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'''Science for the People''' is an organization originating in the [[1960s counter-culture]], which has generated much controversy, essentially a propaganda and activist organization for (far) leftist scientists. Notable members have included [[race denialists]] such as [[Stephen Jay Gould]] and [[Richard Lewontin]]. Another disliked form of scientific research was [[sociobiology]].

==History==
The [[American]] leftist organization was formed in the early 1970's by [[Herb Fox]]. The group was revived in [[2002]]. [[E. O. Wilson]], a biologist and entomology professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at [[Harvard University]] wrote that "the political objections forcefully made by the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People in particular took me by surprise." Wilson stated:

:''I had been blindsided by the attack. Having expected some frontal fire from social scientists on primarily evidential grounds, I had received instead a political enfilade from the flank. A few observers were surprised that I was surprised. John Maynard Smith, a senior British evolutionary biologist and former Marxist, said that he disliked the last chapter of Sociobiology himself and "it was also absolutely obvious to me--I cannot believe Wilson didn't know--that this was going to provoke great hostility from American Marxists, and Marxists everywhere." But it was true that I didn't know. I was unprepared perhaps because, as Maynard Smith further observed, I am an American rather than a [[European]]. In 1975 I was a political naive: I knew almost nothing about Marxism as either a political belief or a mode of analysis; I had paid little attention to the dynamism of the activist Left, and I had never heard of Science for the People''.

:''I was not an intellectual in the European or New York/Cambridge sense. ... After the Sociobiology Study Group exposed me as a counterrevolutionary adventurist, and as they intensified their attacks in articles and teach-ins, other radical activists in the Boston area, including the violence-prone International Committee against Racism, conducted a campaign of leaflets and teach-ins of their own to oppose human sociobiology. As this activity spread through the winter and spring of 1975-76, I grew fearful that it might reach a level embarrassing to my family and the university. I briefly considered offers of professorships from three universities--in case, their representatives said, I wished to leave the physical center of the controversy. But the pressure was tolerable, since I was a senior professor with tenure, with a reputation based on other discoveries, and in any case could not bear to leave Harvard's ant collection, the world's largest and best''.

:''For a few days a protester in Harvard Square used a bullhorn to call for my dismissal. Two students from the University of Michigan invaded my class on evolutionary biology one day to shout slogans and deliver antisociobiology monologues. I withdrew from department meetings for a year to avoid embarrassment arising from my notoriety, especially with key members of Science for the People present at these meetings. In [[1979]] I was doused with water by a group of protestors at the annual meeting of the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]], possibly the only incident in recent history that a scientist was physically attacked, however mildly, for the expression of an idea. In [[1982]] I went to the Science Center at Harvard University under police escort to deliver a public lecture, because of the gathering of a crowd of protestors around the entrance, angered because of the title of my talk: "The coevolution of biology and culture''.

[[Category:left-wing organizations]]
[[Category:Race denialism]]
[[Category:Science]]

Science for the People - Revision history

𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹: 1 revision imported

en>Crusader at 21:00, 6 September 2022