I’d modify that slightly to say that those conservatives who hard-core deny science hold a great deal more political power than those liberals who hard-core deny science, but yeah, basically I agree. (I might agree with what you say, except that I’d want to see some numbers first 
).
That’s almost exactly what I’m saying. Turn it around, rather, and say that if you’re using an evidence-rejecting approach, you’re using an approach fundamentally incompatible with science. I agree that using evidence isn’t sufficient to say you’re doing science, though.
See this is why I never get involved in these discussions even though I feel like I should. Reading this is just too depressing.
We need a shrug icon. As in, I give up, you get to call this one a “win” since you are completely impenetrable.
The thing I never can understand, is why anyone would continue to bang their head against a stone wall. The internet is really really big.
As to the topic at hand, I despise science deniers. Especially the ones that have a direct effect on my life. Religious fruitbats and ignorant fuckheads can deny all they want, just don’t reach your hand in my pocket based on your false beliefs.
Meh.
As the tread is indeed about science denialists, it is pertinent to check if they are using ideology to avoid dealing with evidence.
Or we can just say that they are being silly.
It’s stupid shit like the following that makes me want to bitchslap some bloggers.
The skeptic argument…
wtf? Seriously? How is pointing out the shift in naming a fucking argument? I mean, if you can’t see that shit for the stupid it is, why should I listen to the more complex shit you blog about?
See?
Except for anti vaccers, anti nukers or climate change deniers?..
Fuck it, lets just ship the whole stupid list
Climate's changed before
It's the sun
It's not bad
There is no consensus
It's cooling
Models are unreliable
Temp record is unreliable
Animals and plants can adapt
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
Those aren’t arguments, they are pointing to things, events, measurements, shit that is just there.
Except for the “It’s cooling” and possibly “It’s the sun”, they are all just facts. The sun and the cooling measured in some places is just an example of how complicated the matter is.
It’s hugely complicated. Some blog trying to make it simple, all settled, it’s not science.
and that statement is what I was asking for. Period. Nothing else. You don’t agree that the stats were falsified by the police with the newspaper’s assistance.
Yes, except that he doesn’t get shouted down or dog piled the same way right wing insane posters do. I grant he’s not generally respected, but he is mostly tolerated, with a wry resignation. “There goes Der Trihs again…”
I don’t want to ever be considered a serious poster.
Then I really, really, really don’t understand the exchange in the posts between 128 and 136. Why didn’t you just say, “No, you misunderstand. I’m not, in fact, suggesting that this is an example of science.”
I mean, I’m hesitant to reopen the wound, but you’re not, in fact, contending that this was science, are you, or that measuring something is science?
Warning in advance: Shodan, I’m dragging your name into things unnecessarily.
I find posters like Shodan to be annoying, and I sometimes have trouble believing he’s posting sincerely, but when he’s not drive-bying or taking stupid cheap shots at liberals or at his nemesis Secret Society (I think they’re called the Usury Suppositories or something), he can post things that are interesting and useful.
Der Trihs is fucking insane. He’s like Rand Rover insane.
I try to avoid the temptation to argue with either of them. RR is a little more difficult to resist, because he follows me around making kissy noises and calling me his bitch, and also because I’m already positioned to argue against conservative points of view. But I always regret getting into a discussion with him: it’s never ever useful.
Der Trihs also isn’t useful to argue with, but he doesn’t show up to argue against me at every opportunity, and also I’m not pre-positioned to argue against leftists. Occasionally I’ll say something like I’m saying now, but more often I just resist the temptation to engage with him.
How often do you find yourself arguing against the Rand Rovers of the board?
Check the links, the links to the scientific papers are in there. And those are the arguments from the deniers, you are correct that many do not amount to good ones, and yet they are repeated forever and ever (Amen) by deniers.
And if you had bothered to check the links you would had seen that it is complicated, but that complexity is not favoring deniers.
As pointed out before, it does defer to the science.
A thread about the arrogant ignorance of science denialists should take note of Michelle Bachmann. During this week’s GOP Presidential candidates’ debate she played to antivaxers’ support, slamming Rick Perry for trying to make “innocent 12-year-old girls” get a “forced government injection”. Ooo, jack-booted government thugs holding down innocent children to inject them with needles containing God knows what? Where will it end?
It’s not just Bachmann getting in a dig at Perry’s relationship with Merck, the Gardasil manufacturer. She’s pushing unfounded fears about the vaccine itself.
“After the debate, the Minnesota congresswoman sent out a fundraising appeal on the (Gardasil) issue with the title ‘I’m Offended.’
In interviews after the debate, she suggested that the vaccine could do permanent damage.
She told Fox News: 'There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine.
‘She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences.’”
Bachmann believes what a parent allegedly told her after the debate. The science and the studies? Not so much.
There’s your prime example of the arrogance of ignorance.
More on Michelle’s ploy and playing to antiscience sentiments among voters.
We now return to the pressing issue of how Doper leftists aren’t mean enough to Der Trihs.
Agreed.
You might m not ake a public policy argument against the government usurping parental roles, although even then you’d be on somewhat thin ice. But in my view, if you simply held the line at, “These mandatory vaccinations are not the proper role of government,” you at least have a defensible, non-scientific claim.
Bachmann’s claim is lunacy, foolish arrogant lunacy. I’m not sure anti-vaxers as a whole dominate one side or other other of the political spectrum, but graphed by weight of influence, this one clearly lands heavily on the Right.
When I’m in a thread and I notice a cringe-worthy comment from what’s ostensibly “my side,” I try to make a point of speaking out against it.
I should have, but was drawn on by the interest in defining the scientific method so I could show that a key component thereof was the acceptance of measurements and results even if they did not show what you wish them to show.
But it was a distraction, and I should have just said that science was not my claim.
I mentioned earlier that woo, including antivax nonsense, knows no political boundaries. If you check out the Respectful Insolence link in my last post, the author (whose own politics are mildly right of center) makes the point that while anti/pseudo-science views are routinely espoused and/or coddled by mainstream Republican politicians these days (especially when it comes to evolution and climate change), Bachmann may have crossed the line by promoting antivax idiocy, which in some people’s minds is more commonly associated with crunchy granola leftist views.
Apparently it’s alright to be arrogantly ignorant about science, but not if your ignorance is tainted by an association with liberalism. :eek: