Denialism
Category archives for Denialism
What happens when you study conspiracy theories? The conspiracy theorists make up conspiracy theories about you!
Posted by Mark on February 26, 2013 I’ve known about this effect for a while as I’ve been variously accused of being in the pocket of big pharma, big ag, big science, democrats and republicans etc. Now Stephan Lewandowsky, in follow up to his “NASA Faked the Moon Landings – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax.” paper, has used these conspiratorial responses…
Rebecca Watson’s Skepticon talk is NOT an example of science denialism
Posted by Mark on December 5, 2012 I was recently pointed to this post by Edward Clint which purports to show Rebecca Watson using the 5 tactics of science denialism during her talk “How Girls Evolved to Shop” which was critical of evolutionary psychology at Skepticon. I watched her talk, found it entertaining, informative, wondered why I haven’t been invited to Skepticon,…
Tribalism, Cultural Cognition, Ideology, we’re all talking about the same thing here
Posted by Mark on November 1, 2012 From Revkin I see yet another attempt to misunderstand the problem of communicating science vs anti-science. The author, Dan Kahan, summarizes his explanation for the science communication problem, as well as 4 other “not so good” explanations in this slide: He then describes “Identity-protective cognition” thus: Identity-protective cognition (a species of motivated reasoning) reflects the…
Scientific American addresses denialism in politics – says it jeopardizes democracy
Posted by Mark on October 19, 2012 Scientific American evaluates the candidates on their answers to Sciencedebate 2012 and evaluates ideology-based denialism as a whole: Today’s denial of inconvenient science comes from partisans on both ends of the political spectrum. Science denialism among Democrats tends to be motivated by unsupported suspicions of hidden dangers to health and the environment. Common examples include…
The Privacy Competition Myth
Posted by Chris Hoofnagle on August 16, 2012 In his non-book-review of Garret Keizer’s new book, Privacy, “Reason” Magazine correspondent includes this ill-informed quip on privacy: With regard to modern commerce, Mr. Keizer grumps: “We would do well to ask if the capitalist economy and its obsessions with smart marketing and technological innovation cannot become as intrusive as any authoritarian state.” Actually, no.…
Disinformation about Disinformation: L. Gordon Crovitz’s Information Age
Posted by Chris Hoofnagle on August 1, 2012 When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it’s L. Gordon Crovitz’s “Information Age,” the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal. Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns,…
Is the holocaust denial/climate change denial comparison apt?
Posted by Mark on May 18, 2012 Many of the climate change denialist sites have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. In particular Marc Morano at climate depot has had multiple articles attacking and expressing hysterical outrage at these comparisons. We know they don’t like the comparison, but the question is, is it apt?
Mooney now agrees with us – Denialists deserve ridicule, not debate
Posted by Mark on March 26, 2012 He had to realize Nisbett’s framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism: The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the…
Are liberals really more likely to accept science than conservatives?
Posted by Mark on January 23, 2012 Today’s NYT has Thomas Edsall’s What the Left Get’s Right, the follow up piece to last week’s What the Right Get’s Right, and what’s fascinating is how even conservative commentators think liberals get science right more often than conservatives. Or at least they are less likely to view it ideologically: A few conservative concessions to…
The New Scientist Debates Denialism
Posted by Mark on May 24, 2010 Luckily they don’t make the mistake of actually debating denialists. The feature of last weeks issue, “Age of Denial” is a series of articles by skeptics and one laughable rebuttal, discussing the nature of denialism and tactics to use against it. They do quite a good job covering the basics, starting with Deborah MacKenzie and…
