Sir

In his review of the book Intellectual Impostures, Richard Dawkins makes the astonishing claim that the authors, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, “expose Bruno Latour's confusion of relativity with relativism” (Nature 394, 141– 143; 1998 ).

Here is what Sokal and Bricmont say about this matter in their book: “Finally, Latour draws an eminently sensible distinction between ‘relativism’ and ‘relativity’: in the former, points of view are subjective and irreconcilable; in the latter, space-time coordinates can be transformed unambiguously between reference frames.”

Perhaps, after Dawkins explains how “Latour draws an eminently sensible distinction” became “Latour's confusion”, he will tell us why he feels entitled to claim that there is a confusion in an essay of Latour he shows no sign of having read. He could hardly have done so without noticing that Latour, in fact, belabours the distinction between relativity = objectivity (good) and relativism = no objectivity (bad). Is Dawkins really talking about Bruno Latour?

The review is shot through with misinformation. I believe Dawkins is sincere. But he has failed badly to take the measure of the texts and people he talks about, both those he favours and those he does not. For example, an unhurried reading of page 8 of Strange Weather shows that he badly misunderstands Andrew Ross's ironic reference to how his lack of scientific training (“the science teachers I never had”) determined what book he wrote (“it could only have been written without them”). Referring to arguments about the cultural authority of intellectuals that he developed in an earlier book, Ross explains: “My plan was to explore the reach of these arguments into the world of science and technology. As I lacked the training of a scientific intellectual and the accompanying faith, however vestigal or self-critical, in the certainties of the scientific method, it became clear that my point of identification could not be with ‘high’ scientific culture. My position, then, became that of a cultural critic examining the power and authority of the claims made for science and technology [and] the responses to these claims in the popular culture.”

An equally attentive reading of page 113 of Sandra Harding's The Science Question in Feminism refutes the canard repeated by Dawkins about “a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia” as a rape manual. The sexual metaphor in question — forced penetration of a female entity — is not twentieth-century feminist but, on Harding's reading of the literature, early modern scientific. She believes it probably was fruitful for early modern scientific enquiry and conceptualization, hence her ironic observation that “rape manual” seems as apt a metaphor for the early modern conception of Newton's laws as is “mechanics”.

Dawkins would like works such as Intellectual Impostures to reach a wider audience. So would I. But, unlike Dawkins, I want them to be read sceptically and held to the strict standards of evidence and logic that he and the authors of these works invoke even as they abuse them. By these standards, “it makes me laugh” and “I don't get it” are not arguments. Nature should start enforcing these standards too. “Science as a cultural construct”, and the letters it generated, came close to meeting these standards (Nature 386, 545 –547; 1997 ). This made it possible for important issues to be discussed in a thoughtful way. The same cannot be said of Dawkins' review or the works that he recommends in it.