Brian Martins
Biographic Data
| ID | 3821067 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Martins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian |
| FAMILY NAME | Martins |
| SIGNATURE | MARTINS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wollongong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6261-7677 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 98 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 413 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 98 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Automated plagiarism
The advent of large language models (LLMs) has triggered concerns about various issues, one of which is plagiarism. In contrast with two long-standing types of human plagiarism, competitive and institutionalised, LLMs introduce a new type, which can be called automated plagiarism. There are many possible responses to it, including ignoring it, banning it, polluting it, exposing it, labelling it and suing for copyright infringement. The rise of au…
What's Wrong with Misinformation
Strangely, few recent studies of misinformation have given attention to the concept of misinformation itself. An examination of several studies of Covid misinformation shows them to be implicitly based on having unquestioned possession of the truth, so there is no attention to struggles over who decides what counts as misinformation and no mention of the possibility that views labelled misinformation might offer reasonable alternative perspective…
(Un)regulated wetlandscapes – laang tageek baany in Boonwurrung Country, Nairm
This paper examines laang tageek baany (rockwells) on Boonwurrung Country within the complex wetlandscapes surrounding Nairm (Port Phillip Bay), Melbourne. We use the term ‘wetlandscapes’ to describe the interconnected system of modified wetlands shaped by water flows, geology, vegetation and human activity. Within these hybrid water environments, laang tageek baany unsettle colonial classifications of water and expose limitations in contemporary…
Covid Cover-up: Secrecy, Censorship and Suppression during the Pandemic
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, most health authorities, governments, and mass media organizations presented a single official view concerning lockdowns, masking, distancing, and vaccines. The methods used against contrary views can be classified into four types: flooding, ignoring, censoring, and attacking. The method of information flooding involves presenting dominant views in a unified front, overwhelming contrary views by volume …
Data Cartels: The Companies that Control and Monopolize our Information, Sarah Lamdan
Beyond nonviolent regime change: Anarchist insights
In recent years, a major focus of research and campaigning on strategic nonviolent action has been on movements to oust authoritarian rulers. However, these “nonviolent revolutions” usually do not transform systems of economic and social domination. To motivate appreciation of what might be involved in a more far‐reaching social transformation, selected anarchist themes offer useful guides. The relevance of four principles of anarchist theory and…
Tactics of Scholarly Abuses
Towards strategic rioting
Benjamin Case (2021) argues that the framework of strategic nonviolence is limited by its assumption that violent protest necessarily demobilises movements, and that rioting can be empowering for participants. However, Case’s statistical analysis of US riots and peaceful demonstrations may not be a comparison of rioting and nonviolent action because it is questionable whether, in the US, peaceful demonstrations should be classified as methods of …
Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics
The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors …
Responsabilidade Social da Universidade
Learning from Criticisms of Civil Resistance
In recent decades, civil resistance, also known as nonviolent action, has become more widely used among social movements and recognised by researchers. Alexei Anisin has usefully offered a critique of civil resistance theory and practice. His ideas are used as a basis for reflection and deeper understanding of both strengths and weaknesses of this approach. Inspired by Anisin's questioning of the dataset used to compare nonviolent and violent ant…
Dealing with Conspiracy Theory Attributions
Academic discussions concerning what to do about conspiracy theories often focus on whether or not to debunk them. Less often discussed are the methods, audiences and effectiveness of debunking efforts. To motivate a closer examination of the ‘how’ of debunking, a slightly different issue is addressed: conspiracy theory attributions (CTAs), which are claims that someone or some group believes in a conspiracy theory. Three cases of discrediting CT…
Reflections on a Life in Science and STS
In popular histories, science is commonly presented as engaging in a struggle against organised religion. The story of Galileo, forced by church authorities to recant his views, is endlessly retold
Nationalizing France’s Army: Foreign, Black, and Jewish Troops in the French Military, 1715–1831
Long before the creation of the French Foreign Legion (1831), the military exploitation of the French Colonial Empire (1830–1962) and the anti-Semitic scandal of the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), foreigners, people of colour and Jewish soldiers served in the French Armies of the Ancien Régime, Revolution, First Empire and Restoration. In Nationalizing France’s Army: Foreign, Black, and Jewish Troops in the French Military, 1715–1831, Christopher To…
Leaks, whistleblowing and the public interest: The law of unauthorised disclosures
In 1998, the UK's Public Interest Disclosure Act became law.It has been praised by some as a model and criticised by others as inadequate.So what is the situation for UK whistleblowers, those employees who make disclosures about fraud, malpractice and other problems within organisations?If whistleblowers are adequately protected against reprisals, employees are more likely to report problems, thus benefiting the public interest.If not, then probl…
