Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?
We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.
Some even have doubts about the moon landing.
Someone should probably tell the morons at National Geographic that the only scientist to have walked on the moon is a climate skeptic, and the greatest living nuclear physicist is a climate skeptic. People like Barack Obama and Joe Biden who think that science talks to them, should probably be under psychiatric evaluation. Science is a process of learning , not a left-wing religion written in stone by political hacks.
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
– Albert Einstein
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”
– Richard Feynman
Move over National Geographic, The Science Channel gets it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbeSw3mzAdE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH5SQEKIGhA
The History of Nat Geo. Always great photography but steadily declining content since the 1980s.
I used to read it when I was 12 to see the perky breasts of topless island girls
I did the same at age 8 or 9, then discovered my brother’s Playboy magazines at 10, and never looked back (so to speak).
When you woke up this morning
Did you feel all alone
Did you get a “grip” on yourself
Was it still flesh and bone
Did you yearn for the centerfold
Of some bimbo girl magazine
Did she make you question your manhood
And did she make you “come” clean?
-Neil Innes (Bonzo Dog Band)
Ha….you and every other pubescent boy at the time….except for me of course – I just sought it for the articles. ///
Nat Geo has now even lost that edge to porn sites.
I doubt Nat Geo would still be around if not subsidized by Doctor and Dentist offices.
“war on science” = ‘war on leftist lies’
Do they have articles?
Apparently only haters of white Americans read Playboy now. Who knew they had articles?
Dear Azealia Banks,
I read about your interview with Playboy magazine where you apparently took off your clothes and talked about how much you hate white people. Just another day at the office for you, I suppose.
I confess I didn’t read the whole exchange, though I’m sure it was packed with penetrating insight and searing self-reflection.
I did notice, however, this portion:
“I hate everything about this country. Like, I hate fat white Americans… All the people who are crunched into the middle of America, the real fat and meat of America, are these racist conservative white people who live on their farms… Those little teenage girls who work at Kmart and have a racist grandma — that’s really America.”
You then fantasized about eventually leaving this country:
“As long as I have my money, I’m getting the f*** out of here and I’m gonna leave y’all to your own devices.”
Finally you spoke a bit about the reparations you deserve, and said it’s unnatural for you to be American or Christian:
“Black people need reparations for building this country, and we deserve way more f***ing credit and respect… When you rip a people from their land, from their customs, from their culture — there’s still a piece of me that knows I’m not supposed to be speaking English, I’m not supposed to be worshiping Jesus Christ…All this s**t is unnatural to me.”
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/dear-azealia-banks-please-feel-free-to-leave-america-and-never-return/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%203-18-15%20FINAL
My family had their land, possessions, babies under the age of two, religion, and freedoms stripped from them and they fled for their lives with nothing more than the clothes on their backs 400 years ago (That is, those that were not dead already or imprisoned). They paid ridiculous fares to die in large numbers at sea for the hope of a better life. Then they died in large numbers trying to homestead an unknown and dangerous wilderness. Later, hundreds were lined up along the Matanzas River and systematically cut down by Spaniards.
Not one of my ancestors owned slaves, in fact on my father’s side of the family, we were descended from slaves. They were known as ‘Turnbull’s Niggers’, and from the island of Menorca.
My mother’s side of the family came from Scotland and Ireland, where close to a million slaves were taken by the Moors.
Ancestral hate is for small minded people who have nothing worth contributing to society.
Gator,
A would really like to have taken some of the billions spent on CAGW, gathered up all the America haters and dumped them into the apropriate countries with revoked American citizenship. Heck even swap one for one for someone who WANTED to be an American.
First up Obummer and MOOoooshell and their good Rev. Wrong.
Ha! George Clymer was a wealthy merchant. He was one of the first of what would become the founders to advocate separation from the home country. He never owned a slave and lost 3/4 of his pretty substantial fortune during the Revolution. How come none of his decedents ever asked for reparations?
Catholic Irish Immigrants that came here were so persecuted that there was even a political movement aimed to keeping them down that gained some considerable power. They were called the Know Nothing party. How come Irish Catholics have never asked for reparations?
I could go on, but you get the gist. Why do idiots believe that by lowering the standards for a race they are doing them a favor?
I find it ironic that Blacks hold Lincoln in such high esteem. They obviously have no idea what he thought of them…
Lincoln’s commitment to the resettlement of African Americans is particularly revealing because it demonstrates his belief that African Americans were incapable of being assimilated into white society, and that they were socially unequal to whites, thus “requiring” their forced resettlement to Africa or even Central America, in his view.
