system federally chartered ban banks. anticounterfeiting subsequently declined quite dramatically. not only because of that because you have the founding of the secret service in 1865 whose original mandate is to aggressively go after counterfeiters. >> was a controversial to get to a single currency? >> extremely. there's a number of steps the federal government has to take. state banks are deeply entrenched interest, states like new york and pennsylvania have congressmen and senators who advocate very aggressively these interests because they benefit enormously from a fairly chaotic monetary system. >> ben tarnoff is the author of this book, "moneymakers: the wicked lives and surprising adventures of three notorious counterfeiters." >> up next on the 2011 los angeles times festival of books,

a panel entitled "inconvenient truths" featuring erik conway and naomi oreskes co-authors of "merchants of doubt." seth mnookin, and timothy ferris who wrote the science of liberty. this is about an hour. it's on me. the woman in green says it's oly so we will get started. its i'm jim rainey, the mediaim columnist for the "los angeles times" or i would be on the media column twice a week and ii also blog for the times and tweaked and to all those other a things that we all have to do in today's new media landscape. so i've got a couple of announcements to make your to t. start out. the first one is a standard please silence your cell phones so that especially because we are being recorded we don't wane to pick up a lot of noise. lot

of weeding. there is a book signing following the session. you make 17 left. and a right. and your maps should have that. and you are not supposed to be recording this because c-span is recording this and you can get what you need from c-span. what i am going to do is introduce our speakers, get the discussion going and if everybody looks like they are with us we will take questions for the last 15 minutes or so of the session. we have got a really interesting panel here and a really interesting topic. the title they have chosen is "inconvenient truths". i have three books we will be discussing. we are coming to this panel at a time when with the internet we

have unprecedented access to information, the ability to obtain knowledge and disseminate knowledge that has never been greater. yet we are also in an era if you have been reading the paper when our institutions from the government to the media to the academy to universities like the one we are here at today are under increasing attack, their authority questioned. the three books we're looking at are about the importance of information in a democracy, we come to consensus on universal concern such as the state of the climate or the need to protect our children through immunization. the debate rages on about how we settle these issues to address the what is true and one is not. just recently, i wrote a column what we would agree is a settled matter. which is the birth of the president of the united states.

and yet in this morning in my in basket, in this morning's column i wrote about this. i can review a few of the e-mails who want me to explain exactly how that birth certificate was digitized. as you can see it is very hard to settle things. i will introduce the panel. to my immediate left, the author of the science of liberty. "the science of liberty: democracy, reason, and the laws of nature". he has been called the best popular science writer in the english-language today by the christian science monitor and the best science writer of his generation by the washington post. he has written a dozen books,

the mind's are, new york times best books of the year. his articles have appeared in just about every major publication like the new yorker, scientific american, he has produced three pbs specials and contributed to national public radio. our second guest and speaker is seth mnookin. the it is of value even though you don't see it in his name. we had a discussion about that the other day. his book is "the panic virus: a true story of medicine, science, and fear". seth mnookin is contributing editor of vanity fair magazine and he has written a couple books like hard news which is the jason where scandal at the new york times and the ensuing meltdown of the news room at the new york times, troubles with his editor and such.

he also wrote feeding the monster about the boston red sox and their rise to power after being a perennial also ran. i am familiar with his work. he has written quite a bit about the media. he wrote a terrific story about the new york times reporters serving in iraq. to his left is dr. naomi how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming". her co-author we hope will and as at some point, erik conway is stuck in traffic at this point. she is a professor of history and science studies at the university of san diego. it was cited by al gore in an inconvenience truth as the seminal book on climate change

denial. more general terms where research focused on historical developments of scientific knowledge. continental drift and the invisibility of women in science. provocative. hopefully we will get eric conway in here after this. what we will do at first is have each of your panel's godown and give a quick summation about what your book tells us and what is the gee whiz moment when you talk about your previously, what is the thing that really grips them that they never knew before about your topic? take the full thirty-second. >> what are have been hearing about the science of liberty that it is ruining people's

lives. they stopped everything else in order to not just read the book but the biographies of the people in it. i hadn't expected that but i have been receiving angry calls. acting concentrate on the symbiosis of science and -- i thought it might be useful to sketch a little bit of history. because any subject we learn including our own history and the nature of the universe or anything like that there's always a problem that one backs in to. you can't conduct research and learn things away college course would be structured. that distorts our subsequent understanding and that is true of our own history.

