General Discussion
denialism | May 3, 2015John Cook, of Skeptical Science fame, has created an online course through the University of Queensland and edX, on denialism and climate change. Easy to access and free to take, I found it simple to join from their facebook page, and if you don't want to join you can still see the lectures from their Youtube channel.
Having gone through the materials so far I have to say Cook nails it. His graphic depicting the 5 tactics is very clear and easy to understand.
Also I think he has done a great job of making clear that the problem isn't one of education, facts or knowledge. The problem is…
denialism | December 3, 2014We should have predicted this when we discussed the UVa Rape story in Rolling Stone last week, it was just a matter of time before people would start suggesting the central figure in the story, Jackie, might be fabricating. I would be surprised if this response did not occur, because sadly it is so typical. What I'm surprised by is that the New York Times, is credulously repeating this smear led by Richard Bradley, and Jonah Goldberg of all people.
Still, some journalists have raised questions about the story. Richard Bradley, who as an editor at George magazine was duped by the former New…
denialism | March 18, 2013Two links today for denialism blog readers, both are pretty thought provoking. The first, from Amy Tuteur, on the newly-released statistics on homebirth in Oregon. It seems that her crusade to have the midwives share their mortality data is justified, as when they were forced to release this data in Oregon, planned homebirth was about 7-10 times more likely to result in neonatal mortality than planned hospital birth.
I'm sure Tuteur won't mind me stealing her figure and showing it here (original source of data is Judith Rooks testimony):
Oregon homebirth neonatal mortality statistics, from…
denialism | December 17, 2012Matt Springer has written a post Against the gun control that won't work, and he correctly points out that previous gun control efforts have been little more than shameless demagoguery, including the totally-worthless assault weapons ban. People must understand that the previous major legislation the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 was an atrociously-stupid piece of legislation. The weapons that fell under the ban were not banned because of function. As Springer points out, the ban focused on cosmetic elements of weapons so that lawmakers could put them on a table and describe how they…
denialism | December 5, 2012I 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…
denialism | November 1, 2012From 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…
denialism | October 19, 2012Scientific 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…
denialism | August 24, 2012Timothy Egan nails it, the Republican caucus is composed of crackpots and cranks.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates…
denialism | March 26, 2012He 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 case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.
Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:
The goal instead must be to enforce standards…
denialism | March 1, 2012About a month ago I asked if denialism is truly more frequent on the right or is it that the issues of the day are ones that are more likely to be targets of right wing denialism? After all, one can think of slightly more left wing sources of denialism like GMO paranoia, 9/11 conspiracies, altie-meds, and toxin fear-mongering. The mental heuristics that cause people to believe, and then entrench themselves, in nonsense seem generalizable to humanity rather than just those attracted to conservative politics. Why should those who identify as liberal be any different? Wouldn't they just…
denialism | February 6, 2012Eisen writes
Thus, people joining in the new boycott have no excuses not to follow through. There are plenty of viable OA options and it is simply unacceptable for any scientist who decries Elsevier's actions and believes that the subscription based model is no longer serving science to send a single additional paper to journals that do not provide full OA to every paper they publish. So, come on people! If we do this now, paywalls will crumble, and we all be better off. So, come on! Let's do it!
This sounds great. If you remember we were similarly disgusted since Eisen brought the…
denialism | February 5, 2012No one likes occupiers. They're like fish and houseguests, they start to stink after a short period of time. And I worry that as time goes on the movement will only have a more and more destructive impact on progressive politics and political discourse. This isn't to say they can't be effective, or haven't been effective at at least one goal, that is bringing the topic of economic inequality back into the spotlight. However, as time goes on their leaderless, agenda-less actions are becoming more random, and less likely to result in a good outcome in the coming political fight. In fact,…
denialism | January 23, 2012Today'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 liberalism's strengths were made without qualification; others were begrudging. Nonetheless, in the conservative assessment, common themes emerge:
Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and…
denialism | January 13, 2012At It's not junk Michael Eisen continues to expose the shameless actions of Carolyn Maloney to sell out science for the sake of publishers like Elsevier. As we remarked last week, it seems that very little money is required to buy a representatives favor towards your industry, even if that means acting against the public interest. Now, in her defense of the Research Works Act, which undoes the public distribution of research findings paid for by the public, her response appears to have been written by Elsevier itself.
Eisen busts her in the act.
From Maloney's letter:
First, I…
choofnagle | January 7, 2012Writing in the Saturday (how to make it look like you're rich edition) of the Wall Street Journal, Marisa Acocella Marchetto mentions an expensive, branded drug--Nexium--eight times. She even mentions its slogan ("the purple pill")!
As Mark has written elsewhere, it's moronic to take Nexium because there are cheaper, efficacious alternatives, such as Prilosec, which is available over the counter. Consumer Reports noted in 2010 that Nexium was the most expensive PPI, at $248 a month, and that cheaper generics and over the counter medicines were available.
In the story, she describes being…
denialism | May 24, 2010Luckily 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 her article "Why Sensible People Reject the Truth":
Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one another, not least the use of similar tactics (see "How to be a denialist"). All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt…
denialism | May 20, 2009
I'm open to suggestions. Do we just need to kick our PR departments in the pants? To be fair, often the internets skips that step.
H/T TR
denialism | May 18, 2009It's good news though! A description of the tactics and appropriate response to denialism was published in the European Journal of Public Health by authors Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee. It's entitled "Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?" and I think it does an excellent job explaining the harms of deniailsm, critical elements of denialism, as well as providing interesting historical examples of corporate denialism on the part of tobacco companies.
HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is…
denialism | May 14, 2009Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it's an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery, makes you think about the world and who is in control. But we have to remember when we see these films that these are works of fiction for entertainment. The Illuminati are not real, this sadly ludicrous belief still persists for some…
denialism | April 20, 2009Via Lessig and as explained beautifully by Colbert, payday loans are evil.
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Being a Democrat is no protection from corruption by corporations, as Congressman Gutierrez demonstrates. I think this is a pretty bad example of the type of corruption that Lessig and Brayton have been having a back-and-forth over. Whatever they want to call it, I think we can all agree it's wrong.