Magness and Page not only explore Lincoln’s connections with the African Colonization Society and other African resettlement societies, but also examine sources highlighting Lincoln’s elaborate and profoundly immoral plan to relocate freed slaves to a Central American colony where they would function as indentured servants for syndicates providing various commodities to the U.S. armed forces in a mercantilist relationship:
Ambrose W. Thompson, a Philadelphian who had grown rich in coastal shipping, provided the new president with what seemed to be a good opportunity. Thompson had obtained control of several hundred thousand acres in the Chiriqui region of what is now Panama, and had formed the “Chiriqui Improvement Company.” He proposed transporting liberated blacks from the United States to the Central American region, where they would mine the coal that was supposedly there in abundance. This coal would be sold to the US Navy, with the resulting profits used to sustain the black colony, including development of plantations of cotton, sugar, coffee, and rice. The Chiriqui project would also help to extend US commercial dominance over tropical America.
Negotiations to realize the plan began in May 1861, and on August 8, Thompson made a formal proposal to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells to deliver coal from Chiriqui at one-half the price the government was then paying. Meanwhile, Lincoln had referred the proposal to his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, who, on August 9, 1861, enthusiastically endorsed the proposed contract.
Eager to proceed with the Chiriqui project, on August 14, 1862, Lincoln met with five free black ministers, the first time a delegation of their race was invited to the White House on a matter of public policy. The President made no effort to engage in conversation with the visitors, who were bluntly informed that they had been invited to listen. Lincoln did not mince words, but candidly told the group, “Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race…. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you.”
Likewise, an analysis of Lincoln’s life and career as an Illinois politician and attorney demonstrates that Lincoln the politician did not recognize blacks as his social or political equals and, during his years as a lawyer and office seeker living in Illinois, his opinion on this did not change. Lincoln was opposed to the institution of slavery during his entire lifetime but, like most white Americans, he was not an abolitionist (according to Professor Stacy Pratt McDermott of the University of Illinois-Springfield).
http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/books/item/6453-researchers-further-reveal-abraham-lincolns-racism
Not quite what our public schools teach.
Reparations? This current generation of former slaves should be paying reparations for being provided with a far greater live expectency and a far higher standard of living. Benefits they never would have enjoyed if their ancestors had not come to America.
I cancelled my NG magazine subscription in 2004 and threw away all the back issues I had collected–disgusted that they had lost their way.
Such a shame to see another great brand laid low by what one can only presume is a raft of commissars one maybe once simply tolerated, but as the foot soldiers plied their craft in the field, got embedded at base and worked their way up the greasy pole to control.
After decades looking forward to what is still amazing value to get a coffee table tome packed with stunning imagery at least, and then preserving serried ranks of yellow spines on expanding shelf space, I at last decided enough was enough and let the sub slip. Too many daft claims and conflations, too often.
The pleas to continue kept coming, but to no avail. I wonder if it has at all sunk in why such a loyal and well-matched customer should part ways?
Intriguing that Nat Geo overlooks the real war on science —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ9wvHq3eQ8&feature=player_detailpage
This was the final straw for me with NG. I cancelled my subscription after 30+ years. I told them that I would consider renewing again after they publish an article on Solar Irradiance Theory and the future serious threat of global cooling.
A version of global cooling was all the rage in the Seventies. It too was based on questionable science which was fashionable at the time.
They try to lump vaccination and evolution in with climate science, but those our obviously separate issues and have nothing at all to do with the science of climate change.
It’s telling that the alarmist Prophets of Doom run from debates. Oh, the fear mongers say it’s because that they don’t want to give skeptics legitimacy. But they never used to say that and in fact were happy to debate… until they realized that. they. lose. debates. That’s the science, my friend. The science is on our side, so they run away from debates.
A famous climate debate, with two opposing teams of debaters, with MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen on our side, was in 2007. The audience was polled before and after the debate, and WE WON. The Chicken Littles then realized debating is a losing proposition for them. See a video of the full 1 hour 40 minute debate here: https://vimeo.com/8572553
Here’s a transcript of the debate, including, at the end, the announcement of the results of the before / after audience poll of the famous 2007 debate:
Forgot link for the transcript of the climate change debate, here: http://intelligencesquaredus.org/images/debates/past/transcripts/GlobalWarming-031407.pdf
A 100% global warming propaganda
that’s why they put global warming at the top of the list,
(to show people that they are at the same mental level like fake moon landing apologists)
btw-most independent scientists are against GMO,unlike their prostitute counterparts-/same story with global warming.those who benefitbnever bite the hand that feeds them.
i wonder natgeo did not come up with holocaust deniers.
