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When Scientists Act Like Denialists
Science communicators should embody what their fans value most.
Michael Specter described denialism as “denial writ large,” where a large segment of society turns away from reality. What’s real are matters of facts, scientific consensus and evidence. What’s unreal are the products of irrationality and delusion. But it’s more than disagreement or debate. To level a claim of denialism is to weaponize the disagreement. When rational opposition has been exhausted, dark motives and corruption are all that remain.
Debate is essential in science. “If they weren’t criticizing one another, and disagreeing with one another, we wouldn’t have the grounds to trust the results of science the way that we do,” the philosopher James Weatherall explained. Disagreement ends in denialism, however, when it moves beyond peer review and into the dark. “It reflects a person who is no longer producing work of a sort that can meaningfully convince their peers of anything. So now they’re trying to convince people who are less equipped to evaluate it.”
I’m one of those less equipped people, a humble science fan. By way of introduction, consider my anti-denialist bona fides: I think the earth is round, evolution is true, HIV causes AIDs, humans cause climate change, nuclear energy would help, men have walked on the…
