Scott J. Pearson

Nowhere to Go: The Tragic Odyssey of the Homeless Mentally Ill

By Scott J. Pearson | April 14, 2025April 14, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

In psychiatry, “serious mental illness” is substitute language for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. These two difficult diseases account for much of the homelessness that American cities see. Thus, these two diseases also account for much of where tax dollars go. The utterly tragic part, however, is that decent biomedical treatments exist for these diseases; in America, the infrastructure to treat them does not. Why? And what can be improved? This book, originally published in 1988…

Psychology

My Life Story & the American Mental Healthcare System

By Scott J. Pearson | April 12, 2025April 12, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

The course of my life changed in 2001-2003, years shortly after I graduated with my undergraduate degree from college. I had always thought I’d spend my work-life trying to help people think better about God, religion, and their lives. During this time span, however, I began to suffer from bipolar disorder, a form of mental illness more serious than, say, depression or ADHD. Nothing in my life before had prepared me to deal with this…

Religion-Philosophy

The Virtue of Dialogue: Becoming a Thriving Church Through Conversation

By Scott J. Pearson | April 7, 2025April 7, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Increasingly, Christian churches have become echo chambers that only amplify a given leader’s viewpoint. Their messages resemble denominational perspectives or, recently, boost an interdenominational framework loosely resembling political ideologies. To many, like myself, such a framework conveniently forgets about the diverse, historic nature of Christian theology. Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, was once a megachurch but shrank in membership as decades wore on. It revived itself through becoming a conversational center where people participated…

Research-Education Science Software-Technology

Understanding Tech Transfer: A Brief Guide to University Technology Transfer

By Scott J. Pearson | April 7, 2025April 7, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This short, accessible work outlines a typical tech transfer office at a university. Research universities drive innovation across entire industries and local economies, and smart companies can figure out how to leverage partnerships for commercial successes. The university office that facilitates that is called “tech transfer.” These offices received increased momentum when a federal act in 1980 allowed universities to license their innovations for profit while under federal funding. At 31 pages, this book is…

Science Writing-Communication

Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators

By Scott J. Pearson | April 6, 2025April 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Reality-based thinking isn’t popular in American society today. From policy and religion to social media and town halls, science is viewed with increasing suspicion. While it’s easy to blame entrenched economic and social interests, we in the scientific community must look at ourselves in the mirror, too. Too often, all our presentations are too abstract for the general public to understand. Too often, we hide behind science’s authority instead of admitting our limitations. In turn,…

History Religion-Philosophy Society

Jesus & John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith & Fractured a Nation

By Scott J. Pearson | April 5, 2025April 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This history describes how evangelical culture and its attitudes about masculinity have shaped white Christianity and American politics. In so doing, it tries to describe why evangelical Christians, supposedly the among the most devout and religious, have chosen to support a politician who is anything but devout and resembling the Bible’s Jesus. Frankly, Kristin Kobes du Mez, a minister’s daughter, does an honest, thorough job. The evangelicalism she describes is wedded more closely to patriarchy…

Research-Education Science Software-Technology

Tech Transfer 2.0: How Universities Can Unlock Their Patent Portfolios & Create More Tech Startups

By Scott J. Pearson | April 3, 2025April 3, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Tech transfer offices in American universities attempt to translate innovations from their research labs into industry and the wider marketplace. Tech transfer’s successes tend to be counted in patents and revenue, but most scientific advances run through larger pipelines of graduating students and journal publications. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 attempted to increase the transfer of patents from universities’ labs into licensing to industry. However, as Melba Kurman notes, successful tech transfer has been around…

Software-Technology

How to Break Web Software: Functional & Security Testing of Web Applications & Web Services

By Scott J. Pearson | March 29, 2025March 28, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This almost 20-year-old book describes the then-most common weaknesses of Internet software. Although some of the referenced technologies are outdated, a majority of the principles are still relevant in 2025. SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and the need to sanitize input parameters remain hot issues in web security for developers. Other items bring eye rolls to developers who have been around the bush – Internet Explorer, to name one. Although this book isn’t going to suddenly…

Leadership Management-Business

Organizational Culture & Leadership, 5th Edition

By Scott J. Pearson | March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

“Culture” has become a trendy word in today’s business talk. Many popular books espouse it as a cure-all to every organizational malady. Much hype certainly permeates those book, but Edgar Schein’s work cuts through the hype with an academic lens. Known as the father of the field of organizational culture, Schein describes his early explorations about it with the now-defunct DEC and how his ideas expanded with later work. As a result, this 5th edition…

Healthcare History Science

Making Medical Doctors: Science & Medicine at Vanderbilt since Flexner

By Scott J. Pearson | March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is nearly forty years old, and like any forty-year-old history, it deserves an update. But like any good forty-year-old history, the stories that are told still transmit knowledge and wisdom. As a Vanderbilt Medical Center employee, I found the history of the medical center’s refounding in 1925 enlightening as it set a direction that continues to this day. Before the era of government-funded biomedical research, most research was funded by private endowments from…