Dr. Sunny Marche

Biography:
Sunny Marche, Ph.D., CMC

Sunny Marche is a certified management consultant (CMC), with almost 25 years of consulting experi¬ence in a wide variety of areas, and is currently a Professor, MIS at Dalhousie University and the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. The university appears reluctant to expose him to undergraduate students, notwithstanding the fact he has won a number of teaching awards. His final degree was a Ph. D. in information systems from the London School of Economics.

Sunny has a special reputation among his clients for being able to help them to identify reason¬able goals and objectives, and to develop practical stra¬tegies for achieving them. He has had signifi¬cant experience in technology assessment for investment decision making given that he is a recovering venture capitalist. He has also participated on the Boards of Directors of public and private organizations in Canada.

Abstract:
The Resistible Rise of Opinion: a Call to Scientific Arms


Something pernicious and problematic has arisen in our society – it is the triumph of opinion. It begins with the implicit expectation that opinions are worth something in the first place, and there is no real need for due consideration of the evidence or the application of critical thinking as a process. It ends with the notion that every opinion is worth as much as every other opinion.

Scientific thinking generally and science specifically are important antidotes to this unfortunate development in our culture. The challenge is how to develop scientific literacy in the face of so many other demands for literacy (e.g., information literacy, computer literacy, multimedia literacy, ecological literacy, etc.). What are the necessary conditions for developing a minimum scientific competency among Canadians?