the years. Many people don't realize this, but we've been doing a weekly Zoom together with good colleagues like Mike Osterholm and Peggy Hamburg and Penny Heaton and Bruce Gellin and and Ruth Berkelman, and I've learned so much from you, from all of us, from all that group because of this. And you've been a great help in explaining what the heck is going on right now because it is so extremely dark. So first of all, I wanted to say again how grateful I am for all your support in what's been some dark times too often. But, you know, I think the reason for writing the book is because it's taking lives.
And, you know, the big 30,000-foot overview for the book is humanity is facing two existential threats right now. One of them is from pandemics like COVID, like H5N1, and we're going to have – new ones coming down the pike, right? We're going to have other zoonotic influenzas. We're going to have other coronaviruses and vector-borne tropical diseases, where I am in Texas and the Gulf Coast, and maybe bioterrorism threats, and then the climate crisis, which is equally important. But now there's a third leg to the tripod, Eric, and the third leg is the vast disinformation machine that's blocking us from addressing either pandemics or the climate crisis. And that means that anti-science itself is an existential threat.
And we wrote the book to really highlight that and to help people understand where it's coming from, because I think too often You know, you see the language out there that it's all misinformation or infodemic like it's just some random junk out there on the Internet. And it's not. It's it's it's organized. It's politically motivated. It's financially motivated because of the wellness and influencer thing. um, grifting and industry and, and also, um, you know, that you impart the fossil fuel industry and the climate side. And so that's why we wrote the book to help people understand it and explain it. Cause our premise is you can't hope to chip away at it unless you can understand what the monster is and how to, how to, how to defeat it.
Um, so it's, you know, it's not a happy, cheery book, although we try to, um, One of the things that Michael Mann taught me in the book is this concept of doomism, that it's almost as dangerous to just throw your hands up and say there's nothing we can do. It's fated. It's inevitable. And neither of us believe that. I know you don't either. We tend to be eternal optimists and trying to find a way to carve a path of light through all the darkness. I think that's the other major thread of the book.
Yeah, well, it's quite a remarkable piece of work. And, you know, you described so well the spider web of malevolence, whereby you've got these five forces, the five Ps, the plutocrats and the petrostates, the propaganda, the press, etc.
And the pros, you got it. That's pretty good, yeah. I have to give credit to Michael on that one. He was the one into the alliteration, and it sounded good, so I went with it.
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