we study our history in terms of a few highlights. we make much of a few efforts by the ancient greeks to do something that we would regard today as scientific even though there was no science fact that or the efforts in the golden age of the arab empire on mathematics on scientific subjects that were pursued. science didn't really get established anywhere in world. the first scientific institution anywhere in the world. the seventeenth century at the very earliest. consequently because science change the world so much in every regard we tend to forget about the long period that preceded the discovery of science. during that time and well into

the first century that there was science, the entire human species new relatively few fact. is true that some of what they knew is lost to us and there's a lot of knowledge of herbs and plants and the jungle and a lot of stories that were never written down but no way around the fact that free scientific humans just didn't know many facts. the intellectual tradition that grew up on this consisted of analyzing and rearranging and having clever opinions about those very few facts that were known to humanity. the rate at which humanity discovered things prior to this was comparable to the rate at which the economy grew and that rate was under 1% a year. one year we knew 100 factors for the next year and so forth.

that produced a tradition that in tours to this day in which instead of fact there is a tendency to use dogma and ideology and apply these ideological ideas to things around us. it is simple and quicker and has a distinguished intellectual heritage but it is nefarious to the number of known facts that double every decade. the rate of learning is so astonishing that it is claimed to use old dogmas to deal with that. it was inevitable that we were going to have a clash between science which does not have an

ideology, that is a priest or ideology, that is false. science is a method. these methods have changed the world. no one in ancient times imagine people would be as healthy, as wealthy or as free as they are today as a combination of science. majority of people don't know how science works loan a sense of what is learned. they still adhere to the old tradition of a kind of dogmatic ideological way of looking at the world. we have been set up for clash between the actual facts of the world and the short and ways of dealing with the fact in medieval times and that clash is on us in global warming. [applause] >> summarize for us a little bit

about the paint virus and would you learned in the controversy about vaccines and autism. >> after covering the history of facts i feel like an covering my book. "the panic virus: a true story of medicine, science, and fear" is a book i began working on because it relates to what we are talking about today. a little over three years ago which was before i had a child cry noticed in conversation with my friends that when the issue of childhood vaccines or vaccine safety started coming up the answers i would get to questions about how people went about making these decisions were very much in the language of feelings or intuition. it feels to me like children

receive too many vaccines. it makes sense to me that the number of antigens in vaccine overwhelms developing immune systems. the reason i found that so interesting is that was antithetical to the approach and a language my peers use when it came to other topics where there is an intersection between science and public policy. for instance global warming. if we had a conversation and someone said we had three feet of snow last year, it doesn't feel to me like we could be going through global warming, or conversation on evolution where someone said it doesn't seem right to me that we could be descended from apes. those were attitudes the same group of peers were dismissive of. very much looked down their nose

at stupid people who don't understand the science of these things. what was interesting to me was not that they were wrong in their opinion because i didn't know at the time whether vaccines were not connected in some, way to developmental disorders like autism. but this was how they went about making those decisions. so i naively started working on this project thinking it would be an interesting magazine story, looking at how we decide what counts as truth, some of the issues that get raised. here i am three years later. one of the oddities of book publishing and, i have had this

experience before it is it is hard to convince you to write 5,000 were in magazines tour but you can convince someone to write a 110,000 word book which is what happened here and maybe why i got in trouble. when i began working on this one of my thought was most of the books that are out there on this topic are written from someone who came in to it with one camp or the other. believing their child was vaccine injured and vaccines were dangerous or someone involved in the medical community. so i will write a book from the perspective of someone who isn't coming to this from one side or the other and people will think that is interesting and something -- that is not the case. people who disagree with my

