This article examines how this analogy infiltrated scientific publications that then served as the scientific foundation for apocalyptic TV entertainment and education. It studies how scientists actually speak about prehistoric large-scale volcanic eruptions in a professional context, and how they address their larger social, political and economic considerations within the constraints of scientific publication. Some scientists abstain completely from any discussion of the larger societal impact of their research on large-scale eruptions; others prefer to engage with this issue, sometimes framing their findings in terms of worst-case scenarios for humanity. In the following I will argue that those scientists who created and fostered an unsubstantiated analogy during the late 1980s, also subscribed to a long-term vision of a gloomy future for humanity, creating a fallacy that over the next decades guided and misled them and some of their colleagues in the description and interpretation of the larger societal impact of their scientific results.
...MoreDescription “Examines how this analogy infiltrated scientific publications that then served as the scientific foundation for apocalyptic TV entertainment and education.” (from the abstract)
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