Erik M. Conway

Erik M. Conway (born 1965) is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is the author of several books. He previously completed a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1998, with a dissertation on the development of aircraft landing aids.

In High-Speed Dreams (2005), Conway argues that U.S. government sponsorship of supersonic commercial transportation systems resulted from Cold War concerns about a loss of technological prowess in the modern world. Realizing the Dream of Flight (2006) consists of eleven essays on individuals prepared in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight. Conway also wrote Blind Landings (2007) and he is a co-author of a secondary-level education text entitled Science and Exploration (2007). Atmospheric Science at NASA was published in 2008.

His 2010 book Merchants of Doubt was co-authored with Naomi Oreskes, as was his article in the Winter 2013 issue of Daedalus called The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future.

Merchants of Doubt

Science should be something we can rely on to educate ourselves on various subjects. We trust that scientists do extensive research and provide us with accurate results. Unfortunately, scientific truth can be obscured in the way it is presented, demonstrating only what a small group of particular scientists (or the politicians they work for) want us to believe. This small group has conspired over a span of four decades, sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the public on every topic from tobacco use’s relationship to cancer to global warming.


Bio information sourced from Wikipedia