On Thursday, October 27, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum will host Robert P. Crease, author and philosopher of science, for an evening lecture on public trust in scientific institutions.
Crease’s lecture will serve as a book launch for his latest publication The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory (The MIT Press), co-authored with former BNL Director Peter D. Bond. In The Leak, Crease reconstructs the events of 1997, when scientists discovered a small leak of radioactive water neighboring the laboratory’s research reactor. He details how, despite posing no threat to public safety, the discovery sparked public outrage; drew the attention of politicians, activists, actors, and supermodels; and threatened the existence of the national laboratory. Crease’s narrative retelling of “the leak’s” fallout offers a timely reflection of the gaps that still exist between social, political, and media understandings of science and, in doing so, examines how our institutions can build better trust with the publics they serve.
The lecture will take place at 7:00pm in the Museum’s Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium. Tickets are available online at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s website. Copies of The Leak will be available for pre-order through the museum’s bookstore.
Robert P. Crease is the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, where he has taught for over three decades. His research in phenomenology, the philosophy of science, and aesthetics has influenced countless scholars and helped bridge the gap between the arts and sciences. He has published, edited, or translated 16 books, including The Workshop and the World: What Ten Thinkers Can Teach Us about Science and Authority and World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement. In 2021, Crease received the William Thompson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for his contributions in explaining scientific ideas to humanities scholars.
Address: 180 Little Neck Rd., Centerport, NY 11713
Date & Time: Thursday, October 27th (10/27/2022) at 7:00pm Website: www.vanderbiltmuseum.org/featured-events/
Press Inquiries: Patrick Keeffe, Director of Communications, patrick@vanderbiltmuseum.org