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  2. Cranks Sowing the Seeds of Doubt

Cranks Sowing the Seeds of Doubt

By apalazzo on April 20, 2008.

They announced rain today - instead it is sunny, warm and ... a perfect distraction. Since I haven't yet decamped for lab and am waiting for my wife to shower so that we can have a short picnic by the river before i head out to work, I'll just leave you a few links to some VERY interesting and insightful articles in Slate.The three part series was written by Daniel Engber and focus on how certain elements of our society (i.e. climate skeptics, the ID movement, and the tobacco industry) have cultivated this notion of super-skepticism in an attempt o discredit current scientific consensus.

The idea is that these elements attempt to cast a wee bit of doubt and then illogically deduce that the whole structure of scientific research is corrupt. As mentioned in yesterday's Science Saturday, this pattern of thought resembles that of conspiracy theorists. A must read.

The Paranoid Style in American Science
Part I: A Crank's Progress
Part II: An Uncertain Truth
Part III: Contrary Imaginations

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science & society

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