Denialism

Peter Gleick, my sbling here at scienceblogs.com (see his blog here) is famous for a lot of things, but about one year ago he went up against the Heartland Institute and in a daring effort of investigative (if avocational) journalism, revealed that right wing conservative/libertarian "think" tank's nefarious plans to interfere with science education in an effort to discredit climate scientists in the eyes of the American public and our students through a series of rather smarmy tactics, including some really obnoxious billboards. Scott Mandia at "Global Warming: Man or Myth?" has written a…
It seems that people "believe" in climate change (really, global warming in particular) when it it hot out more than at other times. And by "people" I mean the population in general. It turns out that Democrats don't change their position on climate change as the temperature outside changes (they already know it is real) and Republicans do a little (because it is true and a small number of them will put reality before politics). Meanwhile, those darn Independent voters who have somehow taken over our democracy for some very poor reasons (IMHO) wildly change their beliefs literally on the…
... at any serious level, and then, only if enough Republicans get thrown out of the House to allow committee work and legislation to happen. From The Hill: House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans have rebuffed Democrats’ bid to require the high-profile panel to hold hearings on links between climate change, extreme weather and threats to coastal areas. On Wednesday the Committee, along party lines, voted down Democratic amendments to its formal oversight plan for the 113th Congress. One defeated amendment, from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), would have required hearings on the role of…
Media Matters takes Fox News to Task. Watch the reasonable person talk, then watch the Republican climate science denialist lie: Here is a graph from Media Matters that you should post on your Facebook page and elsewhere: From Media Matters: "The American Geophysical Union and several other scientific bodies including the National Academy of Sciences have acknowledged manmade climate change based on a strong and growing body of evidence.Despite all of this, Fox News has continually and falsely claimed the consensus on climate change does not exist -- yet another example of the network's…
As I mentioned, I'm busy, so I'll just do this in pictures, kinda like a cartoon: There was no "walk back" by Joe. He merely added some links. The results of the poll so far: Personally, I'm hoping for "Force him" ... that would be fun to watch. Meanwhile, there is a lesson here. Science denialists like Anthony Watts do not want to be disagreed with. I think we may have already known that, though. Related posts: What's up with that? Greg Laden, Liar.
Climate change science denialism has pretty much run its course. We've been experiencing a large number of climate change related events (see this list for a brief summary) lately. It may well be that the number per year of such alarming events will go down and up over time. It may be that we will forget that some of them are happening because we grow used to them. But they are happening at a larger rate than just a few years ago, the years are getting warmer and warmer, and the effects predicted by the science have been manifest as predicted, but for on thing: They are happening sooner,…
Top “Ten” Recent Books (focusing on 2012 but including the last few years) on Climate, Science denialism, Energy, and Science Policy are (including one Post Warming novel) are: Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us by Maggie Koerth-Baker Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand by Haydn Washington and John Cook Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise (Kindle Single) by Daniel Grossman, TEDx Books (Kindle Single) Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto Rising Sea Levels: An…
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, and I found I agreed with many of her examples of really bad pop psychology nonsense that's filtered into the media through both scientists, press-release journalism, and marketing disguised as science. In particular the "pink is for girls" idiocy, which…
Imagine the following scenario. Two guys are walking down the street, in different cities. Guy A has two PhDs, one in quantum physics with a focus on dimensionality dynamics, the other in astrophysics with a focus on relativistic aspects of gravity and black holes. She has published dozens of peer reviewed papers on both topics and is a brilliant mathematician. Guy B never took a physics class but yesterday he finished reading large parts of The Elegant Universe. Suddenly, at the same moment, they each have an idea (they do not have the same idea ... they have different ideas) about how…
A probabilistic quantification of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming is a paper just out that examines an important conflict in the conversation about climate change and global warming. Before getting to the details, have a look at this graph from the paper: This is temperature increasing on the earth over a century or so. Notice that there is what looks like a warming around 1940 on top of an otherwise mostly warming trend, followed by a bunch more warming. The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, in 2007, referring to data that ran up to 2005 inclusively, said…
This is an interview at Atheists Talk (TV), an update on the war on science, and a rare opportunity to see me wearing a suit. The first few seconds are sound free; do not adjust your television set. I mentioned the NCSE, here's their web site. Here's a couple of books related to the topic: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto Something on crying babies and vaccination is here, and something on milk allergy is here. Minnesota Atheists YouTube channel is here…
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 tendency of individuals to form perceptions of fact that promote their connection to, and standing in, important groups. There are lots of instances of this. Consider sports fans who genuinely see…
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 belief that cell phones cause brain cancer (high school physics shows why this is impossible) or that vaccines cause autism (science has shown no link whatsoever). Republican science denialism tends to be…
The juxtaposition of Nobel Prize season and the revelation of High Octane Crazy in the Republican Party in regards to science is examined by Rachel Maddow: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Although I focus mostly on medical topics, such as vaccines, alternative medicine, and cancer quackery, I don't limit myself to such topics. True, I used to write a lot more about evolution and creationism, the paranormal, and other standard skeptical topics, but over the last couple of years I've realized where my strength is and where my niche is. So I continue to do what I do, but that doesn't mean I've lost interest in those topics. I've just learned that there are those who can do them as well as I can, while the number of people who can do what I do with respect to quackery and medical…
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. If consumers become sufficiently annoyed with mercantile snooping and excessive marketing, they can take their business to competitors who are more respectful of privacy. Not so with the citizens of an intrusive state.…
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, and this week in the Journal Crovitz tries to backpedal, with the standard trope that his "Who Really Invented the Internet?" article was controversial—"It [became] for a time the most read, emailed and commented upon article on…
And now for something completely different. Except that it isn't really. I say that it isn't really different because, although this post will seem to be about politics, in reality it will be about a common topic on this blog: Anti-science. And where is this anti-science? Sadly, it's in the platform of a major party of one of the largest states in the country. It also meshes with the anti-science inherent in a lot of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and all comes together in one place: The proposed 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas. It's all there, as you…
New study concludes" "The western bean cutworm is neither a 'new plant pest' nor 'caused by GE corn' as stated by Greenpeace."  
Although I'm interested in skepticism in general, I have a tendency to gravitate towards one particular form of pseudoscience (alternative medicine) and, in particular, a certain kind of that particular form of pseudoscience, namely antivaccine quackery. However, as much as I keep returning to the antivaccine movement, I keep noticing just how much it shares with other forms of science denialism and pseudoscientific thinking. I was reminded of this when one of my readers e-mailed me a link to a Facebook group, Pro-Vax Quacks. I have no idea who's behind the group, but what I do know is that…