Denial of science is not a GOP specificity

General Discussion
1

Hello All,

As a reader of CFI newsletter I just registered on the forum to express my disappointment in what is a factually wrong statement. In the latest newsletter (“Looking forward: progress for non-religious Americans”) commenting on the mid-terms election I read this statement: “[…]the active denial of science in public policy is coming primarily from one party: the GOP”.

This statement is certainly true about AGW science. But unfortunately, the DEMs are acting with the same level of denial when it comes to equally well-established scientific facts like the safety of GMOs or Glyphosate.

I hope that the editors will be careful in avoiding bias when reporting the unfortunate denial of science that is regularly happening with politicians more concerned with their voter’s opinion than scientific facts.

2

I agree there are many Democratic VOTERS who do that. But I see those voters calling out the Democratic candidates for their support of Monsanto. Hillary was definitely pro modern farming. Bernie managed to avoid the conversation.

3

Samuel have you studied about the history of science denial?

There are fringies everywhere, but there’s nothing like how the Republicans have fabricated, manipulated and weaponized wanton dishonest denial!

Want supporting evidence? http://www.waronscience.com/home.php


<a href="https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org"> https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org</a>

Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks Exploring the Connection

Riley E. Dunlap and Peter J. Jacques

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787818/

Am Behav Sci. 2013 Jun; 57(6): 699–731.

doi: [10.1177/0002764213477096]


<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article_type/special-report/">SPECIAL REPORT </a>   May 12,  2010

Living in denial: How corporations manufacture doubt

By Richard Littlemore

&nbsp;

<em>There's plenty more, just gotta poke around.</em>
4

Not to mention that thing that most Republicans have actually convinced themselves that they have a personal relationship with the God of time, matter, life and love.

It’s utterly insane, oh but how they do take themselves seriously and how they hate anyone with the rational brain. Thus turning themselves into little monsters of the EGO run amuck, as we can see in the Trumpian takeover of America.

5

I think a better example of Liberal science denialism is the recent fuss concerning the NYT discomfort with James Watson’s refusal to back down from his accurate observation that African IQ is low primarily because of nature instead of nurture.

And on that same note, the ideologically-driven criticism of recent books by Geneticists David Reich and Robert Plomin.

6

You’re talking apples and tulips.

Why? (or how do you figure that?)

7

Guy, what’s your option of David Reich? If you’re not getting criticism, then you are most likely no doing anything. I keep running into his papers and think his work operations are cutting edge. I understand that he has several books out and I would like to read them, but god knows where I would ever find the time.

8

From what little I’ve heard and seen he makes a lot of sense. DNA studies have shown amazing migration patterns, which has revolutionized our conception of the capabilities and movements of ancient peoples. I’m old enough, that my first ‘anthropology’ lessons were received from encyclopedia stories and drawing of dumb brute Neanderthal, then in the early 70s the Leakey’s and their Olduvai Gorge discovers were the latest and greatest. Then in 1974 to be superseded by Don Johanson and his discovery of Lucy which opened up the whole story yet again, then there was an increasing tempo of discovery, … and then genetics and the atomic age of biology and anthropology.

The story keeps getting ever more interesting and complicated, another example of folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity.

New understanding doesn’t make a joke out of old understanding, since it was based on the evidence at hand, there is nothing dishonorable about that - although the Right Wing Crazy Making PR Machine, sure tries to make it seem that way. Still, our resolution keeps improving. Many need security, they must live in a delusion that things don’t change and death shouldn’t happen, and so on it. It’s sad.

I’ve gotten used to the reality that our physical environment is multifaceted, complex and fascinating, always more to be learned and old conceptions to be revised in light of new information.

The faithful seem to have this sense of entitlement that they have a right to understand the universe’s secrets with certainty, when the real world ain’t like that.

I cede the rest of my time to Isaac Asimov, https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

"… These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see.

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern “knowledge” is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. “If I am the wisest man,” said Socrates, “it is because I alone know that I know nothing.” the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, “John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that “right” and “wrong” are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don’t think that’s so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so. …" (check out the entire essay, it’s worth it.)


 

9

@MikeYohe –

Reich is doing good work although the material in “Who We Are And How We Got Here” is not particularly groundbreaking, as geneticists have been exploring this stuff for a while. It’s just controversial to liberals.

Reich first irked the status quo years ago when his lab discovered the elevated prostate cancer risk in black men is caused by something unique within West African DNA which the NYT attacked and then seems to have deep sixed, though there’s still evidence of it on Muckrack: Pardon Our Interruption.

He is on thin ice with this so don’t expect him to be around academia for a long time.

10

Thanks for the reply. I got to say that I am very pleased at the accelerated rate that new findings are being published. It cuts out a lot of tail chasing debates. We can now get to the point and move to the next steps much faster. For example. A question I have is the written language does not match the timelines of domestication of fruits, vegetables, nuts and animals. Were our ancestors in prehistory hyperthymesia? And the key to this answer will only be found by the work of people like David Reich and others willing to take those steps.