CSR researchers Raoni Rajão and Britaldo Soares-Filho received along with partners the Amílcar Herrera award from the Latin American Association for Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESOCITE) for the article “The risk of fake controversies for Brazilian environmental policies”. Originally published in English in the journal Biological Conservation in February 2022, the article exposes the strategy of creating false scientific controversies by a group of Brazilian researchers led by Evaristo de Miranda and points out their enormous negative impact on Brazilian public policies for the environment.

The Amílcar Herrera award is given to works by senior and active researchers published in the last 5 years that deal with relevant aspects of the relationship between science and technology and society.

Amilcar Herrera was an Argentine geologist exiled by the country’s dictatorship and who, after spending time in England, settled in Brazil in 1979 where he founded the Institute of Geosciences and the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). His explanation about the obstacles to development in Latin America are not the product of a lack of scientific capacity, but of little local social demand for research and development, and his distinction between implicit and explicit science and technology (S&T) policy are among his fundamental contributions to thinking about S&T and society in Latin America.