Grant - Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality

Published 2011 by Prometheus Books

Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War against Reality. Copyright 2011 by John Grant. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grant, John, 1949

Denying science : conspiracy theories, media distortions, and the war against reality / by John Grant.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9781616143992 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781616144005 (ebook)

1. SciencePolitical aspects. 2. ScienceSocial aspects. I. Title

Q175.5.G734 2011

500dc23

2011014991

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For Thomas Alan Paul Crowther,
with apologies for the way weve left your world.

If your beliefs fit on a sign... think harder.
Sign at the Rally to Restore Sanity,
Washington DC, October 30, 2010

The staff of the West Milford Township Library have gone above and beyond the call of duty to obtain books for me from far parts and have done so with unflagging friendliness and helpfulness. My thanks to Elaine Bindler, Liz Frey, Beth Gamble, Bruce Gilliard, Joanne Grady, Kitty Heuer, Theresa McArthur, Debbie Maynard, Aimee Morrow, Elyse Schear, Sue Small, Maria Villecca, and Dale Warn.

Much information has been channeled my way by The Spammers, to whom my thanks yet again: Randy M. Dannenfelser, Bob Eggleton, Gregory Frost, Neil Greenberg, Wally Hayman, Jael, Stuart Jaffe, Karl Kofoed, Todd Lockwood,Aaron McLellan, Lynn Perkins, Ray Ridenour, Tim Sullivan, and Greg Uchrin. Others who have passed along useful stuff include Fragano Ledgister, and of course, Pam Scoville.

Forgive me if Ive omitted anyone.

The trouble with most folks isnt their ignorance. Its knowing so many things that aint so.

Josh Billings, but usually (in keeping with the observation) attributed to Mark Twain

This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.

Albert Einstein, letter to Marcel Grossmann, September 12, 1920

Denial of science is everywhere around us, not just in bars and offices and pulpits but on the lips of our broadcasters and legislators, our movers and shakers. Theres denial that AIDS and HIV are connected and that traditional remedies cant cure AIDS. Theres denial of the science showing vaccines dont cause autism. A century and a half after publication of Darwins Origin of Species (1859) theres still denial that we came to be what we are through natural selection; and 180 years or so after publication of Lyells Principles of Geology (183033), demonstrating beyond all possible doubt that the earth must be of great antiquity, there are plenty wholl tell you its only a few thousand years old. And that our ancestors romped with dinosaurs. And that the sun and all the rest of the universe go round the earth.

There are those who argue that putting a zygote to use to offer potential cures to the currently uncurable is killing a child, whereas flushing that same zygote down the toilet isnt. There are those who deny the benefits of genetically modified foodstuffs in a world of soaring human population (and theres another denial story in itself) and those who deny concerns that in some instances more research is needed before letting those modified organisms into the wild. The dangerously deleterious environmental impacts of intensive farming are so widely denied that in the average US supermarket theres likely to be no nonfactory meat, poultry, and fish on offer at all. And there are still plenty of people around who deny that smoking causes illness and death.

There are those who, because it offends their ideology or simply because theyve been deluded by demagogues and industry shills, deny the reality of global warming even though the evidence is becoming drastically harder to ignore with every passing year.

And this is hardly to start the list of the science denials that are currently corrupting our culture and poisoning our public discoursestifling our ability to make the right decisions for societys benefit and the well-being of our children and grandchildren.

The denial of science is a topic of enormous breadth and depth. When I first decided to write this book, I thought Id be able to cover every aspect of it, if not exhaustively then at least in enough detail to give a fairly comprehensive idea of what was going on. It soon became clear to me this was impossible. If I didnt want to produce a book the size of Encyclopedia Britannica I was going to have to tone down my aspirations a triflewhich meant deciding to give some aspects of denialism scant treatment to allow space for others that seemed more important. Important? Id say some of the areas Ive chosen not to focus onlike stem cell research and genetically modified foodsare very important indeed, but theyre still not as important as climate-change denialism. Because of our continued denial of global warmingor certainly our seeming political inability to address ittheres a good chance human civilization as we know it will have disappeared by the end of this century. Now thats important.

How could the richest country on the planet, home to some of the worlds finest universities and libraries, have reached the sorry state where denialism of scienceof objective realityis rampant? In the weeks after a deranged gunman, Jared Loughner, shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others, Rightists in the US claimed Loughner was a Leftist while Leftists claimed he was a Rightist. In an essay on this situation, Why We Should Take Jared Loughners Politics Seriously, educator Steve Striffler put his finger on one of the primary reasons theres so much antiscientific nonsense permeating US culture: