Science Denial Explained

This column is rather long, but it does a reasonable job of explaining why science denial is so widespread in various societies.


Why Science is so hard to believe


Of course, if you choose to be a science denier on the principle that anything you don't understand with a basis in science, you will end up with the following conditions.

Vaccinations are bad, so we will not get our children vaccinated.  Polio, measles, mumps will return to prevalence.  (and this will put you in the same bed as the Taliban)  Children will die and be crippled and the cost of care will mount.

Flouride is a bad chemical and a communist plot to poison us.  or in liberal Portland, Orgeon a bad chemical that should not be added to water.  Never mind that it promotes better tooth enamel for everybody at a very low cost and is a natural occurring substance that is in some water naturally (that is how it was discovered) and causes no harm.  So bad teeth for everyone shortening lives.

GMO food is bad for you because it is unnatural.  Starvation for some people somewhere and a higher cost of food everywhere else will be the outcome.

And if you believe GMO food is OK, how can you not believe that Global Warming is real and deserving of being addressed.  Of course, the higher cost of food that will result from global warming is all part of the natural way of things.  It is inevitable and society should not have to deal with inevitable issues.  That sounds like gridlock to me.

Anyway, back to my path of science denial.  So once you disbelieve all that, of course evolution is the next thing to be disbelieved.  Dinosaurs never existed, which despite all the skeletons in museums, seems a preferable belief to the one in Kentucky where all the dinosaurs co-existed with early human life in the aftermath to the Garden of Eden, within the last 6000 years, which is all the earth had existed for these people.  And just where did all the fossil fuels come from if that is your belief.  And why doesn't the Old Testament discuss dinosaurs?

I know this is getting a bit stretched, but if you are going to deny one slice of science, you have to deny all of it if you are being logical.  And if you accept a few slices of science (say chemistry and biology, I don't know anyone who can explain Physics to me, so I cannot be sure they really understand Physics and I have had numerous discussions with Physics majors and read Steven Hawking), then don't you have to accept everything about science and rely on the vast body of scientists who make a living trying to reprove and disprove everyone else's work to arrive at a consensus.

But let me continue briefly down this path of science denial.  Once you are here, you are back in the middle ages and believing that the sun rotates around the earth, Galileo was a dangerous heretic and witches should be burned at the stake, not mention we can let sewage and rats lie freely in gutters promoting plagues.

Obviously, I consider science denial a plague of its own, but at least I now understand its origin:  fear of that which is hard to understand, a need to belong to a group that agrees with what I believe no matter how irrational that belief, and the power of the internet, which allows those who can profit from science denial to continue to promote it.  Follow the money, as always.