{"id":542487,"date":"2010-04-24T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18884161.post-2726704527586782042"},"modified":"2010-04-24T07:21:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T11:21:39","slug":"denialists-replace-the-rigorous-and-open-minded-skepticism-of-science-with-the-inflexible-certainty-of-ideological-commitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/542487","title":{"rendered":"Denialists replace the rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science with the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment."},"content":{"rendered":"
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I kept running into different versions of that student, people who were convinced that, largely in the name of science, we had tres-passed on nature’s ground. The issues varied, but not the under-lying philosophy. Society had somehow forgotten what was authentic and there was only one effective antidote: embrace a simpler, more “natural” way of life. No phenomenon has illustrated those goals more clearly than persistent opposition to genetically engineered food. “This whole world view that genetically modified food is there so we have no choice but to use it is absolutely terrifying and it is wrong,” Lord Peter Melchett, a former British Labour minister, told me when I met him a few years ago.<\/p>\n

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Today, Lord Melchett, whose great-grandfather founded one of the world’s largest chemical companies, is policy director of the British Soil Association, the organic food and farming organiza-tion. The first time we spoke, however, he served as executive di-rector of Greenpeace, where he was in the midst of leading a furious campaign against Monsanto (which he referred to as “Monsatan”) to rid the world of genetically engineered foods. “There is a fundamental question here,” he said. “Is progress really just about marching forward? We say no. We say it is time to stop assuming that discoveries only move us forward. The war against nature has to end. And we are going to stop it.”
I felt then\u2014as I do now\u2014that he had gotten it exactly wrong; scientists weren’t waging a war at all, he was\u2014against science itself. Still, I saw Lord Melchett as a quaint aristocrat who found an interesting way to shrug off his family’s industrial heritage. His words were hard to forget, though, and I eventually came to realize why: by speaking about a “war against nature,” he had adopted a system of belief that can only be called denialism. Denialists like Lord Melchett replace the rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science with the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment.
We have all been in denial at some point in our lives; faced with truths too painful to accept, rejection often seems the only way to cope. Under those circumstances, facts, no matter how detailed or irrefutable, rarely make a difference. Denialism is denial writ large\u2014when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.
Denialism comes in many forms, and they often overlap. Denialists draw direct relationships where none exist\u2014between childhood vaccinations, for example, and the rising incidence of diseases like diabetes, asthma, and autism. They conflate similar but distinct issues and treat them as one\u2014blending the results of different medical studies on the same topic, or confusing a general lack of trust in pharmaceutical companies with opposition to the drugs they manufacture and even to the very idea of science.
Unless data fits neatly into an already formed theory, a denialist doesn’t really see it as data at all. That enables him to dismiss even the most compelling evidence as just another point of view. In-stead, denialists invoke logical fallacies to buttress unshakable beliefs, which is why, for example, crops created through the use of biotechnology are “frankenfoods” and therefore unlike anything in nature. “Frankenfoods” is an evocative term, and so is “genetically modified food,” but the distinctions they seek to draw are meaningless. All the food we eat, every grain of rice and ear of corn, has been manipulated by man; there is no such thing as food that hasn’t been genetically modified.<\/p>\n

From: Denialism, How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.<\/i><\/p>\n

Michael Specter, The Penguin Press, 2009<\/p>\n

Pundits Thoughts.<\/b><\/p>\n

Another great book to go on the bookshelf next to Stewart Brand’s The Whole Earth Discipline, and Tomorrow’s Table in the Turq library<\/p>\n

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I kept running into different versions of that student, people who were convinced that, largely in the name of science, we had tres-passed on nature’s ground. The issues varied, but not the under-lying philosophy. Society had somehow forgotten what was authentic and there was only one effective antidote: embrace a simpler, more “natural” way of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}