"How Did Bay-At-The-Moon Lunacy Come To Occupy A More Prominent Place Than Textbook Science?"

[hatrack]

EDIT

How did this happen? How did bay-at-the-moon lunacy come to occupy a more prominent place in our public discourse than textbook science? How, indeed, has it ever come to be thought that there is still a scientific debate over evolution, or that pluperfect nonsense like creationism is worthy of a hearing? How did there come to be a multi-million dollar "creation museum" in Kentucky, with full-scale models of dinosaurs fitted out with saddles? (Why saddles? So Adam and Eve could ride them around Eden. Duh.)

EDIT

Paul Feyerabend was not the worst enemy of science. Radical feminists and others of the "academic left" are not the worst enemies of science. Neither are the right-wing radio bloviators. Big money is the worst enemy of science. Big Tobacco found the way to fight science. What do you do if the science shows that your product is deadly, killing tens of thousands of your customers a year, yet that product brings you profits beyond the dreams of avarice? You deny the science. You hire your own "experts" to do science your way and reach the conclusions you require. It is easy. The comic strip Dilbert shows just how easy. In one strip the evil CEO Dogbert enters a business with the name "Weasels R Us." Dogbert says to the weasel behind the counter: "I need three bitter and unsuccessful scientists and a hundred lazy journalists." The weasel says, "Consider it done!" The final panel shows Dilbert reading the headline "Toddlers Thrive on Pollution." You can always find somebody with "Ph.D." after his name willing to say what you want to hear. So, the way to fight science is to set up an alternative "science" of your own.

This tactic worked wonderfully. By generating doubt about the science, Big Tobacco avoided meaningful regulation for years. What worked for Big Tobacco now works even better for Big Oil and Big Coal. By funding obscurantist opposition to climate science, they have effectively scuttled any reforms that might threaten their profits.

Indeed, as Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway show in their superb book Merchants of Doubt, manufacturing doubt about science is itself now a big business. Big corporations fund their own "research" institutes and "think" tanks to churn out junk science, skewed statistics, and self-serving disinformation. These institutions pose as communities of scholars, but really they are ideological propaganda mills that serve the agendas of the big money interests that fund them. Such organizations exist to construct a counter-narrative -- a specious alternative to scientific information -- and they are cynically confident that a scientifically ignorant public cannot distinguish their counterfeit from the real thing. Real science hardly has a chance against slick, lavishly funded flapdoodle.

EDIT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-m-parsons/worst-enemy-of-science_b_5978360.html

[rock]

1. Both parties wants an ignorant electorate

If the electorate were just a little more intelligent they would kick out the vast majority of politicians and send many of them to prison. This would also foreshadow ruination for the 1%. This principle is particularly noticeable in Education, Law, and Politics. I would add that the party that most fears this occurrence is, of course, the repipiggies, but the Dems are also responsible. This principle also explains why everything is reported in the extremes: if it's reported then either it's a puff piece (not news) or it's so severe it's the end of the world (c.f. Ebola). There is no sensible middle-ground; it's always black-or-white and life-or-death.

[Nihil]

4. True on all counts.

> Both parties wants an ignorant electorate

All the better to maintain the illusion that there *are* two parties and not just
one plutarchy with nominally opposing factions within it.

[ladjf]

2. Ignorance begets ignorance. nt

[MisterP]

3. money of course!

it's got a long precedent, actually
http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Sludge-Good-For-You/dp/1567510604
http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Greens-Wise-Use-Movement/dp/1555663281
its counterpart would be greenwashing, I suppose?

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. Sports Statistics and Celebrities trump Periodic Table

Can people recall the recent Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry? What about the adventures of Justin Bieber, or the Yardage of Peyton Manning? Who does society respect more the Rapper of the Chemist?

Simply we do not value our Scientists and Engineers and perhaps even Doctors in the way that we revere the daughter of a wealthy business man or the wife of a Decathlon champion. We worship flash over substance.