Talk:Denialism/Archive1

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Well

Well, a stub is better than a [[red link]].--PalMD^-Goatspeed! 21:57, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

Look, Ma, a real wiki! With collaboration and everything!--PalMD^-Goatspeed! 22:06, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

Everyone knows real wikis are old wives' tales full of liberal deceit. Thunderkatz^Ho! 22:08, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

Gey kaken, narisherkop.--PalMD^-Goatspeed! 22:10, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

Maybe there could be a section about the most common Denialism strategies? People need to know their enemy, and not just in the biblical sense. BrineBoy^[NaCl]=0.06M 13:12, 12 August 2008 (EDT)

Backwards

I can see why you'd think it was backward, but the definition is "the art of denying a well-evidenced fact in an authoritative way." That applies to what I put in perfectly: they deny shots are safe, and they deny Aspartame is safe. Denialsim, and it's exactly the same phenomenon as the others. So what's the problem with it? Tarantallegra (talk) 08:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Er, aren't they both still there? Mostly, I think it's an issue, perhaps, of you editing in a way that requires improvements? ħuman 06:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

They're there because I reverted you, and then someone else came along. Tarantallegra (talk) 06:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, someone else probably made your addition palatable. ħuman 06:46, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

New Scientist denialism issue

For those who are interested, there is an entire issue of New Scientist devoted to denialism here. Šţěŗĭļė teabag 19:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Good find, I've just read the dead-tree article for that - it reminded me of CP so much, especially to common traits. I didn't think you could access the online version without a subscription. DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 19:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, denialism as a mental illness. Possibly a bit too far but I see where they're coming from. ^gnostic 19:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd condone stealing adapting the "how to be a denialist" bit. However, it could almost be a full article that expands the points into something of a full essay. ^gnostic 19:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

prettying the list

It isn't pretty. Any ideas to fixafy? Sterile teabag 00:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Generally I think this one needs a bit of a scrub. Long and drawn out quotes, a long list of "things", one-sentence paragraphs. That sort of thing. ^gnostic 17:37, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

There are frequently problems with "negative" lists. As you get further down the list the possibility of double negatives is increased. For example at the end of the existing list we have the following being "targeted" by denialists : "Heliocentrism" and "Germ theory denialism" - at least if I read it properly. (I seem to recall us taking another wiki to task for doing something similar.)

I'm not sure how to make the positive statement so as to avoid this tendency though.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 17:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I know what you mean, I just re-jigged the whole "if it is contrary to what is denied" sort of thing. Perhaps we should cut the list to the talk page for now? ^gnostic 19:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

We seem to have sorted most of them out. However

• Diseases cannot be healed by denying they exist (in Christian Science)

Still needs rewording.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 19:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

"Denial of disease causes" perhaps. This isn't quite germ theory denial, it's more like denying the source of some illnesses so you can blame it on demonic possession. While we're one disease, would be who claim that alcoholism and addiction are "diseases" be in denial of personal responsibility? ^gnostic 19:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

OK - but my question is about how to word it so that it's a target of denialism. "Denial of x is denied by denialism" starts to give my brain a problem.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 19:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I have given it a shot below. ^gnostic 20:03, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

List (cut)

I've cut the following from the article. We should a) categorise them to make it more readable (holocaust denial isn't quite the same camp as the moon landing hoax, IMO) and b) expand upon the points. ^gnostic 19:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

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

Science and Medicine

• The HIV/AIDS connection (see also Peter Duesberg)
• 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)
  • 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 existence of global warming by invocation of various conspiracy theories
• The existence of ecological carrying capacity and overpopulation
• Health hazards of some consumer products, most notably cigarette smoking
• Heliocentrism and Einstein's theory of relativity
• That various comestibles such as aspartame are either harmless or nearly harmless.
• Ozone layer depletion
• The effectiveness of germ theory
• The known causes of disease. Such as in faith healing and prayer as used in Christian Science. This is serious as it denies people access to effective medical care.
• That oil is a finite resource, and instead advocacy for explanations of oil formation such as abiogenesis in which oil is continually replenished

History

• The Holocaust and other genocides (particularly the Rape of Nanking and the Armenian Genocide)
• The moon landings during the 1960s-70s
• The evidence presented by Warren Commission report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy

Politics

• 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 American birthplace and citizenship of Barack Obama

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.

Refs from the above section

It's not by coincidence that Medicine has a large proportion of colleagues labelled as denialists across multiple specialities. Consensus is always contaminated by conformity to various degrees. The less hierarchical and political a discipline is, the higher the purity and scientific value of the consensus. The situation in Medicine is worrying. The discipline is bloated by regulations and interfered with by international bodies and financial interests. Practitioners are handed over protocols decided by a handful of appointed officials. Argumentum ad baculum is typical of such hierarchical settings, and since reputation as a denialist would harm most careers, the label amounts to threatening dissenters into conformity. The abundance of denialists should raise concerns about the methods used by the consensus to gain support.--Brasov (talk) 12:44, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Federal Reserve audits denialism?

Considering all the Ron Paul obsessives who keep insisting that the Federal Reserve System has never gotten audited and that we need special legislation to force the Fed to submit to an audit, I have to wonder if these people don't know how to use search engines. If public Fed audits don't exist, what do they call this?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BSTcombinedfinstmt2011.pdf

BTW, p. 5 of this audit shows that the Fed in 2011 earned $83,877,000,000 in net interest income, and it reimbursed the U.S. Treasury $75,424,000,000. Despite the ignorant propaganda that the Fed operates as some kind of scam to exploit American taxpayers, it gets to keep only about 10 percent of its net interest income while putting the rest of its earnings into the common pool with our tax money.

Advancedatheist (talk) 17:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

There's already quite a lot of coverage of Fed conspiracy theories on the Federal Reserve page, if that's what you're looking for. EVDebs (talk) 00:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a case of stopped clockism. The audits by the comptroller and GAO are not as comprehensive as the audit undertaken as a result of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which revealed some very dirty dealing. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:36, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

AHA denialists?

This article categorizes the "link between cholesterol...and heart disease." as denialism. But the AHA itself in the draft version of their new guidelines, categorizes dietary cholesterol and a "not a nutrient of concern": http://blog.heart.org/qa-federal-nutrition-panels-advice-dietary-cholesterol/

Caquilino (talk) 14:45, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Nope. As your link points out, the AHA statement refers to dietary consumption of cholesterol and not serum cholesterol, the kind of cholesterol that has actual links to bad health. It seems like denialism, but it's just the evolution of understanding in how the levels of cholesterol work. MarmotHead (talk) 15:21, 7 July 2015 (UTC)