READ: From the “The Stupid, It Burns” Department: “Science denial not limited to political right”. PDF, EPUB online free reviews.

Guest rant by David Middleton

Science denial not limited to political right
September 19, 2017

In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, many claims have been made that science denial, particularly as it relates to climate change, is primarily a problem of the political right.

[…]

UIC Today

That’s like saying in the wake of [insert random words], many claims have been made that science denial, particularly as it relates to climate change, is primarily a problem of the political right.

The article actually gets worse as it goes along. It’s based on a “publication” by a grad student and psych professor. Unsurprisingly, the “paper” cites the following “references”…

Lewandowsky S., Oberauer K. (2016). Motivated rejection of science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 217–222. Link

Lewandowsky S., Oberauer K., Gignac G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622–633. Link

Mooney C. (2011, 9 30). Newt Gingrich deceives on stem cell research, mocks evolution. Retrieved on March 15, 2015, from http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/09/30/332730/gingrich-deceives-stem-cell-research

Mooney C. (2012). The Republican brain: The science of why they deny science—And reality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Mooney C. (2014, 9 11). Stop pretending that liberals are just as anti-science as conservatives. Mother Jones. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/left-science-gmo-vaccines

The “funny thing” about politically oriented skepticism, is that scientifically literate liberals are more likely to buy into the Gorebal Warming scam than scientifically literate conservatives:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/23/scientific-literacy-leads-to-more-politically-polarized-opinions-on-climate-change/

Of course, this divergence could simply be due to the nature of the scientific literacy. Geoscientists are nearly three times more likely to think that climate change is natural than government employees are.