conclusions see it as an interesting book that someone happened to write. i learned daily about my time, two pharmaceutical companies and -- if there are any pharmaceutical company reps out there i will give you my number. i am happy to take your money at this point. the book is already out. i figure if i am getting blamed i might as well get some benefits from that. so i have been shocked and it has been i opening as to how much the topic at which i think there's not a lot of continued debate, how much debate there is in the political and public round and what the implications of that are. there are severe implications. ten children died in california last year. nine of them were under 6 months

old which means they were too young to be a vaccinated. it started to return with measles and there are a dozen hospitalizations including children who were too young. this is an issue we will only see come up more often. i will leave off there and have an interesting conversation. [applause] >> the thing i thought was fascinating was the next step is not just that people are relying on their feelings or intuition or common sense, but there is a shadowy figure out there, that are actually taking these doubts and playing on them and making a career out of a exacerbating

concerns about the science in particular a round of global warming. maybe you can work in the notion that this is very specific. this isn't random that people are having these doubts. >> thanks for inviting me. what you said it is in the book. it turns out a lot of that information is not just subject and possibly incomplete or incorrect. that was the discovery that we really need to write this book. sometimes people ask us how did you decide on this topic? a stray dog that you find, and we were historians working --

really how settled on expert scientists. i wrote an article in which i basically said that. summarizing what was being said, but i turned out to be wrong about that. i started getting very strange e-mails. i thought to myself don't these people have television to watch? it is a strange world we live in but the important part is it isn't all just ignorance or subjective feeling and confusion. those things are important. it can do damage. in addition we also face even more troubling phenomenon. people who should know better. people who are not confused, people who are highly educated or deliberately promoting this

information. ideology more than money. i have been to a lot of states and countries and places like kansas. one of the most interesting things people said to me is how many times things have come up whether it is can this, i never knew that science, there not talking about global warming the climate change. the cacophony of competing voices. most of us have little understanding of where it comes from and how robust it is when

scientists felt they resolve a problem so for people to realize and understand that is not just that climate science is settled. has been settled since 1993. twenty years since the convention on climate change which we seem to have forgotten about. we seem to be suffering a kind of collective amnesia maybe because we are drowning in information. people have forgotten that president george h. w. bush signed the convention on climate change and committed the country to doing something to stop dangerous interference in climate system's. it is a little shift. you can feel a little bit where people say that is right. it is not like he was a member of greenepeace. this is extremely gratifying because it made me feel a renewed dedication to my own profession as a historian the way history can be informative

not just about not repeating the mistakes of the past which we do overtime but knowing what the past is. knowing that what we are committed, in past years. one other thing about this issue that is important for people to understand. one reason this issue is so extremely -- scientists or scientific experts in climate change or autism. a methodological approach -- has been around for 20 years. pretty robust overtime. many people making counterclaims claim to be scientists and they are quoted in major newspapers like los angeles times, totally accepted. so a person, even a highly educated persons as a claim being made by a person who

claims to be a scientists say we are not sure about global warming or autism or vaccines, pretty understandable, there is a debate going on. the media has a responsibility to address that and address people who claim to be scientists but are not. then there is a harder problem we get out of our books that these people are scientists and that makes it even harder. the question of credentials and expertise, to these people are and why they say what they are saying. it is not always being paid for by forces of darkness but sometimes it is. these are all questions that need to be asked and we hope part of what our book has done is raise these questions and make people realize there needs to be a better conversation

about these issues. >> thank you. [applause] >> the undertone or overtone is we have this incredible level of knowledge increasing dissemination of it but at the same time running amok going crazy, is it really getting worse in terms of reaching consensus and finding truth or does it just seemed like that because we have the echo chamber of the media and the internet or are we doing better at being able to reach consensus within the scientific community and when that knowledge goes out into body politics? >> arguably the greatest discovery in human history is discovery of science but moreover that science works in free societies. 47% of all humans live in the

