Erik Conway is a historian of science and technology residing in Pasadena, CA. He is currently employed by the California Institute of Technology. He studies and documents the history of space exploration, and examines the intersections of space science, Earth science, and technological change. He most recently received the 2009 NASA History award for “pathbreaking contributions to space history ranging from aeronautics to Earth and space sciences,” and the 2009 AIAA History Manuscript Award for his fourth book, “Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History.”

Conway has been, at various junctures in his life, a nuclear field electronics technician in the U.S. Navy, a student of geomechanics, and a naval officer. He served as damage control assistant, and briefly acting chief engineer, of a tank landing ship and as an operations planner for a Pacific Fleet amphibious squadron. He had small roles in planning the US withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 as well as the noncombatant evacuation operation from Rwanda. He’s a devout fan of Stephen J. Gould’s writing on natural history and considers it Gould’s fault that he’s now a historian of science and technology.

Conway began studying the history of climate science in 2002, after receiving a NASA history contract to write “Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History.” Two years later, at an International Commission for the History of Meteorology meeting in Polling, Germany, he met Oreskes and began a long conversation about the denial machine. Merchants of Doubt is one product of that dialog.

He is currently completing a history of robotic Mars exploration.

Dr. Dworkin is a contributing editor at Daily Kos and a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwiki.info) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Flu Wiki has been cited for excellence by diverse sources such as Science magazine and the Harvard Business Review, and linked by local public health departments, NGOs and media sources. Dr. Dworkin has lectured on the topic of Flu Wiki, public health and the internet at the UCLA School of Public Health and been invited to present at specialty conferences such as the Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Conference (jointly sponsored by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on Flu Wiki’s volunteer community projects. he has also participated in numerous tabletop and live pandemic exercises locally, statewide and with CDC and HHS (including two secretaries.)

Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years. He serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces. He holds academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Allied Health Science at Quinnipiac College. His clinical areas of expertise include respiratory illness in the pediatric population, and the implementation of asthma education programs for the public and for health professionals. He has also served on Connecticut’s statewide asthma task force and authored articles on various aspects of pediatric asthma care. He is the Course Director for the American Heart Association’s Pediatric Advanced Life Support course administered through the Danbury Hospital Community Training Center.

Dr. Dworkin received his S.B. in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his medical degree from Albany Medical College. His internship, residency, chief residency and pulmonary fellowship were completed at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Naomi Oreskes is one of the world’s leading historians of science. Having started her career as an exploration geologist working in the mining industry in Australia’s outback, she is now Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor of Geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and the Provost of Sixth College, UC San Diego. She has received grants for her work from the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society, and won numerous major prizes and awards, including, most recently, the Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (2009) and the UC San Diego Chancellors Associates Faculty Excellence Award for Community Service (2008).

For the past twenty years, Professor Oreskes has studied the process of consensus and dissent in science: How do scientists decide when a fact is “established?” How do they judge how much evidence is sufficient to deem something scientifically demonstrated? And what happens when scientists can’t agree? In 2004, she began to investigate the question of what scientists had to say about global warming , and quickly realized that scientific experts had a consensus on the reality of global warming and its human causes. Her essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686), led to numerous Op-Ed pieces, including in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. This work has been widely cited in the mass media in the United States and Europe, including in the Royal Society’s publication, “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change," and in the Academy-award winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Josh Rosenau has been a Programs and Policy Director at the National Center for Science Education since 2007. He researched the evolutionary relationships between Philippine rodent species based on phallic morphology as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He pursued a doctorate at the University of Kansas, studying the ways ecological competition shapes the ecological niche and geographical ranges of species. When creationists on the Kansas board of education sought to undermine evolution education in 2005, Josh worked with grassroots groups and the media to improve public understanding of the issues, and to defend honest and accurate science education. Since joining NCSE, he has continued this effort, working with grassroots groups from Florida to Texas, testifying before school boards, meeting with legislators, and speaking with journalists across the country. He continues to work with scientists to be more effective science communicators, and with the public to increase science literacy in the US and abroad. Recent publications include a study of new legal strategies employed by creationists, and a study of the rhetoric of creationists in the Islamic world.