Persistent Bias on Wikipedia: Methods and Responses
Systematically biased editing, persistently maintained, can occur on Wikipedia while nominally following guidelines. Techniques for biasing an entry include deleting positive material, adding negative material, using a one-sided selection of sources, and exaggerating the significance of particular topics. To maintain bias in an entry in the face of resistance, key techniques are reverting edits, selectively invoking Wikipedia rules, and overrulin…
STS and Researcher Intervention Strategies
When I learned about a concerted campaign against Australian vaccination critics, I decided to intervene in the debate. As a result, some proponents of vaccination turned on me, making abusive comments and complaining to university officials. At several points in this experience, I had to make choices about how to intervene or respond. STS perspectives offered valuable insights for understanding the dynamics of the controversy but provided little…
STS Interventions: Preparing, Defending, Learning
Intervening in the Australian vaccination debate, I found that STS perspectives helped me understand the controversy but gave little guidance on how to defend against attacks. Max Liboiron comments that preparation, including support networks, should precede interventions. I was well supported in my involvement in the vaccination debate, but those who openly advocate a stigmatized view may have difficulty gaining support. Teun Zuiderent-Jerak ask…
Learning from Delusions [Opinion]
Examines the concept of delusions as it applies to surveillance and assesses its impact on society
Patriotic Collaboration: Zhou Fohai and the Wang Jingwei Government during the Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) has not receded into the past for the Chinese, but remains a complicating factor in contemporary Sino-Japanese relations. This is largely because of the way the Chinese government has used the War to gain an advantage over the Japanese government during periods of tension, and to stimulate anti-Japanese nationalist sentiment to bolster its nationalist credentials in a new post-communist age. This continuing …
Tactics of political lying: The Iguanas affair
Political lying recurrently becomes a major issue in the media. Audience members seldom have first-hand information and hence rely on media stories to assess claims. Although background information may not be available, the tactics used by key players are more likely to be reported. Two models for analysing tactics are introduced, one based on methods of deception, detection and response, the other based on methods to reduce or increase outrage o…
Failures of nonviolent action
Thomas Richard Davies in his 2014 article ‘The Failure of Strategic Nonviolent Action in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Syria’ in Global Change, Peace & Security addresses an important topic.11 Thomas R
The Dynamics of Nonviolence Knowledge
Nonviolent action, despite its widespread use and successes, has received relatively little scholarly attention and financial support compared to military research and studies of conventional politics. Understanding the direction and content of knowledge about nonviolence is a project in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge that can help explain why the study of nonviolence has been marginalized, why misconceptions about it persist, why so…
Snowden's Lessons for Whistleblowers [Commentary]
In June 2013, Edward Snowden burst onto the world media scene. He had worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency and collected a vast quantity of top-secret documents. Snowden leaked the documents to the Guardian, a well-known British newspaper and media group, revealing that the NSA had been secretly carrying out extensive spying on electronic communications. Snowden quickly became one of the world's best known whistleblowers. As we…
Resist, scientist! Countering degradation rituals in science
When the work and reputation of scientists suffer ritual degradation, a range of tactics can be deployed to resist and rework the psychological and social impacts. Five key resistance tactics to degradation in science are revealing degradation rituals, redeeming the reputation of the targeted scientist, reframing the degradation as unfair, redirecting attention to other domains, and refusing to cooperate with the rituals. These tactics are illust…
Repression, Backfire, and The Theory of Transformative Events
Repression sometimes can lead to greater movement mobilization: repressive events that are perceived as unjust have the potential to generate enormous public outrage against those seen as responsible. One result of repression-backfire-can contribute to the understanding of the conditions under which some repressive events may become transformative for social movements. Three case studies that highlight the processes involved in backfire are exami…
Science Studies and Activism: Possibilities and Problems for Reconstructivist Agendas
Might a rapprochement be desirable and possible between the more academic and the more activist wings of STS? What can each learn from the other? A promising trajectory for this purpose may be to reinterpret and extend research in the constructivist tradition, building on recent work that appears to constitute the beginnings of a reconstructivist scholarly tradition. Some of the necessary work would be explicitly prescriptive: given that technolo…
Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies
According to both traditional positivist approaches and also to the sociology of scientific knowledge, social analysts should not themselves become involved in the controversies they are investigating. But the experiences of the authors in studying contemporary scientific controversies-specifically, over the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, fluoridation, and vitamin C and cancer-show that analysts, whatever their intentions, cannot avoid bein…
