Just couldn't let it die eh...
How is OWS relevant? This discussion is about science denialism and conspiracy theories. From Hoofnagle's excellent
denialism blog:
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead."
-Benjamin Franklin
What are denialist conspiracy theories and why should people be instantly distrustful of them? And what do they have to do with denialism?
Almost every denialist argument will eventually devolve into a conspiracy. This is because denialist theories that oppose well-established science eventually need to assert deception on the part of their opponents to explain things like why every reputable scientist, journal, and opponent seems to be able to operate from the same page. In the crank mind, it isnt because their opponents are operating from the same set of facts, its that all their opponents are liars (or fools) who are using the same false set of information.
But how could it be possible, for instance, for every nearly every scientist in a field be working together to promote a falsehood? People who believe this is possible simply have no practical understanding of how science works as a discipline. For one, scientists dont just publish articles that reaffirm a consensus opinion. Articles that just rehash what is already known or say everything is the same arent interesting and dont get into good journals. Scientific journals are only interested in articles that extend knowledge, or challenge consensus (using data of course). Articles getting published in the big journals like Science or Nature are often revolutionary (and not infrequently wrong), challenge the expectations of scientists or represent some phenomenal experiment or hard work (like the human genome project). The idea that scientists would keep some kind of exceptional secret is absurd, or that, in the instance of evolution deniers, we only believe in evolution because weve been infiltrated by a cabal of materialists is even more absurd. This is not to say that real conspiracies never occur, but the assertion of a conspiracy in the absence of evidence (or by tying together weakly correlated and nonsensical data) is usually the sign of a crackpot. Belief in the Illuminati, Zionist conspiracies, 9/11 conspiracies, holocaust denial conspiracies, materialist atheist evolution conspiracies, global warming science conspiracies, UFO government conspiracies, pharmaceutical companies suppressing altie-med conspiracies, or what have you, it almost always rests upon some unnatural suspension of disbelief in the conspiracy theorist that is the sign of a truly weak mind. Hence, our graphic to denote the presence of these arguments the tinfoil hat.
Another common conspiratorial attack on consensus science (without data) is that science is just some old-boys club (not saying its entirely free of it but
) and we use peer-review to silence dissent. This is a frequent refrain of HIV/AIDS denialists like Dean Esmay or Global Warming denialists like Richard Lindzen trying to explain why mainstream scientists wont publish their BS. The fact is that good science speaks for itself, and peer-reviewers are willing to publish things that challenge accepted facts if the data are good. If youre just a denialist cherry-picking data and nitpicking the work of others, youre out of luck. Distribution of scientific funding (another source of conspiracy from denialists) is similarly based on novelty and is not about repeating some kind of party line. Yes, its based on study-sections and peer-review of grants, but the idea that the only studies that get funded are ones that affirm existing science is nuts, if anything its the opposite."
Enjoy the ' local global warming' this weekend
