Two distinguished professors have joined forces to write an impassioned book about the recent, concerted attacks on science. While they both live and work in the United States, where what they describe as the ‘forces of darkness’ are most active and influential, the problem they describe is truly global. Mann is a celebrated climate scientist who has been a leading voice in the field since the 1980s, while Hotez is a virologist who became involved in the public debate about the Covid-19 pandemic. The central argument of the book is that we face existential crises in both human health and the health of our planet. While the best hope of successfully tackling these challenges relies on science, there is now ‘politically and ideologically motivated opposition to science’, threatening both our ability to advance understanding of these complex issues and, equally important, the freedom of scientists to communicate their understanding.

It is not a new issue. I have been involved in the struggle against anti-science forces for several decades. In the 1980s, the Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland had an education minister who championed the so-called ‘creation science’ movement. A group of religious folk who believed that one of the creation stories in the Book of Genesis was literally true, that the Earth and all creatures on it were created in six calendar days about 6,000 years ago, persuaded the minister to argue that this should be taught in science classes, alongside what he said was ‘the theory of evolution’.