Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today's Left (by Chris Mooney)

[HuckleB]

http://www.desmogblog.com/unequivocal-today-s-right-overwhemingly-more-anti-science-today-s-left

Concluding paragraphs...

"...

Anyway, there is one last point that I made in the earlier post, and that I will reiterate. It was about the left and disobedience. Green didn’t seem get this one either.

On the left, we eat alive our own allies when they make false claims. That’s precisely what happened on vaccines and autism. We don’t follow the leader—any leader. This is part of our inherent disunity (often a political liability) and anti-authoritarian psychology.

On the right, the dynamic is different and authority is too often followed, even when it is dead wrong. And you stand up for your friends. That’s a virtue in many instances—but not when those friends need calling out and correcting.

There is much more that can be said about that, and indeed, will be said in my next book. But for now, we’ve done more than enough to show why the left and the right are different beasts when it comes to science—and why trying to construct a false equivalence between them ignores all the differences that matter."


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Here's a link to the original referred to in the first paragraph: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/22/326556/classic-false-equivalence-on-political-abuse-of-science/

While it's difficult to see anti-science stuff pushed by fellow liberals, one does have to remember that the right is where the problem is overwhelming.

[Bucky]

1. Other than the anti-immunization kooks, where are there any anti-science lefties?

[Bucky]

2. Oh, and I apologize for offending any of you anti-immunization idiots out there.

[HuckleB]

3. Most of it is in relation to health care.

Plenty of folks still buy into homeopathy, for example. Others tout every quack cure they can find on the Internet, or make up their own philosophy out of thin air, and then push it in response to actual scientific understanding. Uh, and then there's the astrology crowd. I think I'll stop before I offend anyone else.

[Dr. Strange]

4. Where? Hell, there's some here!

There was the Algebra Debate of 2010:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=72725
And of course, the legendary Moon Bombing Threads^TM:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6724923
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6712126
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6723615

[EOTE]

5. Oh god that was embarrassing.

The most embarrassing part of that was the poems and odes to the moon I saw during that time. People in tears because a giant uninhabited rock hundreds of thousands of miles away from earth had some metal slammed into it.

[Dr. Strange]

7. I wrote several haiku to commemorate the metal missile.

Nobody thought to care about the poor missiles who were being forced to hurt the Moon Goddess. I weep for the metal. The poor metal. :cry:

[hifiguy]

8. I somehow missed the Moon Bombing Threads

That is some seriously wack reading material. :spray::rofl:

[HuckleB]

9. +1

[SpartanDem]

11. I had forgotten about the moon bombing threads

still makes me shake my head

[hifiguy]

6. The anti-vaxers are nuts. And I say that as a person diagonsed

as being on the autism spectrum (Asperger's).

[HuckleB]

10. After taking a look at the new postings in the Health Forum today, I might just change my mind again

:banghead:

[HuckleB]

17. It's sCAM Spam city over there this morning.

[krispos42]

12. "My country, right or wrong" seems to be their attitude n/t

[HuckleB]

13. Something like that.

Interestingly, they don't seem to think they're country is "governed" by scientific outcomes.

Hmmmmmmm.

:hi:

[krispos42]

14. All of us have the invisible hand of the free market shoved up our asses.

We're all free-market meat puppets.


Didn't you get the memo?

[HuckleB]

15. No, but that my explain my itchy butt.

:hi:

[HuckleB]

16. Fight The Anti-Regulation Nonsense...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x109990

[JoeyT]

18. It would be a lot easier to take on the right's anti-science positions

if we didn't have self-proclaimed prominent atheists/science writers getting their panties in a bunch every time someone is mean about religion, which is where an awful lot of the right's anti-science positions come from.

Mooney isn't going to address that argument, though.

[HuckleB]

19. Uh, your concern is one of the strangest propositions I've come across in some time.

Can you clarify it?

Please.

Hmm.

[JoeyT]

20. Mooney isn't a particularly reliable guy.

I take anything about science with a grain of salt when it's coming from a Templeton Fellow, since the Templeton Foundation exists solely to pollute science at every turn. He also tends to pitch a hissy fit any time he thinks anyone is overly critical of religion.

It's why I say he's unhelpful in countering the anti-science attitudes the right pushes, since those attitudes are steeped so heavily in religion. In any argument between a creationist insisting children be taught a 6000 year old earth and an atheist insisting that it isn't science and it's stupid to boot, Mooney will chide the atheist for being too mean.