Gator
I, for one, am tired of the idiotic statement that blacks built America. Were they part of it? Sure. But so were all the other groups who came here. Erie canal, transcontinental railroad, Pittsburgh steel mills, northern shipyards, etc. etc. were not built by slave labor. Slave labor, with a few outliers, was involved in the farming of the rural south which was noted for the concentration of wealth in the planter class with little left over for the poor, white and black alike. Outside of that sector, slavery HINDERED economic diversity in the slave states. Azealia should wise up, lighten up, and smell the magnolias.
The first slave owner on this continent was black!
According to colonial records, the first slave owner in the United States was a black man.
Prior to 1655 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants. All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Seven years was the limit that an indentured servant could be held. Upon their release they were granted 50 acres of land. This included any Negro purchased from slave traders. Negros were also granted 50 acres upon their release.
Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.
When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker.
Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner.
Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.
By 1699, the number of free blacks prompted fears of a “Negro insurrection.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa.
Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free blacks back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves.
However, black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.
By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.
http://conservative-headlines.com/2012/03/americas-first-slave-owner-was-a-black-man/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VElFWpNH5GM
Our schools systems are teaching ‘revised’ history to ‘improve’ the self image of blacks. So the accomplishments of the Egyptians are now attributed to blacks. The schools teach nothing of Arab slave traders or the fact that blacks of one tribe sold blacks of another to the traders.
Science is not the only subject that the blasted Progressives have completely mucked up.
They also don’t teach that Europeans were not paranoid lunatics. The first crusade did not occur until after 450 years of violent Muslim conquests of traditionally Christian territories.
In 600 AD most of Europe was still PAGAN. Yes, Rome and Greece and Turkey were all run by emperors who were Christians but the Norse, for example, were very much not Christians at all and the first Christian to land in England preached to the Anglo Saxons and Celts who were in no shape to go across the planet to fight Muslims.
The Norse, on the other hand, were very good at roaming all over the place, while still pagans, all the way to North America and across the Mediterranean Sea, etc. When they converted, they were very fanatical and eager to go loot and fight ‘pagans’ which funny enough included looting Byzantia, too.
Watch and learn…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo
Whether through eugenics, indoctrination, or threats, progressivism’s ultimate goal has always been societal stasis.
Once looked up the census data for US by county. (like here – https://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/atlas/censr01-106.pdf )
It becomes quite clear that with under 2% of the population, blacks had no place in building or working in the fishing & shipbuilding industries of Maine, the mining of North Central Minn, Montana, Nevada, N. Idaho, no help in farming / ranching in the Dakota’s, Montana, Wyoming or the lumber industries of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and pretty much nothing in Alaska.
So what exactly did they build.
https://youtu.be/Ha4zlvaKimw
Among other evils, slavery is a poor economic arrangement and cannot compete with free men in the marketplace. Innumerable commenters in the day made the same observation upon their trip down the Ohio river bisecting free states and states of slavery. Slavery builds poverty and slothfulness. Slaves built nothing, and in fact, were a slave to command his own self respect, he would need to do as little for his master as possible.
The problem is that we talk of science as if it were something tangible and say things like “science has proven the theory of gravity” for the purpose of conversational brevity and as such we have created a golem subject to polemics such as NG proposes.
A proper pedant would dispense with “science” as the colloquial verb and utilize the proper “scientific method” in these assertions i.e. “utilization of the scientific method has allowed technicians to validity the theory of gravity to the extent that physicists now consider it to be a law.”
Except the Climateers don’t use the scientific method, they only methods they use belong to political science.
Well..now somebody is making sense. Thank you.
Our “friends” at TWC must smoke a lot of whatever it is they’re smoking!
http://www.weather.com/science/environment/news/warmest-winter-on-record-earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU
Political propaganda written by a political operative in a politicized science magazine about a politicized science.
Nat Geo forgets that they proclaimed Lake Superior’s warming “the canary in the coal mine” in Nov 2012. And that Lake Superior was “is also one of the most rapidly warming lakes in the world.”
If you read the article you’ll see that the researchers compared 1979 to 2006 in a spectacular cherry pick, one of the highest ice years compared to THE lowest.
Well you all know how that turned out. How could you argue with science?
