On the Information Superhighway, there's no such thing as a true science denier

Tina Dupuy
Tinadupuy.com
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:12 UTC

Science isn't like religion in that you can't just pick and choose the science you don't concur with. You can't, say, believe in evolution, but not for species you think are gross. Or think gravity is a sound theory but it only pertains to left-handed Oregonians. Or accept atomic theory but only for people named Adam.

You get the idea; that's not by definition scientific. If you trust in the rigors of science: evidence, testing, peer review etc. - you're used to the fact that science is completely indifferent to your feelings. Yes, we all want the sun to revolve around the Earth and for plastic to be nutritious for sea creatures, but in science, wishing it were true doesn't make it so.

Religion, on the other hand, gets to be custom fitted. You can be a Christian and if you don't like the part in the Bible about being happy when smashing babies against rocks (Psalms 137:9), you can just ignore it. Or if you no longer think it's kosher to even say publicly, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet (1 Timothy 2:12)," you can be mum on that one too. Disagree with slavery? No problem. Want to wear something besides linen? That's fine. Go to Red Lobster religiously? Still OK.

Islam is the same in that respect. President Obama said ISIS, the insanely well-funded terrorist group (who are also don't believe in evolution), isn't Islamic. This is how sectarian wars start - one group degrading the piety of another group claiming to be more pure/better/cleaner/uncorrupted then they are. Instead of a holy war about whose god is better, it's a splinter fight over whom god likes more.

So it's understandable how religious people - especially religious leaders - bristle at science. They've grown accustomed to being able to carve out exactly what they like from religious texts, leaving the objectionable stuff behind.

This has led to a bizarre paradox: The Creationist with an iPhone or respectively the Anti-Vaxxer in a Prius. Utilizing science and all its comforts and advances, while being selectively skeptical about what science actually has to offer. Using technology to deny science takes some skilled compartmentalizing. It's saying you have faith in science enough to post cat gifs on Facebook but not enough for science to contradict your convictions.

There was a time when we thought the Information Superhighway would make everyone more informed, better educated. Instead its enabled the misinformed to find places to permanently nestle in confirmation bias. Misery loves company - as does ignorance.

This week, NASA announced August had been the warmest on record. Climate change is real. There's not a controversy. There's an effort to undermine the data by using the word "controversy." The Earth is warming. Period. No amount of "nu-huh" will make it not so.

Comment: Nu-huh! NASA is part of the global warming fraud and is not an objective, reliable source.

Ice age cometh: No warming left to deny... Global cooling takes over... CET annual mean temperature plunges 1°C since 2000

Global Warming? Global Cooling Forecast Backed By Real Science

Global Cooling - Methods and testable decadal predictions

Think the past winter was bad? Get ready for mini Ice Age

Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda

This is the same week when the first car was 3D printed. (And yes, it's electric.) And at this same incredible time in car history, the epicenter of car culture, Los Angeles, is in the throes of a deadly and completely preventable whooping cough epidemic. Children in the most affluent parts of the city are, according to reports, vaccinated at rates on par with the Sudan. This comes from a fear of vaccines sparked by a long-ago debunked, bogus "study" linking the shots to autism. Now children are actually dying - three infants in California just this year - from the science-denial of wealthy helicopter parents.

And since I already mentioned ISIS and we're apparently now at war with them, they do this too. They don't want Syrian children to learn math but are more than happy to use the technology made possible by math (namely YouTube) to post their videos (also made possible by math) of their beheadings of innocent captives.

Enough. This is embarrassing.

Think of science as the user agreement you have to say yes to before getting to use technology. In that contract (we know you haven't read) is the accord that you - albeit passively - agree in evolution, climate change, vaccinations and math. Otherwise it's a breach of contract. Go ahead and say "nu-huh," but unless you're reading this via candlelight in your self-made cabin, you've already clicked OK.

Comment: The author should take her own advice and support real science instead of Zombie science. The data and research behind global cooling and an impending ice age is growing and growing.

Below is a definition of Zombie science from Not even trying... The Corruption of real science:

When a branch of science based on incoherent, false or phoney theories is serving a useful but non-scientific purpose it may be kept-going by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose non-scientific interests it serves.

For example, if a branch of pseudo-science based on a phoney theory is nonetheless valuable for political purposes (e.g. to justify a government intervention such as a new tax) or for marketing purposes (to provide the rationale for a marketing campaign) then real science expires and a 'zombie science' evolves.

Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like real science.

But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds.

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Real science is coherent - and testable (testing being a matter of checking coherence with the result of past and future observations).

Real science finds its use, and gets its validation, from common sense evaluation and being deployed in technology.

Real science is validated (contingently) insofar as it leads to precise predictions that later come true; and leads to new ways of solving pressing problems and making useful changes in the world.

But zombie science is not coherent, therefore cannot be tested; its predications are vague or in fact retrospective summaries rather than predictions.

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In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda; trading on the prestige which real science used-to have and which zombie science falsely claims for itself.

Zombie science is deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses rhetorical attempts to shape opinion.

Furthermore, most zombie sciences are supported by moral imperatives - to doubt the zombie science is therefore labelled as wicked, reckless, a tool of sinister and destructive forces.

To challenge zombie science is not merely to attack the livelihoods of zombie scientists (which, considering their consensus-based power, is itself dangerous) - but opens the attacker to being labelled a luddite, demagogue, anti-science, a denialist!

For all its incoherence and scientific worthlessness, zombie science therefore often comes across in the sound bite world of the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which in actuality is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.