Ignorance Unmasked

Robert N. Proctor is Professor of History at Stanford University. His books include Racial Hygiene (1988), Packaged Pleasures (2014), and Golden Holocaust (2011). Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University. Her books include Gendered Innovations 2 (2020), Secret Cures of Slaves (Stanford, 2017), and Plants and Empire (2004). Together, Proctor and Schiebinger are editors of Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (Stanford, 2008).

"'Agnotology,' [the] science of generating ignorance, has become the most important discipline of the day."—Bruno Latour, Sciences Po, Paris "The essays in Proctor and Schiebinger's spectacular new collection make the concept of agnotology, the creation of ignorance, relevant to the most basic political and scientific battles of the day—from the controversies over the Israeli destruction of Gaza through climate science and food production. This should be read by all social scientists interested in our modern world."—David Rosner, Columbia University "In a world where up is down and down is up, Ignorance Unmasked brings to bear the power of history to dismantle systematically perpetuated ignorance, with each chapter revealing surprising insights into how our world has been built—accidentally and intentionally—to deceive us."—Yogi Hendlin, Erasmus University Rotterdam