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title: "Brian Martin (social scientist)"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Martin_(social_scientist)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:51.577460+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
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=== Vaccines ===
Martin has offered support for the discredited proposal that oral polio vaccine caused AIDS. The hypothesis first came to notice in Rolling Stone magazine by way of journalist Curtis and AIDS activist Elswood in 1992, and was later further promoted by the journalist/writer Hooper and Martin, with Hooper crediting Martin for giving the OPV-AIDS link hypothesis "further publicity and credibility". Martin disputes the claim that he has been a supporter of the hypothesis, instead saying that he has "never argued in favour of the OPV theory", but has instead stated "that it was and remains worthy of consideration yet in many ways has been unfairly dismissed". A 2016 article in The Australian described Martin's 2010 paper as claiming "that medical researchers had colluded to silence the theory that the AIDS virus was caused by contaminated polio vaccines in 1950s Africa."
Immunologist and research scientist Greg Woods refuted Martin's posit on the Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease stating Martin's 2014 paper in The Conversation on the theory behind the cancer "misrepresents the state of the science".
In 2014, Martin published a paper characterising criticism of Andrew Wakefield's discredited claims about vaccines and autism as "suppression of vaccination dissent". In 2016, an Agence Science-Presse piece accused Martin of defending "the idea of a vaccine-autism link." However, Martin disputes this, saying: "I have never defended this idea." The Australian reported that "Martin is a former paid member of the anti-vaccine Australian Vaccination Network", and that Martin states that he is also a member of the American Skeptics Society.
Martin has been criticised for his role in the Judith Wilyman PhD controversy where medical academics and the AMA raised concerns of whether Martin had the necessary knowledge to assess her doctorate which discussed vaccine science. The Australian has criticised him as not recognising academic rigour over academic freedom, and surgeon John Cunningham called on the university to have the thesis "reviewed by people whom have knowledge of vaccinations".
In 2016, the Australian Skeptics criticised Martin's supervision of Wilyman by presenting Martin, Wilyman and the Social Sciences Department of the University of Wollongong the satirical Bent Spoon Award for awarding "a PhD thesis riddled with errors, misstatements, poor and unsupported 'evidence' and conspiratorial thinking".

== Publications ==

=== Books ===
Truth tactics (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2021)
Official channels (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2020)
Jørgen Johansen and Brian Martin. Social defence (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2019)
Vaccination panic in Australia (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2018)
The deceptive activist (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2017).
Ruling tactics: methods of promoting everyday nationalism, how they serve rulers and how to oppose them (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2017).
Nonviolence Unbound (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2015).
The Controversy Manual (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2014).
Doing Good Things Better (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2013)
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)
Information Liberation, (London: Freedom Press, 1998).
Tied Knowledge: Power in Higher Education, (self-published, 1998).
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).
(with C. M. Ann Baker, Clyde Manwell & Cedric Pugh) Intellectual Suppression: Australian Case Histories, Analysis and Responses, (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1986) ISBN 0207151326
Uprooting war, (London: Freedom Press, 1984).ISBN 978-0900384264
The Bias of Science (Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1979) ISBN 0909509131

=== Journal articles in the physical sciences ===
His most cited papers are:

Davies, Brian; Martin, Brian (1 October 1979). "Numerical inversion of the laplace transform: a survey and comparison of methods". Journal of Computational Physics. 33 (1): 1–32. Bibcode:1979JCoPh..33....1D. doi:10.1016/0021-9991(79)90025-1. ISSN 0021-9991.
Hess, David; Martin, Brian (1 June 2006). "Repression, Backfire, and The Theory of Transformative Events". Mobilization: An International Quarterly. 11 (2): 249–267. doi:10.17813/maiq.11.2.3204855020732v63. ISSN 1086-671X.
Martin, Brian; Richards, Evelleen (1995). "Scientific Knowledge, Controversy, and Public Decision Making". Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. SAGE Publications, Inc.: 506–526. doi:10.4135/9781412990127.d30. ISBN 978-0-7619-2498-2. Retrieved 22 January 2024.

=== Other journal articles (selection) ===
Brian Martin (1990). Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 15, No. 4, Fall 1990, pp. 474–494
Martin, Brian (1996). "Sticking a Needle into Science: The Case of Polio Vaccines and the Origin of AIDS". Social Studies of Science. 26 (2): 245–276. doi:10.1177/030631296026002003. S2CID 146463905.
Juan Miguel Campanario & Brian Martin (2004). Challenging dominant physics paradigms, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 18, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 421–438.
David Hess & Brian Martin (2006). Repression, backfire, and the theory of transformative events Mobilization, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2006, pp. 249–267.
Martin, Brian (2015). "On the Suppression of Vaccination Dissent". Science and Engineering Ethics. 21 (1): 143–157. doi:10.1007/s11948-014-9530-3. PMID 24658876. S2CID 9824788. Published online: 23 March 2014.

== References ==

== External links ==
Personal home page
Brian Martin, University of Wollongong