democratic societies. no one thought that was possible. it could have been the other way around and in movies is portrayed as a science works best in a secret, all creating the death threat. science works in free societies and they are always like that. is always a terrible mess. it is a pain in the neck. all is a cacophony. that is the nature of free societies. it would help if those of us who are enthusiasts of science and those of us who are scientists were a little clearer about the actual situation. let me state it simply. you have a choice in life between answers that are absolutely certain and false, and answers that are conditional land might be true. there is no such thing even in

mathematics as an absolutely clear and fundamental statement that everybody can agree is true all the time. i have to include in this religious thought. aaron have no quarrel with people's religious beliefs but it is flabbergasting to imagine this world is being controlled by some kind of superintelligence who cares about us because the world looks exactly as if there is no such thing. the only reason you can believe that is you believe that our culture is full of imprecations that you have got to believe. it helps is to know. that is much more humane historically than believing and the best tool for now comes from science. i was advising scientists because one of the technicalities here is there and

did the impression that some philosopher somewhere has demonstrated that science is just one of many ways of knowing and its conclusions are to be privileged when compared to other is -- i spent 15 years researching this subject and i can assure you there is no basis for that statement whatsoever. science is the best method that has ever been found and probably the best method that there can be because it is so simple. you test your ideas for a controlled experiment and act on the basis of the results. that changed the world for the better by every conceivable measure. health, wealth, happiness with the possible exception of the loss of certainty. there's a lot of complaint that people used to be certain and now we aren't any more. what they were certain about was false! no reason to be nostalgia about certainty is that were false!

one statistic. sixty million civilians -- not talking about wartime -- sixty million people were murdered by their own governments in the twentieth century alone because of ideology. that is what false dogma does. in the same period of time not a single scientist was ever disgraced or sand or exiled from the kingdom of science for being wrong because there's nothing wrong with being wronged. what is wrong is to have a dedicated fiery believe in things that are not so. [applause] >> one thing that is interesting in your book is that there -- scientists who were propping up the things that are wrong which they only can talk about and also a cult of celebrity around the vaccine/autism connection. tell us about those big names

who are most certain and one in particular that is interesting is jenny mccarthy and her establishment of that connection after having a very unusual theory before that about what caused her son's autism. >> jenny mccarthy is clearly the best known public figure who has come out and discussed her belief vocally, in her case the measles, mum's rubella vaccine that triggered person's autism. i actually think in this instance if there is a celebrity that is more responsible is probably oprah winfrey and not jenny mccarthy. one thing that makes this issue a little bit different than climate change where i think

there is an opportunistic infection of doubt, the most fervent believers in this theory are almost entirely parents and genuinely believe their children -- and parents--the vast majority have been incredibly let down by medical establishment's, has not received the support they need or deserve in any number of levels. that makes this unique. why can't you go back to writing about politics or crime or

something you care about. it is true. i have not gotten that kind of response that i have got here. in terms of celebrity and celebrity doing an incredible amount of damage, has been media figures like oprah acting as if in the view.is just another viewpoint and if there's any dispute or debate it needs to be presented on the one hand and on the other hand. i think that is absolutely false. it reinforces the lack of volume control that can be present on the internet where you come of with one link and it is hard to tell what the consensus or evans is behind that compared to something else.

when various media figures like of fraud or other outlets like the connection between vaccines and not schism like global warming, and feel compelled to present it as on the one hand this person believe that vaccines cause autism and on the other fees 99% of people in the field do not believe that but you quote one on each side to give that balance. that does an incredible disservice to the public. there should be a reckoning among our peers. not just surrounding this issue but in health and medicine more generally. something that is fascinating is in the media culture, science and medicine, the standard we

hold ourselves to testing from most other fields with the exception of policy, so and so claims barack obama is a nigerian foreign agent and barack obama says no, i was born in hawaii is not the coverage you would see if i said apple computer is about to go out of business. when we write a story that says on the one hand seth mnookin says apple computer is going out of business and steve jobs said who is seth mnookin? if you say something that is outrageous or outlandish even if that is the type of coverage you can bet a lot in science and medicine and politics. my favorite of that would be on the one hand the lakers claim they won the series.

