Brian Martin

Brian Martin (born 1947) teaches in the interdisciplinary area of Science, technology, and society at the University of Wollongong in Australia, where he became a professor in 2007. He was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International Director.

Background

Martin was born in Gary, Indiana, USA, although grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He took an undergraduate degree at Rice University from 1965–1969. He left the US primarily to avoid the military draft during the Vietnam War, settling in Sydney where he received his PhD (in theoretical physics) from the University of Sydney in 1976. He also became more concerned about injustice, and joined activist organizations; he has established, and been a part of, several campaigns and organisations. He subsequently worked at the Australian National University as an applied mathematician before his position was terminated, and became a lecturer at the University of Wollongong in 1986. By then he had started to work on social issues surrounding scientific investigation.

Scholarly contributions

The central theme in Martin's research is the dynamics of power, with special attention to strategies for challenging repression and exploitation. He has explored power dynamics through an interplay of theory and case studies, including nonviolent action, technological vulnerability, values in science, environmental politics, institutional roots of war, dissent and scientific controversies. His backfire model is a framework for understanding tactics used by perpetrators of injustice, as well as providing various means for resisting these tactics.

Martin is the author of 15 books and over 200 major papers and chapters. His choice of research topic and perspective is individualistic, and ranges widely. Unlike his books, many of his articles are published in unusual locations including activist magazines and online journals. In wider public life, he has spoken at a British Science Association Festival of Science, broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and testified at the Australian Senate's Inquiry into Academic Freedom.

As a social scientist interested in the dynamics and politics of controversy, Martin attempts to not take sides, while recognizing the myth of the neutral observer. The controversies Martin has studied include: nuclear power, fluoridation, pesticides, nuclear winter, the origins of AIDS, euthanasia, and vaccination.

Martin's earlier scientific work was in stratospheric modelling and numerical methods; astrophysics; and wind power and electricity grids.

Books

• Nonviolence unbound(Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2015).
• The Controversy Manual (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2014).
• Doing Good Things Better (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2011)
• Justice Ignited: The Dynamics of Backfire, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
• (with Wendy Varney). Nonviolence Speaks: Communicating against Repression, (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003).
• Nonviolence versus capitalism (London: War Resisters' International, 2001).
• Technology for Nonviolent Struggle, (London: War Resisters' International, 2001).
• (with Lyn Carson). Random Selection in Politics, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).
• The Whistleblower's Handbook: How to Be an Effective Resister, (Charlbury, UK: Jon Carpenter; Sydney: Envirobook, 1999). Updated and republished 2013 as Whistleblowing: a practical guide, Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing)
• (ed.) Technology and Public Participation (University of Wollongong, 1999)
• Information Liberation, (London: Freedom Press, 1998).
• Tied Knowledge: Power in Higher Education (self-published)
• Suppression Stories, (Wollongong: Fund for Intellectual Dissent, 1997).
• Social Defence, Social Change (London: Freedom Press, 1993)
• Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)
• Uprooting war (London: Freedom Press, 1984).
• The Bias of Science (Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1979) ISBN 0-909509-13-1

Journal articles in the physical sciences

His most cited papers are:

• Davies, Brian; Martin, Brian (October 1979). "Numerical inversion of the Laplace transform: a survey and comparison of methods" (PDF). Journal of Computational Physics. 33 (1): 1–32. Bibcode:1979JCoPh..33....1D. doi:10.1016/0021-9991(79)90025-1. (cited over 470 times)
• Wickramasinghe, D.T. and Martin, B. (1979) "Magnetic DA White Dwarfs" Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Volume 188, Issue 1. pp.165-180.

Other Journal articles (selection)

• Martin, Brian (2008). "The globalisation of scientific controversy". Globalization. 7 (1): online.
• Scott, Pam; Richards, E.; Martin, B. (Fall 1990). "Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies". Science, Technology, & Human Values. 15 (4): 474–494. doi:10.1177/016224399001500406.
• Hess, David; Martin, Brian (June 2006). "Repression, backfire, and the theory of transformative events". Mobilization. 11 (1): 249–267.
• Martin, Brian (1978). "The selective usefulness of game theory". Social Studies of Science. 8: 85–110. doi:10.1177/030631277800800103.
• Campanario, Juan Miguel; Martin, Brian (Fall 2004). "Challenging dominant physics paradigms". Journal of Scientific Exploration. 18 (3): 421–438. Bibcode:2008atcr.book...11C.

External links

• Brian Martin, University of Wollongong
• Publications with Brian Martin's topic pages Dissent, Nuclear Suppression, Schweik Action Wollongong
• Audio File of Brian Martin's "Democracy Without Elections"
• Whistleblowers Australia