Evidence is overrated when you're a conspiracy theorist

[Dogmudgeon]

An excellent and scathing overview of conspiracy theorists and their "contributions" to climate "skepticism", including a CT scenario in which Al Gore is in telepathic contact with the Lepidopterans (and, presumably, their in-laws).

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2888700.htm">Evidence is overrated when you're a conspiracy theorist
Stephan Lewandowsky at ABC/The Drum (Queensland, Australia)

Conspiracy theories are part and parcel of modern life and some people clearly find their allure irresistible.

The nature of conspiracy theories and their ultimate fate is reasonably well understood by cognitive scientists, who have identified three core properties.

First, unlike the real insights provided by science and rational thought, conspiracy theories obsessively focus on selected pieces of — real or imaginary — "evidence" while ignoring mountains of actual data. Thus, conspiracy theorists deny the existence of the elephant sitting across the room because part of its earlobe is splattered with pink paint — so, not being completely gray, it can no longer be an elephant.

...

For several years now, armies of irate pensioners have been swarming the countryside, spurned on by feverish websites, taking photographs of thermometers in the belief that this would invalidate concerns about climate change — and seemingly unaware of the fact that the utility of a thermometer derives from the accuracy of its measurement rather than anything captured by a colour photo.

Likewise, climate "sceptics" obsessively yelp at the alleged frailties of the surface temperature record and accuse respectable scientific agencies of "fudging" data, oblivious to the fact that multiple independent analyses of the temperature record give rise to the exact same conclusion. The further fact that the satellite data yield precisely the same result without any surface-based thermometers is of no relevance to climate "sceptics." It is also of no relevance to climate "sceptics" that their claims about the absence of global warming are logically incoherent with their simultaneous claim that humans didn't cause the warming.

A second attribute of conspiracy theories is that any new contrary evidence is incorporated into the conspiracy by simply broadening its scope. If someone points out that the elephant is an elephant despite its pink earlobe, then that person clearly is part of a conspiracy that wants to bestow imaginary elephants upon the world.

Thus, to the 9/11 "truthers", when the U.S. Congress determines in a bipartisan report that the terrible events of 9/11 were perpetrated by a group of terrorist hijackers, this only goes to show that the U.S. Congress was part of the conspiracy to demolish the World Trade Center.

...

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2888700.htm">Read the whole article in The Drum.

The unsettling thing is that this mode of thought es quickly slipping into the mainstream. Australians are mercifully insulated from Birthers and Death Panels by an entire ocean, but their politics is similar to that of the USA, and they have their own colorful species of wackadoos with whom to contend.

--d!