Levitt states he is a leftist trying to save the "academic left" from itself by exposing misuses and abuses of science to advance political goals. Topics discussed include: cultural constructivism or
social constructivism, the
strong programme, the science criticism of
Stanley Aronowitz and
Bruno Latour,
post-modernism and
deconstructionism and their influence on American academia, the science criticism of
Andrew Ross, feminist science criticism, environmentalist science criticism and "apocalyptic naturism",
Jeremy Rifkin's influential "pseudoscientific alarmism", attacks on medical research connected with AIDS activism and
animal rights advocacy, and
Afrocentrism. The book also questions
human activity's relationship with climate change. The authors find it unfortunate that social scientists and literary critics often consider themselves qualified to criticize the natural sciences without learning much about them in detail, and worry about what would replace
Enlightenment ideals of universalism and rationalism, and objective truths about the natural world as ascertained by a scientific methodology of repeatable experiments, if these were to be discredited, as many science critics in the humanities wish to do. ==Reception and influence==