[ExI] Do your own research

[John Clark]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 8:47 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>* I**f a microbiologist wants to  buy a telescope, look at the sky with
> it, form opinions, ask  questions, and use the scientific method to answer
> them, then she is  within her rights to do so.*


I'm a libertarian (small l) so I think she has a right to say whatever she
wants, but if she is not only forming her own astronomical theories to
explain the facts but also forming her own facts obtained with a Walmart
toy telescope and doing so for clearly political reasons then it is my
right to call her a ideological crackpot.


> > *That being said, there is a reproducibility crisis going on in
> science.*


The scientific community is not perfect but you are not going to get closer
to the truth from right wing bloggers who have been students of the science
of epidemiology for 20 minutes or so.


> *> to his credit, Linus  Pauling lived to be 98 years old so, if it did
> not help him, then his  mega-dosing of vitamin-C certainly did not harm
> him. Come to think of  it, with all the supplements and nootropic stacks
> being taken around  these parts, he probably would have fit right in on
> this here list.*
>

Linus Pauling was the greatest chemist of the 20th century so I'd forgive
his little vitamin-C eccentricity, and he'd fit in with this list as it was
until about 5 years ago because, although he was interested in politics and
got a second Nobel Prize for opposing atmospheric nuclear bomb testing, for
him scientific truth always had priority over ideology, both right wing and
left. But this list has radically changed in the last 5 years, so Linus
Pauling would no longer fit in around here. I'm not sure I do either.

> And I must conclude that today's science deniers tend to be ideological stooges
>> of the right.
>
>
> > *Unless the science is genetics as it pertains to things like
> sex-determination, IQ, and genetically modified organisms. Other sciences
> routinely denied by the left are nuclear physics (nuclear  power)*


It's true that left-wing science deniers exist too but they are not in
ascendancy or are the immediate problem, the immediate problem is right
wing crackpots in charge of the federal government who are denying reality
and killing people as a result, tens of thousands of people.

*> and immunology (vaccinations).*
>

Trump loves vaccines now because he thinks the hope of one will help him
get reelected, however 4 Years ago he said he hated vaccines and blamed
them for giving children autism because he thought that would help him get
elected. And it did.

John K Clark
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