Climate Change: Denialism is a game for the whole

Denialism is a game for the whole political family

By Dana Blankenhorn | Nov 9, 2009 |

Liberals like to look down their noses at conservatives who deny scientific studies as “denialists.”

Turns out this is a game the whole political family can play.

In his new book Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter finds evidence of anti-science denial in many political movements, ranging from organic food advocates to those who deny evolution.

Science is not a belief system. Science doesn’t “believe” in evolution. Scientists accept evolution as the best explanation for available evidence, and as the best source of new questions about that evidence. Science is not about answers, it’s about questions.

It’s science’s constant hedging in the face of new questions, new experiments and new evidence, that makes it hard for science to be heard in the din of voices demanding absolutes and attacking those who dare ask questions as “moral relativists.”

Working scientists deal with this by putting their work to one side while discussing their political or religious beliefs, but most people don’t, can’t or won’t do this. So we scream at one another and ignore the evidence all around us.

It’s easier to live in a state of denial than to accept a scientific world where no answer is truly final.