If you disagree with the Left on a science issue, you are “anti-science.”
“Yet despite its history and today’s unprecedented riches from science, the U.S. has begun to slip off of its science foundation. Indeed, in this election cycle, some 236 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, several major party contenders for political office took positions that can only be described as “antiscience”: against evolution, human-induced climate change, vaccines, stem cell research, and more. A former Republican governor even warned that his own political party was in danger of becoming ‘the antiscience party’.”
A more pedestrian magazine Popular Science, used to actually be about new science and technology, When I was about 14 – 15 years old, they all of a sudden decided to have a green agenda, and the magazine went down hill and hasn’t recovered since.
I know SA is/was more high brow. And Omni was for the science fo the Bizarre.
Just in brief, Scientific American used to be a beacon of truth and integrity for us who studied in the 50s-60s and for generations before that. What in the blazing h–l has happened to that journal? We who got our first glimpses of science in the big world from SA now get only biased bull$..t, with all tolerance towards people questioning and asking questions lost and gone, and worse still, all the young people coming after us, too!
I see the term ‘anti-science’ often enough, but not anti-science people. Everyone on all sides of the CO2 ‘debate’ get called ‘anti-science’, but they all make scientific claims. Homeopaths are full of $|-|!+ but they make scientific claims, too. People who claim to have Morgellons disease present remarkably detailed hypotheses to account for the ailment.
Science is, you make an hypothesis and design an experiment to test it. If it passes the test, you’ve got a working theory. Everybody does this, and everybody who does this is pro-science, including the total whackos. This makes ‘anti-science’ pretty useless terminology.
The real problem is, not all hypotheses are created equal, nor are all tests, nor are all data. Nor the validity of conclusions drawn. We have a situation where bull$|-|!+ is ineradicably endemic and those most susceptible to bull$|-|!+ are also most prone to enthusiasm about it.
Bravo!
Proprietary science: I won’t show you the data because that will get me fired.
Science: Show me the data.
Anti-science: I won’t show you the data because you might find something wrong with it.
If I disagree with the Left on an issue, then I must be “anti-left”, i.e. right.
“it’s not just opinion about controversial social issues that puts original thinkers in jeopardy– it’s any opinion!”
“The rules of the new Thought Police have made comments, criticism, dissent and even complements nearly impossible.”
Tammy Bruce, The New Thought Police.
If you so much as want to understand science, you’re already anti-science.
We’re living in the age of linguistic inversions. Confer:
progressive = obstructionist (ban, stop, prevent)
liberal = oppressive (control this, control that, control everything)
nutritious = devoid of nutrients (no sugar, no fat, no proteins, no amino acids, no essential ions)
Maybe we should start compiling a dictionary of modern contronyms.
Anti-science beliefs DO jeapordize democracy and liberty. “Climate change” is basically anti-science as it is portrayed in politics and media. “Organic” and “all-natural” and “anti-GMO” is anti-science. Regulations to control fat, tobacco, alcohol and sugar (the four basic food groups) come from anti-democratic and anti-liberty bodies and with no science to back them up. Even the anti-bris movement in San Francisco was clearly anti-democratic and anti-science. Keynesian economics is anti-science.
Oh, those were all progressive ideas.