What were we doing last June that we missed this?: At the Eighth World Conference of Science Journalists, Helsinki June 24-28, 2013, a panel fretted,
Denial of the scientific theory of evolution is the granddaddy of organized anti-science movements, cropping up repeatedly under different guises in the United States and in other countries around the world. Despite challenges by scientists, educators, politicians and lawyers, evolution denial hasn’t gone away and won’t go away. Instead it has seeded doubts about science that have spread to other arenas, including denial of global warming science, vaccination, genetically modified foods, and the hazards of second-hand smoke.
Science writers need to be aware of the influence of anti-science efforts on the topics they cover, since science denialism efforts have spread more quickly and widely in recent years, aided by the Internet and social media. Well-organized campaigns linking opposition to evolution to other anti-science efforts, both legal and political, help fuel the digital denialism battles. Denialism has been defined as “choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth”.
Why does science denialism seem to be spreading around the globe? Are there common underlying causes involving religion, political beliefs, economics, education, and human nature itself? What is the history of well-organized attempts to mislead the public about scientific evidence? What challenges does denialism pose to the media in general, and to science journalists in particular, in communicating about controversial scientific issues to the public? More.
What? At a time when even p-value is coming under serious scrutiny, DNA studies are shaking the tree of life, and new human evolution finds are “baffling” and “hard to make sense of” (just to rattle off some stuff that whistled past the desk recently; there was scads of it back last June too), these people imagine that “well-organized campaigns” underlie uncertainty?
But who needs such campaigns? Why bother, when letting people know the facts does the job fine? Heck, you only have to run a blog on a shoestring. Talk about stuff we should know about here at UD.
There is a simple solution to these science writers’ problem: Lose the pom poms and the loud hailer. Read what you are writing. The rest of us have. The only thing you are justified in being so certain of is your own certainty. And your certainty doesn’t seem to be contagious.
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There they go again! its laughable.
iF you don’t agree with them your a SCIENCE denier.
Give me a break already.
We disagree with certain conclusions in certain subjects touching on origin matters. Yes global warming is another myth but thats a trivial matter.
We are saying they are WRONG and wronger about evolution.
WE are saying the SCIENCE is poorly done by evolutionists and some of us do BETTER science.
Your lame and this accusation is a reflection on why you are on the wrong side.
Your lame in your thinking.
We ain’t going away and the late debate shows you are.
The times they are achanginggggg!
I give thanks that there are “science deniers.” Of course, that term is grossly misapplied. We are Darwin Doubters.
That does not make us science deniers.
Science is a human endeaver, and the last I checked humans do make mistakes and some do not recognize their own biases or philosophical/political agendas. Some demand that their philosophy of science rule all of science – even if that blinds them from the truth?
Let us define science as the search for how nature works – no holds barred. Let us recognize that the historical sciences are different from the laboratory sciences with respect to the degree of confidence we can place in results that are found.
Let us agree to talk to each other cordially and not dogmatically.
From the OP: “…evolution denial hasn’t gone away and won’t go away. Instead it has seeded doubts about science that have spread to other arenas, including denial of global warming science, vaccination, genetically modified foods, and the hazards of second-hand smoke.”
False dichotomy. Yes, there are those who deny that evolution happened the way Darwin described it. This does not mean that they deny other valid scientific inquiries.
I’ve never heard of someone denying vaccinations, only questioning their efficacy; I’ve also never heard of people denying GMOs, only questioning their safety. People do not deny that vaccinations occur or that GMOs exist. They ask whether or not they are safe for public consumption. If you as a reporter cannot tell the difference between the two, then save everyone the hassle of reading your poorly thought out words. You’ll only add to the confusion.
The only thing that needs to be ‘denied’ is that evolution even qualifies as a science in the first place! It is all smoke and mirrors. Every bit of it! There is not one piece of evidence that can withstand scrutiny so as to support the grand claims of neo-Darwinists:
Where’s the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism?
Four decades worth of lab work is surveyed here, and no evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution surfaces:
Michael Behe talks about the deep implications of the preceding paper in this following podcast:
How about the oft cited example for neo-Darwinism of antibiotic resistance?
Well, that doesn’t seem to be helping. How about we look really, really, close at very sensitive growth rates and see if we can catch almighty evolution in action???
Shoot that doesn’t seem to be helping either! How about if we just try to fix a ‘beneficial’ mutation:
Well that certainly didn’t help. How about if just try to help evolution out a little and saturate genomes with mutations until we can actually see some ‘evolution’?
