Keynote Speaker

Lee McIntyre, Ph.D.
Philospher and Author
LEE McINTYRE is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a recent Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. He has taught philosophy at Colgate University (where he won the Fraternity and Sorority Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching Philosophy), Boston University, Tufts Experimental College, Simmons College, and Harvard Extension School (where he received the Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Distinguished Teaching). Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

McIntyre is the author of On Disinformation (MIT Press, 2023), How to Talk to a Science Denier (MIT Press, 2021), The Art of Good and Evil (Braveship, 2021), Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2019), The Sin Eater (Braveship, 2019), The Scientific Attitude (MIT Press, 2019), Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018), Respecting Truth (Routledge, 2015), Dark Ages (MIT Press, 2006), and Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences (Westview Press, 1996). He is the co-editor of five anthologies: Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (MIT Press, 1994), two volumes in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science series: Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline (Springer, 2006) and Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline (Springer 2014), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science (Routledge, 2017), and A Companion to Public Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022). McIntyre is also the author of Explaining Explanation: Essays in the Philosophy of the Special Sciences (Rowman and Littlefield/UPA, 2012), which is a collection of twenty years’ worth of his philosophical essays.

McIntyre's popular essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Nature, Scientific American, Newsweek, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Deseret Magazine, and numerous other venues. He has appeared on CNN International on Amanpour and Company -- and several other programs on PBS, NPR and the BBC -- and has spoken at the United Nations, NASA, and the Vatican.

Keynote Presentation Description:    Denial, Trust, and Excipients: How to have More Productive Conversations at the Intersection of Science and Values Are people justified in making decisions about their personal health that do not conform with the latest scientific evidence? What is the role of the "precautionary principle" here, and what is the best way to think about balancing risk? Is it possible to convince those who resist excipients by using the same model that has been successfully used on science deniers? But is it appropriate to dismiss those who resist excipients as deniers in the first place? The benefit of handling these conversations correctly can be enormous. The cost of handling them wrong might be increased governmental regulation, as we have seen in Europe on GMOs. But first, in our own minds, we must be careful to respect the distinction between scientific facts and values -- between definitive evidence and personal choice. Paperback copies of Dr. McIntyre's book "How to Talk to Science Denier" are available for purchase during registration.  The keynote presentation will be immediately followed by a book signing in the exhibit hall.