In their book review "Bringing Reason and Context to the Science Wars"
(Physics Today, May 2001, page 57), Craig McConnell and Robert H. March
stated: "By the 1990s, a number of scientists struck back, and the fat
was in the fire." The statement might be mistaken to mean that, before
the 1990s, no scientists struck back, but that is not the case.
On 8 January 1988, Jon Turney, then science editor of the London
(England) Times Higher Education Supplement, reported on page 2
the outcry over our Nature commentary "Where Science Has Gone Wrong."1
Turney wrote:
Teachers of history, philosophy and sociology of science .
. . are up in arms over an attack by two Imperial College [London] physicists,
. . . who charge that the plight of . . . science stems from wrong-headed
theories of knowledge. . . . Scholars who hold that facts are theory-laden,
and that experiments do not give a clear fix on reality, are denounced.
. . . Staff on Nature, which published a cut-down version of the
paper after the authors' lengthy attempts to find an outlet for their
views, say they cannot recall such a response from readers. "It really
touched a nerve," said one. There is unhappiness that Nature lent its
reputation to the piece.
How would one designate this particular conflict from the 1980s?
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