[ExI] antiscience from both sides

[William Flynn Wallace]

Examples of right-wing anti-science:

   1. Creationism.
   2. Global warming denialism.
   3. Anti-environmentalism generally.
   4. Exaggerated claims about fetal development.
   5. Rejection of epidemiology as it pertains to sex, pregnancy, and
   sexually transmitted disease.
   6. Rejection of genetics, neurology, and psychology as they pertain to
   sex and gender.
   7. Pseudo-biological justifications for racism and sexism.
   8. Supply-side economics, if you count economics as a science. That’s a
   whole ‘nother discussion.

Examples of left-wing anti-science:

   1. Anti-GMO hysteria.
   2. Opposition to nuclear power under any and all circumstances.
   3. Other extremes of environmentalism, with predictions of immediate
   doom rather than slow long-term change.
   4. Opposition to space exploration: “why are we spending money up there
   when people are starving down here?”

Examples of anti-science shared by both left and right:

   1. Antivax. Started as a left-wing mania, and still more common in
   liberal communities, but some of the most prominent advocates are
   right-wing politicians, e.g. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.
   2. Abuse of statistics regarding crime issues, especially gun control.
   Left- and right-wingers draw opposite conclusions from the same data, and
   they both go to absurd extremes. Principled statisticians are left crying
   in the wilderness.
   3. Suspicion of the enterprise of science: the idea that there are giant
   cabals of scientists working in secret with no oversight and “playing God”
   or uncovering “things we weren’t meant to know.”
   4. Closely related, the common cultural stereotypes of scientists as
   arrogant, aloof, and out of touch with the lives of “regular people.”

bill w
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