The Critique of Science Becomes Academic
The author uses personal experiences to introduce the view that the critique of science, on entering the academy in the form of the sociology of scientific knowledge, has become increasingly remote from crucial social issues and social movements confronting it. By linking their analyses more with such issues and movements, science studies scholars can serve a more useful social purpose and also reinvigorate their theory
Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics
The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors …
Sticking a Needle into Science: The Case of Polio Vaccines and the Origin of Aids
The author became involved with the theory that AIDS originated from contaminated polio vaccines by arranging for publication of a key paper, by interacting with prominent partisans and by writing articles himself. These experiences suggest some of the advantages and disadvantages of partisan intervention in the scientific reception system by a social analyst. Open partisanship should be added to the repertoire of social analysts of science
Analyzing the Fluoridation Controversy: Resources and Structures
The fluoridation issue provides a test of some of the usual approaches to the analysis of scientific controversies. One of the important features of the fluoridation debate has been the use of professional power to promote fluoridation and to attack the credibility and activities of anti-fluoridation scientists. To incorporate this feature, the `resources' perspective must be broadened to include resources besides discourse. Even so, the resource…
Outrage Management in Cases of Sexual Harassment as Revealed in Judicial Decisions
Sexual harassment can be conceptualized as a series of interactions between harassers and targets that either inhibit or increase outrage by third parties. The outrage management model predicts the kinds of actions likely to be used by perpetrators to minimize outrage, predicts the consequences of failing to use these tactics—namely backfire, and recommends countertactics to increase outrage. Using this framework, our archival study examined outr…
Nonviolence and Communication
Communication is central to the effectiveness of nonviolent action: methods of protest and persuasion are essentially means of communication, while methods of non-cooperation and nonviolent intervention have crucial communicative dimensions. As a mode of political communication, nonviolence can be contrasted with rational dialogue, electoral politics and violence, and stands out from them in combining high transformative potential with dialogue a…
Gene Sharp's Theory of Power
Gene Sharp, the world's leading writer on non-violent action, uses a theory of power based on a division between rulers and subjects and on the withdrawing of consent as the main avenue for effecting political change. From the point of view of structural approaches to the analysis of society, Sharp's picture leaves out much of the complexity of political life, such as the structures of capitalism, patriarchy and bureaucracy which do not fit well …
The Beating of Rodney King: The Dynamics of Backfire
Dissent and heresy in medicine: Models, Methods, and Strategies
Science, Technology and Nonviolent Action: The Case for a Utopian Dimension in the Social Analysis of Science and Technology
Science and technology can be used and developed to support nonviolent struggle as well as military struggle. By examining what science and technology is likely to be useful for nonviolent action, a set of priorities for disciplinary fields, research projects and methods of research is obtained that is quite different from those associated with military priorities. This case study illustrates the value of studying not just the science and technol…
Repetition Strain Injury in Australia: Medical Knowledge, Social Movement, and De Facto Partisanship
One of the most vehement debates over medical knowledge in Australia in the 1980s concerned “repetition strain injury” or RSI. This paper analyzes the Australian RSI experience using two contrasting approaches: the sociology of medical knowledge and social problems as social movements. Each approach tends to delegitimate the position that RSI is work-related and has an organic basis. A key factor leading to the de facto partisanship associated wi…
The social construction of drug debates
Persistent Bias on Wikipedia: Methods and Responses
Systematically biased editing, persistently maintained, can occur on Wikipedia while nominally following guidelines. Techniques for biasing an entry include deleting positive material, adding negative material, using a one-sided selection of sources, and exaggerating the significance of particular topics. To maintain bias in an entry in the face of resistance, key techniques are reverting edits, selectively invoking Wikipedia rules, and overrulin…
The Dynamics of Nonviolence Knowledge
Nonviolent action, despite its widespread use and successes, has received relatively little scholarly attention and financial support compared to military research and studies of conventional politics. Understanding the direction and content of knowledge about nonviolence is a project in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge that can help explain why the study of nonviolence has been marginalized, why misconceptions about it persist, why so…
How to Attack a Scientific Theory and Get Away with It (Usually): The Attempt to Destroy an Origin-of-Aids Hypothesis
Supporters of dominant scientific theories sometimes attack competing, less favoured theories in ways that conflict with expectations of proper scientific behaviour, for example by using double standards. To reduce concern about their actions, supporters can use a variety of techniques: cover up the violation of expectations; devalue the competing theory and its advocates; interpret the process as proper; use expert panels, meetings and other for…
The Sociology of the Fluoridation Controversy
