Overview

The modern world is filled with debate and controversy, and science and technology—the most characteristic features of the modern world—are not immune. Science and technology are implicated in many if not all of the issues, troubles, and problems students are likely to come across in their classes and in their everyday lives. Science and technology serve as a primary pathway to understanding front page headlines on everything from war to AIDS, and from oil exploration to global warming. Battleground: Science and Technology examines the most hot-button issues involving science and technology and provides a balanced assessment of the arguments on all sides of the often strident debates. The approximately 100 issues examined in Battleground: Science and Technology include topics in the brain sciences, including the controversies over the cause of autism and the reliability of memory, as well as the debates over parapsychology; debates surrounding information technology, such as only privacy, the impact of video games on social behavior, and the advent of virtual reality; the complexity over drugs and medications, such as the testing of the efficacy of medications, the war on recreational drugs, and the costs of pharmaceutical research; and hot-button topics that are constantly in the news, such as evolution and creationism, DNA testing, stem-cell research, and genetically modified organisms. Each entry provides a list of accessible resources useful for further research.

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Reviews

This collection of essays by various authors, wide ranging in their backgrounds and qualifications and covering a wide expanse of topics, goes beyond the scope of most encyclopedia-type volumes....This resource will prove useful to teachers and students. It summarizes in one compact place many of the aspects of issues around which some controversy swirls. These essays, especially the lengthier ones, can serve as starting points for more elaborate and in-depth investigation of topics. This text offers instant access (through the table of contents) to information that can lead in many directions for more investigations. It's a worthwhile addition to a classroom resource bank for information on the implications of scientific and technological applications to society. -NSTA Recommends

<p> Battleground: Science & Technology offers a basic introduction and overview to the topics addressed...This set is most appropriate for high school libraries, public libraries, and community college library that have a need for introductory material on the topics presented. - <p>ARBA

Author Information

Sal Restivo is Professor of Sociology, Science Studies, and Information Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Special Lecture Professor at Northeastern University in Shenyang, China, the former Hixon/Riggs Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Harvey Mudd College, and a former Special Professor at Nottingham University in England. He is a founding member and former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Peter H. Denton is an instructor in Technical Communications and Ethics at Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Royal Military College of Canada.

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