Shoot that doesn’t seem to be helping either! Perhaps we just have to give the almighty power of neo-Darwinism ‘room to breathe’? How about we ‘open the floodgates’ to the almighty power of Darwinian Evolution and look at Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiment and see what we can find after 50,000 generations, which is equivalent to somewhere around 1,000,000 years of human evolution???
Now that just can’t be right!?! Man we should really start to be seeing some neo-Darwinian fireworks by 50,000 generations!?! Hey I know what we can do! How about we see what happened when the ‘top five’ mutations from Lenski’s experiment were combined??? Surely now the Darwinian magic will start flowing now!
Now something is going terribly wrong here!?! Tell you what, let’s just forget trying to observe evolution in the lab, I mean it really is kind of cramped in the lab you know, and now let’s REALLY open the floodgates and let’s see what the almighty power of neo-Darwinian evolution can do with the ENTIRE WORLD at its disposal??? Surely now almighty neo-Darwinian evolution will flex its awesomely powerful muscles and forever make those IDiots, who believe in Intelligent Design, cower in terror!!!
Now, there is something terribly wrong here! After looking high and low and everywhere in between, we can’t seem to find the almighty power of neo-Darwinism anywhere. Shoot we can’t even find ANY power of neo-Darwinism whatsoever! It is as if the whole neo-Darwinian theory, relentlessly sold to the general public as it was the gospel truth, is nothing but a big fat lie!
Footnote. Besides no empirical support, neither does Darwinism have any rigid mathematical basis to falsify so that it may be considered truly ‘scientific’ in the first place:
Moreover, as if that were not bad enough, the vast majority of ‘mutations’ to the genome are non-random:
Well so much for Random mutations/variations providing help Darwinian claims! How about Natural Selection? Can Darwinists demonstrated that the second pillar of Darwinian thought is true?
WOW, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is not even on the right playing field! The reason why 4-Dimensional things are completely invisible to 3-Dimensional Darwinian processes is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:
Moreover, even if Natural Selection were on the right playing field, dimensionally speaking, to be a viable explanation for the internal physiology and anatomy of a creature, Natural Selection would still be hopelessly blind to the subtle changes it is required to select at the molecular level,,
This devastating ‘princess and the pea’ problem for natural selection is pointed out by Dr. John Sanford at the 8:14 minute mark of this following video,,,
All of which begs the question, if showing both of the two primary pillars of Darwinian thought to be false cannot falsify Darwinism, exactly what scientific finding could falsify Darwinism?
Of related note: Intelligent Design does not suffer from such lack of mathematical rigor:
Moreover, Intelligent Design can easily be falsified by empirical evidence:
Verse and Music:
You have to feel sorry for them sometimes…
Claiming that doubting evolution leads to denying the usefulness of vaccines (which is unjustifiable) or the reality of global warming is just scare-mongering and a way of demonizing the opponent without having any evidence.
@ Robert Byers
Claiming that man-made global warming is false might be correct, but it is a pointless statement. The additional CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere may or may not cause damage to the environment (e.g. acidifying the oceans). But pedantically splitting hairs by raising worthless questions doesn’t change the blatantly obvious fact that fossil fuels are very damaging to the environment. If by denying global warming your point is to claim that e.g carbon taxes are flawed and that we should be doing something else, then say that! But don’t ask useless questions that distract away from obvious problems (man made environmental damage due to fossil fuels among other things). Pretending or implying that we don’t need to change and that the status quo is sustainable is not going to fix anything. Far from it.
“Denial of the scientific theory of evolution is the granddaddy of organized anti-science movements”
I thought I was a “skeptic”, not a denier. I don’t deny that DNA code mutates. And I don’t deny natural selection weeds out living organisms that are too broke to survive in their environment. But I am extremely skeptical that these two processes of death improve life over time.
Thanks, News, for posting this information. It is troubling that the dissent from Darwinism is treated as anti-science and denialism. I have previously commented a couple times here at UD and at TSZ as Piltdown2, but realize this may leave the impression I’m skeptical of scientific evidence. That’s not the case. I just think it’s important to remember that people in the past have presented false evidence in support of Darwinism, indicating to me that they realized the actual evidence was unconvincing. So for now, I’ll simply be steve4003, a Darwin-dissenter. As you and previous commenters on this post have indicated, there are ample scientific reasons to doubt the ToE without being anti-science.