Defenders of the Truth: the battle for science in the sociobiology debate and
beyond by Ullica Segerstråle, Oxford, £20, ISBN 0198505051
STUDYING insects seems a harmless enough profession. So why should an
entomologist get heckled at public meetings, have water poured over his head, be
branded a racist by colleagues and even be physically assaulted for his
views?
Today, E. O. Wilson of Harvard University is regarded as one of modern
biology’s seminal thinkers, but for most of the late 1970s and early 1980s,
Wilson was a hate figure for most on the left. Just what was all the…