Previous studies have explained opposition to fluoridation in terms of misinformation, alienation, or confusion. These studies have several shortcomings stemming from an uncritical attitude toward scientific knowledge. Recent perspectives in the sociology of scientific knowledge provide the basis for developing a wider understanding of the fluoridation issue, including analysis of scientific disagreements, the promotion of fluoridation, and exper…
My Lai: The Struggle Over Outrage
The 1968 My Lai massacre, during the Vietnam War, and its aftermath can be conceptualized as a struggle over outrage. Examination of the events reveals that the perpetrators and their commanders took various actions that inhibited outrage over the unprovoked killing of civilians. These actions can be classified into five methods: covering up evidence; devaluing the victims; reinterpreting the episode as a military victory; setting up superficial …
The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: The Origin-of-Aids Debate at the Royal Society
The Royal Society of London held a scientific meeting in September 2000 focusing on two theories of the origin of AIDS: one, that it occurred through "natural transfer" of immunodeficiency virus from monkeys or chimpanzees to humans; and the other, that it occurred through iatrogenic transfer via contaminated polio vaccines used in Africa in the late 1950s. This meeting was the culmination of years of public contention over the polio-vaccine theo…
Social Defence Strategy: The Role of Technology
Social defence - namely, nonviolent community resistance to aggression as an alternative to military defence - requires the development of strategy, as does military defence. The role of technology in social defence strategy has never received much attention. Of the various perspectives on technology, perhaps the most useful for the purposes of social defence is that artefacts, by embodying social relationships, influence but do not determine the…
Technological vulnerability
Who's a Captive? Who's a Victim? Response to Collins's Method Talk
We are grateful to Harry Collins for clarifying his own assumptions about science and social science. He argues for neutrality as a methodological prescription. It was precisely our aim to argue against this. We begin here by specifying three difficulties with the prescription of methodological neutrality for controversy studies: interaction with the debate, selection and deployment of methods, and social influences on methods. The latter two dif…
Merit and Power
The merit principle, used as a way of removing biases in occupational structures, is flawed. The evaluation of merit is tied to the interests of those in positions of power, so that application of the merit principle is compatible with continued structural inequalities. In practice the concept of merit is used as a resource in organisational power struggles. A deeper problem with the merit principle is its acceptance of occupational hierarchies. …
Voting models incorporating interactions between voters
The Selective Usefulness of Game Theory
The concepts of game theory are analyzed to determine their selective usefulness for studying certain types of problems and obtaining certain types of conclusions. It is found that game theory lends itself to perspectives and applications which do not question the assumptions underlying existing structures or institutions in society. The selective usefulness of game theory concepts is reflected in the actual uses and applications of the theory; s…
Critique of Nuclear Extinction
The idea that global nuclear war could kill most or all of the world's population is critically examined and found to have little or no scientific basis. A number of possible reasons for beliefs about nuclear extinction are presented, including exaggeration to justify inaction, fear of death, exaggeration to stimulate action, the idea that planning is defeatist, exaggeration to justify concern, white western orientation, the pattern of day-to-day…
Merit and Power
The merit principle, used as a way of removing biases in occupational structures, is flawed. The evaluation of merit is tied to the interests of those in positions of power, so that application of the merit principle is compatible with continued structural inequalities. In practice the concept of merit is used as a resource in organisational power struggles. A deeper problem with the merit principle is its acceptance of occupational hierarchies. …
Analyzing the Fluoridation Controversy: Resources and Structures
The fluoridation issue provides a test of some of the usual approaches to the analysis of scientific controversies. One of the important features of the fluoridation debate has been the use of professional power to promote fluoridation and to attack the credibility and activities of anti-fluoridation scientists. To incorporate this feature, the `resources' perspective must be broadened to include resources besides discourse. Even so, the resource…
Technological Vulnerability: A Neglected Area in Policy-Making
Many technological systems are vulnerable to threats such as military attack, sabotage, sudden economic change or social disaffection. There are various ways to reduce such vulnerabilities, such as direct planning, diversification and self-reliance, but current policy-making takes little cognisance of the issue
Computing and War
Gene Sharp's Theory of Power
Gene Sharp, the world's leading writer on non-violent action, uses a theory of power based on a division between rulers and subjects and on the withdrawing of consent as the main avenue for effecting political change. From the point of view of structural approaches to the analysis of society, Sharp's picture leaves out much of the complexity of political life, such as the structures of capitalism, patriarchy and bureaucracy which do not fit well …
The Sociology of the Fluoridation Controversy
