The Issue at a Glance

James Enstrom vs. UCLA: Terminating Environmental Debate (10.1007/s12129-017-9672-2)

Peter Bonilla, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

In the first entry in “Unsettled Science,” a special section in this issue, Peter Bonilla presents the case of epidemiologist James Enstrom, a researcher in environmental health sciences at UCLA’s School of Public Health since 1976, who was isolated, punished, and ultimately wrongfully terminated for publicly and persistently dissenting from his department’s stance—and that of the California Air Resources Board—on “the long-term effects of particulate matter.” Bonilla argues that Enstrom’s experience exemplifies “why protecting academic freedom, often viewed from outside the academy as a quaint, esoteric concept…serve[s] the public interest.”

Societal Threats from Ideologically Driven Science (10.1007/s12129-017-9660-6)

Edward J. Calabrese, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Tipped off by a “friendly critic” of a working paper, Edward J. Calabrese recounts his disheartening