BGSU speaker addresses threats to science

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Many of the world’s most urgent problems require a scientific solution, and yet science is facing serious
threats, both internally and externally, according to Dr. Arturo Casadevall, director of the Center for
Immunological Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
As this year’s Jean Pasakarnis Buchanan speaker at Bowling Green State University, Casadevall will
address the problems of science and suggest some solutions.
His talk, titled "Science at a Crossroad: Time for Reform," will be held at 7 p.m. Monday in
112 Life Sciences Building, the Pasakarnis-Buchanan Lecture Hall. The talk is free and open to the
public and aimed at a lay audience.
On Tuesday, he will give a departmental lecture, "Thoughts on the Origins of Virulence," at 11
a.m. in the same room.
The talk is also open, but it is designed primarily for those people with a background in science.
According to Casadevall, science is arguably humanity’s greatest intellectual invention. In the 250-plus
years since the Scientific Revolution, humanity has attained a great understanding of the natural world
and this has translated into a tremendous range of innovation that ranges from interplanetary probes to
vaccines to rapid communications.
However, he said, the scientific enterprise is facing threats from inadequate funding, a societal focus
on short-term goals and anti-scientific movements characterized by denial of scientific information as
well as a reward structure focused on winner-take-all economics, over-specialization and poor
communication skills with the public, who fund science.

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