Previous studies have explained opposition to fluoridation in terms of misinformation, alienation, or confusion. These studies have several shortcomings stemming from an uncritical attitude toward scientific knowledge. Recent perspectives in the sociology of scientific knowledge provide the basis for developing a wider understanding of the fluoridation issue, including analysis of scientific disagreements, the promotion of fluoridation, and exper…
Strangers and Sisters: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949. Emily Honig
An overview
Left or Left Behind? Heller and Feher on the Peace Movement
Review of Doomsday or Deterrence? by Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
On the Neglect of Scientists with Low Research Productivity
Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies
According to both traditional positivist approaches and also to the sociology of scientific knowledge, social analysts should not themselves become involved in the controversies they are investigating. But the experiences of the authors in studying contemporary scientific controversies-specifically, over the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, fluoridation, and vitamin C and cancer-show that analysts, whatever their intentions, cannot avoid bein…
Who's a Captive? Who's a Victim? Response to Collins's Method Talk
We are grateful to Harry Collins for clarifying his own assumptions about science and social science. He argues for neutrality as a methodological prescription. It was precisely our aim to argue against this. We begin here by specifying three difficulties with the prescription of methodological neutrality for controversy studies: interaction with the debate, selection and deployment of methods, and social influences on methods. The latter two dif…
Shanghai 1927-1937, Elites Locals et Modernisation dans la Chine Nationaliste. Christian Henriot
Scientific Fraud and the Power Structure of Science
In the routine practice of scientific research, there are many types of misrepresentation and bias which could be considered dubious. However, only a few narrowly defined behaviours are singled out and castigated as scientific fraud. A narrow definition of scientific fraud is convenient to the groups in society – scientific elites, and powerful government and corporate interests – that have the dominant influence on priorities in science. Several…
Automatic Vehicle Identification: A Test of Theories of Technology
Two contrasting theories-actor-network theory and nondecision making-are separately applied to the same case study, namely, technologies for automatically identifying road vehicles. By this process, the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are highlighted: The actor-network approach is useful for understanding local processes but lacks tools for easily illuminating patterns across countries; by contrast, the concept of nondecision making is …
Repetition Strain Injury in Australia: Medical Knowledge, Social Movement, and De Facto Partisanship
One of the most vehement debates over medical knowledge in Australia in the 1980s concerned “repetition strain injury” or RSI. This paper analyzes the Australian RSI experience using two contrasting approaches: the sociology of medical knowledge and social problems as social movements. Each approach tends to delegitimate the position that RSI is work-related and has an organic basis. A key factor leading to the de facto partisanship associated wi…
The Critique of Science Becomes Academic
The author uses personal experiences to introduce the view that the critique of science, on entering the academy in the form of the sociology of scientific knowledge, has become increasingly remote from crucial social issues and social movements confronting it. By linking their analyses more with such issues and movements, science studies scholars can serve a more useful social purpose and also reinvigorate their theory
The Green Gang and the Guomindang State: Du Yuesheng and the Politics of Shanghai, 1927-37
The complex relationship that developed between Du Yuesheng's Shanghai Green Gang group and the Guomindang regime in the mid-1930s provides useful insights into the nature of the Nanjing government's rule and, in particular, into the manner it exercised power in its Jiangnan bailiwick. Although the Shanghai Green Gang bosses, in particular Du Yuesheng, were coopted by the new Guomindang State, their full integration into the regime's power struct…
The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919–1937
In a remarkable example of history as detective work, Brian Martin pieces together the fascinating and complex story of the Shanghai Green Gang and its charismatic leader, Du Yuesheng. Martin sifts through a variety of fragmentary and at times contradictory evidence—from diplomatic dispatches to memoirs to police reports—to produce the most comprehensive account of this chaotic period of Chinese history. In analyzing the Green Gang's system of or…
Sticking a Needle into Science: The Case of Polio Vaccines and the Origin of Aids
The author became involved with the theory that AIDS originated from contaminated polio vaccines by arranging for publication of a key paper, by interacting with prominent partisans and by writing articles himself. These experiences suggest some of the advantages and disadvantages of partisan intervention in the scientific reception system by a social analyst. Open partisanship should be added to the repertoire of social analysts of science
Social Construction of an `Attack on Science
undermine their views, since Gross and Levitt's basic approach is to attack constructivists for not being positivists, adding the spice of a one-sided commentary on intellectuals. For science studies scholars, the interest in the book lies not in the content but the way the argument is constructed, noting its resonance in wider circles.1 For those who are used to studying the political uses of science, Higher Superstition provides an object lesso…
Technological vulnerability
Political science (73 works) · Sociology (59 works) · Law (53 works) · Computer Science (38 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (30 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Psychology (27 works) · Engineering (18 works)