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/20/climate-change-and-variability-drive-low-water-levels-on-the-great-lakes/
Question: “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?”
.. Because if we aren’t skeptical (about claims and predictions) we could fall for any number of scams and hoaxes — such as the doomsday that was supposed to happen in December 2012. There were a lot of mainly young people that were worried about the wild claims of global disasters. The hoax even spawned a Hollywood blockbuster, much like the AGW hoax spawned ‘The Day After Tomorrow’.
In 2012, I wrote this paragraph in case it helped with the problem :-
“Would you believe me if I made a wild claim that a huge, very deep hole five miles across is going to appear in the South Island of New Zealand on May 30 next year? Would it make any difference to you if I said that the May 30 date is when the ancient Martian calendar ends one cycle and starts another? …. Since I haven’t said how or why that is possible I hope you won’t just assume that I am correct. Most people need some proof, or evidence, that backs up these wild claims. Otherwise, I could say something like: “I’ve found a new species of apple tree that has the apples falling upwards!” and everybody would believe me without question.”
The take-home-lesson is: *Just saying it doesn’t make it true*, especially if the doomsayer is likely to make a profit out of the doom saying.
I recall a rare moment of thruthtelling on TV at the time. The reporter had dug up a genuine Mayan shamanout in the Yucutan. When he asked this old wise man what happened when the Mayan calendar ended, he replied: “We start over again.”
“Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?”
Why do so many science journals devolve into tabloids that pose strawman questions?
I’m not sure if you think my question was a strawman question, . but I was just trying to compare the thinking of CAGW skeptics with the thinking of ‘2012 end-of-the-world’ skeptics, and suggest a possible reason why many reasonable people doubt CAGW ‘science’. In both cases skeptics point out that there is a lack of empirical evidence, hence my sentence: “Most people need some proof, or evidence, that backs up these wild claims.”
… and I have to say, my use of the ‘2012 end-of-the-world’ hoax as an example was not “tabloid”. I was heavily involved in the ‘2012hoax.org’ website and forum. We tried very hard to explain to the young people why all the wild claims of the doomsayers were devoid of the necessary extraordinary evidence, and we tried very hard to convince them that they didn’t need to use self-harm or worse *before the feared day in December 2012.
Having lived through the end of the world several times already, I am rather bored with the notion.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
I have not read the National Geographic article, but if they are trying to imply that the same people are on one side of all of these issues, they are completely wrong.I think you will find a large concentration of anti-vaccine sentiment in the liberal ultra wealthy west coast communities. Ditto anti GMO.
These are almost certainly not the same people who are climate skeptics.
Here’s the article
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
Joel Achenbach is a writer for Washington Post; NatGeo is now starting to echo Wapo.
Von Hayek-
….The first of these developments was the growing importance, associated with the rise of modern science, of that particular form of rationalism that I call ‘constructivism’ or ‘scientism’, which for the following several centuries virtually captured serious thought about reason and its role in human affairs. This form of rationalism…is particularly ill-considered, embedding a false theory of science and of rationality in which reason is abused…and leads invariably to an erroneous interpretation of the nature and coming into being of human institutions. Descending in the modern period from Rene Descartes, this form of rationalism … claims that pure reason itself can directly serve our desires and can build a new world, a new morality, a new law, even a new and purified language, from itself alone. It still dominates the thinking of most scientist, and also of most literati, artist, and intellectuals.
Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that “the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science.” Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientist, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehension and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.
Says Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard), paid science denier of the Heartland Institute. US kids aren’t even ranked in the top 20 in math and science among nations, and the trend is downward … and we have people who are building “Creation Museums” in America. Scientific illiteracy and denial is rampant in America and unbefitting of a nation as great as ours. The key statement regarding how science has been politicized: “Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion, and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers. ” Peer group beliefs are often religious or political. Religiosity accounts for nearly all science denial in the area of evolution. Politics account for nearly all science denial in climate change. The problem is, people who should be reading this article don’t read Nat’l Geo. They could care less about science and they are told what to think from their political websites and the Koch Bros.
I don’t get paid you are liar.
Damn! I missed my Big Oil check again this month! 😆
Reblogged this on Edonurwayup's Blog and commented:
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
– Albert Einstein
Ha! 2 weeks before Christmas I saw this edition in waiting room at Hospital. .. i threw it in the bin with the sharps!
Can’t have Morons seeing that….
Did I do good Dad?
Yes, Son
(Said in a deep voice)