Denialism

Category: Denialism Defined

  • Take Denialism 101

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    MarkH
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    John Cook, of Skeptical Science fame, has created an online course through the University of Queensland and edX, on denialism and climate change. Easy to access and free to take, I found it simple to join from their facebook page, and if you don’t want to join you can still see the lectures from their…

  • Denialism in the Literature

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    MarkH
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    It’s good news though! A description of the tactics and appropriate response to denialism was published in the European Journal of Public Health by authors Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee. It’s entitled “Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?” and I think it does an excellent job explaining the harms of deniailsm, critical…

  • Crank HOWTO

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    MarkH
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    Who wants to know how to be an effective crank? Well, I’ve outlined what I think are the critical components of successful crankiness. Ideally, this will serve as a guide to those of you who want to come up with a stupid idea, and then defend it against all evidence to the contrary. Here’s how…

  • Logical Fallacies

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    MarkH
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    Almost everybody knows about the fallacies of logic, formal and informal, that are routinely used in arguments with denialists. While these fallacies aren’t perfect examples of logic that show when an argument is always wrong, they are good rules of thumb to tell when you’re listening to bunk, and if you listen to denialists you’ll…

  • Impossible expectations (and moving goalposts)

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    MarkH
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    I’m sorry for mixing terminologies. But moving goalposts isn’t adequate to describe the full hilarity of the kinds of arguments denialists make. For instance, the goalposts never have to be moved when they require evidence that places them somewhere in the land before time. What I mean is the use, by denialists, of the absence…

  • Fake Experts

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    MarkH
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    You know who they are – those organizations that have words like “freedom” and “rights” “choice” and “consumer” in their names but always shill for corporate interests…those occasional MDs or engineers creationists find that will say evolution has nothing to do with science. They are the fake experts. But how do we tell which experts…

  • Selectivity (Cherry Picking)

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    MarkH
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    For our next installment of the big five tactics in denialism we’ll discuss the tactic of selectivity, or cherry-picking of data.

  • Unified theory of the crank

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    MarkH
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    A crank is defined as a man who cannot be turned. – Nature, 8 Nov 1906 Here at denialism blog, we’re very interested in what makes people cranks. Not only how one defines crankish behavior, but literally how people develop unreasonable attitudes about the world in the face of evidence to the contrary. Our definition…

  • Conspiracy

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    MarkH
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    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?

  • Hello Scienceblogs

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    MarkH
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    Hello and welcome to denialism blog. Here we will discuss the problem of denialists, their standard arguing techniques, how to identify denialists and/or cranks, and discuss topics of general interest such as skepticism, medicine, law and science. I’ll be taking on denialists in the sciences, while my brother, Chris, will be geared more towards the…