The Scientific Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

This unique volume describes how scientific truth is perceived. It includes theories from the philosophy of science that pertain to truth and objectivity in science.

John R Helliwell, DSc (Physics, University of York), DPhil (Molecular Biophysics, Oxford University) is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at The University of Manchester, where he served as Professor of Structural Chemistry from 1989 to 2012. Academic teaching from 1979 till 1988 was at the Universities of Keele and York in the physics departments there. He is a researcher in the fields of crystallography, biophysics, structural biology, structural chemistry and data science. He was also based at the Synchrotron Radiation Source at the UK’s Daresbury Laboratory, in various periods of appointment between 1979 to 2008, including in 2002 as Director of Synchrotron Radiation Science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Society of Biology, and the American Crystallographic Association, an Honorary Member of the British Crystallographic Association and of the British Biophysical Society. He is a Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences & Arts of Barcelona, Spain and an Honorary Member of the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia. His awards include the European Crystallographic Association Eighth Max Perutz Prize 2015, the American Crystallographic Association Patterson Award 2014, and the ’Professor K Banerjee Endowment Lecture Silver Medal’ of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) 2001. He has published over 200 scientific research papers and several books, e.g. Macromolecular Crystallography with Synchrotron Radiation with Cambridge University Press (1992), published in paperback in 2005 and Macromolecular Crystallization and Crystal Perfection with N E Chayen and E H Snell), Oxford University Press - International Union of Crystallography Monographs on Crystallography (2010). He has published several Scientific Life, popular science, books in recent years, which are with CRC Press Taylor and Francis.

He has served in roles of major responsibility such as President of the European Crystallographic Association (2007 to 2010), Chairman of the International Union of Crystallography’s (IUCr) Commission on Journals (1996-2005), Chairman of the IUCr Diffraction Data Deposition Working Group (2011 to 2017) and its Committee on Data (2017 to 2023) as well as its Representative to the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI; 2005 to 2014) and the International Council of Science’s Committee on Data ’CODATA’ (2012 to 2023). In the past thirty years he has Chaired several international advisory committees for synchrotron, and more recently neutron, facilities’ development and their users’ science. He was Leader of the UK Delegation at the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics Congress and General Assembly in New Delhi, India in 1999 and was Leader of the UK Delegation at the International Union of Crystallography Congress and General Assembly in Prague in 2021.

Scientists in their career development seek guidance. I have been a Senior Mentor at the University of Manchester both in the Department of Chemistry and in its Manchester Gold scheme as well as a director in the scientific civil service as I mention above.

A note about my interests in the philosophy of science which I have had for a long time. So much so that I eventually have written quite a number of book reviews on the topic in my (semi-) retirement since 2012. I have also reviewed books on how we communicate science and how we manage it for the public good as well as scientific career development.