There seem to be a lot of posts recently about various forms of denialism.\u00a0 So I though I would throw in.<\/p>\n
Denialism, in my opinion, is when a person ignores the evidence in favor of a personal belief.\u00a0 Creationists believe that God created the heavens and Earth directly.\u00a0 Since science says that there are natural processes that allow for the creation of stars, planets, and life, the creationists think that science is trying to destroy God (of whatever flavor) and instead deny that the science is correct.<\/p>\n
In my various travels across the internet, I’ve seen what are basically three reasons for science denial.\u00a0 The first is money.\u00a0 Science denialists often make an income (sometimes a massive income) from their denial.\u00a0 William Dembski has stated he would rather publish books than send his stuff to journals.\u00a0 Wakefield (of the autism\/MMR link fame) had developed another measles vaccine and was getting undisclosed money from a law firm.\u00a0 Climate denialists are often related to the big oil companies which has a vested interest in keeping carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere.\u00a0 There’s even some evidence that the anti-GMO groups are supported by organic farm collectives.<\/p>\n
The second reason is fear.\u00a0 Fear of the unknown.\u00a0 This is most often used by the leaders of a movement to get at the followers.\u00a0 Many of the anti-GMO crowd have no idea what the science really says about GMOs.\u00a0 In fact, they say things that are completely wrong (like there are no long term studies).\u00a0 They get all their information from the anti-science sources and everything else is a a) conspiracy,\u00a0 b) liberal lies, c) atheism, d) big business. The complete lack of logic behind these claims are stunning, but the anti-science position isn’t really founded on logic.<\/p>\n
The third reason is cultural.\u00a0 Religion says one thing.\u00a0 Science says something else.\u00a0 Obviously, hundreds of years of scientific evidence is wrong because a book written by ignorant sheepherders 2000 years ago says so.\u00a0 The organic movement is a culture, they think that everything natural is good and everything that isn’t natural (whatever that means) is bad.<\/p>\n
What do all of these various denialist camps have in common?\u00a0 Mostly, I consider the types of poor arguments that they use, which are the same.<\/p>\n
Cherry-picking.\u00a0 This is when someone looks for data that supports them and ignores the data that doesn’t support them.\u00a0 All of the various denialist groups are big into this one.\u00a0 The best examples of this come from the creationists and anti-GMO groups.\u00a0 They pick the data that they think supports their claims, while ignoring data (from the same study) that doesn’t support their claims.\u00a0 My favorite example of this is the anti-GMO groups freaking out about the Seralini, while completely ignoring almost 16 years of research that show GMOs are safe.<\/p>\n
Quotemining is a favorite in the creationist and climate denialist camps.\u00a0 Of course, the creationists pretty much invented the concept of science denial, so they have all the tricks.\u00a0 My favorite example of the quotemining comes from this very web site where an ID Proponent was using a document penned by 28 Nobel prize winners to support his claim.\u00a0 Of course, the very next paragraph of that letter contains the phrase that “ID is not science.”<\/p>\n
Another favorite tactic of the denialists is to spend more time arguing about the meaning of words instead of arguing about the actual science.\u00a0 Words like “information”, “natural”, and “trick” are all concepts that are twisted to mean whatever the denialist wants at the time.\u00a0 Those meanings will never, ever be well defined by the denialist camps.\u00a0 The reason for that is so that those definitions can be changed, often in the middle of a sentence.<\/p>\n
There are literally hundreds of logical fallacies and every single one of them has been used at some point to support science denial.<\/p>\n
What’s really fascinating about science denial and why it’s obvious that it’s personal\/culture thing instead of a science thing is because the science denialists freely use the benefits of science, while denying the part that they don’t like.\u00a0 Creationists used to be big on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and how that showed the evolution was impossible.\u00a0 All the while, they used their cars and had babies and raised plants without understanding that if the 2nd Law didn’t work for evolution, then it wouldn’t work for those things either.<\/p>\n
Anti-GMO groups seem to have no problems with insulin generated from bacteria.\u00a0 They don’t have problems with spraying Bt crystals on ‘organic’ crops.\u00a0 But put the Bt gene in the crop and they freak out.<\/p>\n
I could go on and on.\u00a0 But I think you get the point.\u00a0 Science denial has suddenly, within the last decade, become the in thing for various groups.\u00a0 In most cases, it’s purely because science is doing something or saying something that they don’t like.\u00a0 Maybe the anti-GMO crowd isn’t studying creationist literature to find the best way of attacking science.\u00a0 But parallel evolution results in very similar tactics from very similar groups.<\/p>\n
Scientists and science journalists (and people like us) really have to step up the information campaigns.\u00a0 Like a general who has to appear before congress and in parades instead of leading his troops, scientists have to start speaking up, in lots of different venues.\u00a0 We also have to push to improve the science education of the people of the US and the world.\u00a0 We have kids who use technology everyday and have no idea how that technology works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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