[talking over each other] >> to come around to jenny mccarthy is one way in which the public and medical establishment has failed is taking people like jenny mccarthy and saying how is it the public believes this former playboy playmate and go ahead and doctors them. the people who are watching oprah or listening to what jenny mccarthy said we're not talking about 15-year-old boys, looking for old issues of playboy. we are talking about parents who relate to another parent talking about their experiences. and their experience with their children. this is a little bit distinct. we get to the same an end point we do with climate change and

others things. the way you get there is different. >> it is probably harder in what you cover remain stream reporters in publications like the l.a. times to ignore someone who has a ph.d. in front of their name. when you look at this why is it time after time there is this false equivalency in these articles about global warming or any of the other topics you have written about? >> i keep getting asked that question by journalists. you tell me. it is your business. it is the mystery to me why this is so different. on one level it is understandable in journalists who have a deadline and are not a specialist in science could be confused by these issues and think i need another voice to give me a different perspective.

and if somebody has put something on their desk, can you say here is a ph.d.. i had someone say to me what credible scientists can you recommend to me who doesn't believe in global warming and i say none. they don't believe me and they think i am biased. anyone wants to pay me i am waiting for these -- people who pay be the have any money. why has it been so difficult? it isn't just in daily papers and deadlines. you see it in well research magazine articles, and it is extremely troubling. it is not just that there is a celebrity that i don't believe an asset rain -- acid rain. gets taken a by media people

viewed as credible. one idea that is most disturbing talking to neighbors and people you meet in daily life how widespread it is among highly educated people. to read fortune or forbes or the wall street journal. extensive articles that are well research. not that these people are saying we know there is no global warming. it is an easier argument to dispute and review. what they say is we are not really sure. we don't know for sure. there's always doubt. this is a clever strategy because they are right. there is always doubt. science never proves anything absolutely. that was a dream that collapsed in the nineteenth century. we know that science will never

prove anything beyond a shadow of the doubt so there's always the opportunity for people to raise questions just like the birth certificate. the possibility of deconstruction is and less. than is why it is important to recognize and say yes. i could write an article about the ways in which modern digital technology has made it possible to falsify a birth certificate. you could write that article and get experts to talk to you about it and how you could photoshop in the signatures. but you would be doing a disservice. >> you think so? [laughter] >> there goes next week's column. now i have got to go. i am told in the old days we had mike -- we are so sophisticated at u.s. c unlike ucla, and --

[talking over each other] >> people have questions. if you want to raise your hand i will call on you and might repeat the question. [inaudible] >> this negates everything you guys are talking about. [inaudible] >> for many years and i heard them talk to parents and that is exactly what it is. it is vaccine, period. [talking over each other] >> let's let him ask the question. >> i am not being sarcastic --

>> do you have a question? [talking over each other] >> why is called for's inconvenient truth use as a platfo global warming? if [talking over each other] >> the article was robert f. kennedy jr. which ran in rolling stone beat the has been retracted by salon and was -- of lead disappeared by rolling stone. there is no longer any mention of it on their web site. it disappeared from their archives. it eventually -- there were 500 words of correction. we thought that this was x time

the amount and it was actually 1/100th of that. there is a very good parallel between rfk jr.'s efforts which have been solely derided by the scientific community and al gore's efforts which have not. gore, and highlights something about the debate which is the lot of people have firsthand experience that supports very strongly their belief that vaccine, as autism. a lot of parents have experiences where they had a child which they felt was developing normally. that child was vaccinated and everything changed. a very quick story about that. there have been a series of on

this cases involving vaccines and autism representing 5,000 families with three different -- families whose evidence and testimony will support that fact. the mother testified, about her recollection of her daughter and after her daughter was vaccinated. there were contemporaneously doctors about michele's development in that time but matched up with the mother's recollection. not because the mother was not being completely honest but that is what our brains. we create narrative for events in our past. we reorder things in a way that makes more sense to us.

