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A dirty dozen gems about denialism

Anti-Idahoism Colony collapse disorder Conservative denial Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Global warming HIV denial Historical revisionism Holocaust denial Ku Klux Klan Obama citizenship denial Steve Milloy Young Earth creationism

Denialism is a methodological school of woo. It is the art of denying a well evidenced fact in an authoritative way, despite lack of any empirically acceptable counter-evidence.

Denialists tend to have wide variety of targets from the scientific to the political. Popular denialist targets include:

• The HIV/AIDS connection (see Peter Duesberg and HIV denial)
• The Holocaust and other genocides (particularly the Rape of Nanking and the Armenian Genocide)
• The efficacy and safety of vaccination (and modern evidence-based medicine in general)
• The existence of evolution (generally conflated with Big Bang cosmology and abiogenesis by deniers, which in reality are completely separate from evolution; notably, the former is an astronomical theory while evolution is a biological theory^[1])
  • Often combined with the denial of the Earth's actual age of approximately 4.54 billion years, as well as the actual age of the universe in general, which is even older
• The constitutional basis for the separation of church and state in the United States
• The legal requirement to pay income tax (again, in the U.S.)
• The existence of global warming by invocation of various conspiracy theories
• Ecological carrying capacity and overpopulation^[2]
• Health hazards of some consumer products, most notably cigarette smoking
• The moon landings during the 1960s-70s
• The Warren Commission report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy
• Christian Science believes diseases can be healed by denying they exist.
• Denial that oil is a finite resource, and advocacy for explanations of oil formation such as abiogenesis in which oil is continually replenished^[3]
• The American birthplace and citizenship of Barack Obama
• Heliocentrism and Einstein's theory of relativity
• That various comestibles such as aspartame are either harmless or nearly harmless.
• Ozone layer depletion
• Companies deny that their products are harmful.

Denialism has at times been a tool of national policy in some places, including Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union (denial of Mendelian genetics), the defeat of the Kyoto global warming treaty and requirements for abstinence-only sex education in the United States, the Turkish government's denial of the Armenian Genocide, and the attempted suppression of relativity as "Jewish science" in Nazi Germany.

[edit] Methods

The Hoofnagle boys at Denialism Blog on scienceblogs.com have described (using their "Denialists' Deck of Cards" series^[4]) how their tactics are remarkably similar. Denialists often claim that an established set of knowledge or scientific theory is not proven, lacks evidence, or is a controversy. Lists of experts (who may have no credentials in the area) are compiled as testimonials. Such statements are common among the tobacco industry about the connection of smoking to lung cancer; creationists about evolution; and denialists about global warming.

Denialist groups also create their own research to "study the problem" or produce their own body of "competing evidence" which is often poorly performed (if at all, as many are public relations firms). These groups will encourage people to form their own opinions or do their own tests, rather than relying on studies with appropriate controls.

More informal techniques include a witch's brew of half-truths, sob stories^[5], conspiracy theories and or spin to try to force the public to ignore an important issue.

[edit] See also

• One single proof

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ Then again, you can't really expect people who don't even know what a theory is (i.e. the people who use the phrase "just a theory") to know that
2. ↑ This form of denialism is found in the "there are no limits to growth" belief popular among a range of fringe ideologies from libertarians, to communists, to Lyndon LaRouche), but there are also legitimate counter-arguments that carrying capacity can be increased through technology, including the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and modern improvements in agriculture; these are also denied by those on the opposite extreme who propose a sustainable world human population at perhaps 1/10th or less of current numbers.
3. ↑ The term "peak oil denialism" is also thrown about by peak oil proponents, who conflate the numerous beliefs and predictions of impending doom surrounding peak oil with oil being a finite resource; yet the latter is true, the former are legitimate subjects for debate and skepticism.
4. ↑ http://www.denialism.com/Deckofcards/deck.html
5. ↑ Generally about the impending impoverishment of multimillion dollar companies, but often involving stories about how brown people/insert_other_religion_heres/small independent artists are going to steal our money, steal our identities, steal our country, steal our dogs and rape our women.