i understand why parents believe that. effect that we still do not have any satisfying answers for the causes of autism or satisfying treatments exacerbate that. i wouldn't try and diminish those parents's experiences. it doesn't seem -- in cases where there has been other evidence we can look at it doesn't seem to match up. >> if we can get a question directed to timothy ferris or naomi oreskes, how about that gentleman and another baseball cap back there? >> i am biased in favor of baseball caps. >> pattern is developing. [inaudible] >> -- work that you do.

[applause] >> i don't know why you don't get more press. we are starving. >> by our books. [talking over each other] >> do you have a question? >> the next natural progression to all this in my mind is where does the law stand on all this? we are happy to hear the truth, not so happy to hear the rumors and innuendoes. can we just say anything these days? do you know anything in terms of where the law stands on what is acceptable or is there anything unacceptable?

>> is there a way the government changes howard relates to science or places our decisionmaking? >> the economics alone has been a tremendous difference -- the competence with which democratic countries are managed and many non democratic ones as well. it is popular to be derisive about -- the only thing anyone knows is what you tell me. economics is the dismal science which dates from before there was a science of economics. we are in some danger of having an educated upper class in terms of education that runs countries and for instance takes global warming seriously in virtually every major country in the world.

certainly no debate there. and a general class of folks less well educated who fall prey to rhetoric. we see it most conspicuously -- calculation goes like this. if you're an insurance company what is the risk and where do we pay out if it happens? you multiplied those together. what global warming and autism have in common is that the risk is a horrific we large. global warming effect goes unchecked and wreck human civilization. not forever but it can set us back a good deal. it can reach the point where the cost of think fixing things a greater than total available funds. we're between 1%, and 2% gdp to reverse that and that is already enough to scare lot of people off. autism similarly is a horse or bull when this happens to your child that you can seize on a

suggestion of a connection and people respond to it. i have close friends -- two of my closest friends believe vaccine caused it. when you get into that calculus at that point with these big questions it is difficult in democracy because leaders of democracies, democratic countries are much healthier as an entity, much stronger and broadly based and leaders can't get very far so when the public is so far behind the curve with regards to science and technology is hard for those leaders -- >> brings us back to the al gore question. that is what al gore was trying to do. never worked with a person -- have no vested interest in this. one of the things he recognized in the late a.d.s was that global climate change is a

scientific and political and economic problem. he understood you can't get too far end when you have an issue involving complex science it is challenging because you can't ask people to act politically if they don't understand why they are being asked to act. in the case of climate change people need to understand something about the science. he took it as part of his task to learn the science and spend time with scientists. he spent time with a lot of scientists that i know. he does read scientific articles. whether he understands them i don't know. try to explain the science in language people could understand. for exactly this reason. it is not too far in front. it is an important issue because without the science we wouldn't really know what we need to do because we could solve our energy problems in the united states with coal and natural gas.

so unless you understand why greenhouse gases affect climate and how they changed it you don't understand why we need to do the things that we have to do. >> right here in front. >> correspondence going with freeman dyson, very prominent scientist, outstanding physicists who took the opposing viewpoint on global warming and referred to the risk cost analysis as a swindle. i was surprised at this. he is not a climatologist and that is about the only thing i can say to forgive what he told me. but i would like to know if you could explain -- i would like to know if naomi oreskes could explain what you believe is at

work that a scientist of his stature would come out so strongly against global warming as a hoax or at least -- >> for those of you did not hear the factors why would freeman dyson, a physicist at the institute of the dance studies at princeton be a skeptic about global warming. his objections have to do with calculations about the discount rate which is this weird -- in the last chapter of the science of liberty, has to do with the question of if you are going to spend a lot of money on a big problem diaz that the law right now when the dollar is worth more in absolute terms for do you wait until your economy is bigger and the same spending is a smaller portion and therefore cheaper. he was critical of some of the economic analysis.

he ultimately believes technological fix will save us from having to do conservation measures with regard to global warming. i sure hope that is true but i wouldn't want to bet our whole civilization on it. >> really good example of what i was referring to. some of these people are in fact scientists but it is important to realize he is 92. he has not done research on this topic and he has changed his opinion on this. i had an exchange with him. in the 1970s, the chasing committee which are high level confidential advisory committee, mostly physicists which include other folks reporting to the department of energy. one of the first government reports on climate change and earliest modeling work. freeman dyson was a viewer of that report and praised it and said how great it was and in the

acknowledgements, one of the things -- scientists are people like everybody else. scientists who have been very famous. and they use the limelight and we saw that phenomenon here and the other thing about freeman dyson if, a great scientists is a rebel. to needle society, hope conventional wisdom and is not wrong about that. it can be damaging and unhelpful. >> that is a good point. global warming is not a subtle question. to take the other side.

if you pump lot of these into the atmosphere through the industrial process hes the world is going to warm up. we are pumping the gas is but we think for some magical reason the world is getting warmer for some decent -- different reason that we have nothing to do with the. we can put all this stuff into this atmosphere which is fair relative to the planets than the acquiesce later on your eyeball. we can keep pumping this stuff into the atmosphere and the fact that we are getting exactly the global warming results that scientists predicted is irrelevant. somehow it will all be okay. to get from here to there is such enormous territory and hardly matters whether individuals have different opinion or whether al gore politicize the issue because i do think the title of this panel -- he did a lot to popularize the issue but of the process

created a political lightning rod in himself against which opposition could be directed. >> i won't discriminate against the staff. there's someone in a yellow shirt, one of the volunteers. >> where can people who are scientifically thinking like hopefully we are, where can we gather, where can we support each other against all the dogmas? are there any groups, any web sites where we can freely communicate back and forth and support each other? >> you might as well hawk in. >> a couple quick thought about that. ten years ago, maybe seven years ago i was talking -- the book i wrote about the new york times and i was part of an audience complaining bitterly about the quality of the media and how

there wasn't in depth reporting. i asked how many people subscribe to a daily newspaper or paid subscribers to magazines and it was a very small number. one faint that people who support science can do is show that support by actively supporting people, i am not making a pitch for us. actively supporting media outlets and not just with their money but one of the huge issues and one of these huge issues in this debate, people who are motivated to speak out and to write to columnists and tv networks are the people on the extreme side of it. if you are covering this, you will get 50 or 100 e-mails and

messages about how you are only representing the view.of the establishment and not representing the parents who believe this. i know from being on this side it can be hard to understand that 100 people is just 100 people and not 100,000. i'm sure you experienced this this week because jim wrote about this. there are organizations like the center for inquiry that are very proactive about promoting science. if you believe in the importance of science and scientific reporting, you should find ways to let other people know you believe that. if you see a column or a news report that you believe is doing a really good job, let them know. and when those editors make their next decision they will realize it is not just everyone who cares about this carries on

this one side. i don't know if that is a totally satisfying answer? >> that is a brilliant answer. said that i didn't plan to end on this note but we have to wrap up. ending on the note of hugging your local reporter and supporting them that is it. [inaudible conversations] >> this event was part of the 2011 los angeles times festival of books. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i heard there's a new book out by chris hedges, "new york

times" reporter, excellent writer. he cuts right to the core. i don't know if it's out yet for this summer. he's a wonderful writer. and right very passionately about the times in which we live. there's also a book i just saw, it's called the good cheeses -- "the good jesus and the scoundrel christ." it's a dark satire. it imagines mary had twins on christmas day. and we never heard about, like, the bad twin. we know about the good twin. this sort of imagines the story of what the other guy did. so, so that sounds -- you know, right up my alley, and as a recovering catholic, i'm looking forward to reading that. >> tell us what you're reading