Index of Everything Denialism

What Causes The Scientific Ignorance Necessary For Creationism Or Global Warming Denialism? How To Prevent It?

Yes, Senator jared I am talking to you Can someone answer this?

Answer:declining level of education and increase in standard of living.. in othere words easy living better than average person in world with little effort and yet learning less in school.. most of us americans are arrogant enough and ignorant enough to believe everything we WANT to believe with little or no logical facts to back it up. just look at latest presidential race and all the inane accusations or the recent conflict on health care with people getting irate for reasons that have no fact or even without knowing what the issue is.. we pick a side or team and then believe that one is absolute and the best no matter for any scores or statistics or even playing the game We ARE NUMBER ONE! WIN WIN WIN! OTHER TEAM SHOULD DIE DIE DIE! yayyyyyyyyyyy! sad and embarrassing that I share the term "american" with people like this, but they are so easy to make money from - you know the old saying of how they are soon parted from their money, and we do have so much disposable income here..

Why Are Conspiracy Theories Like Creationism And Global Warming Denialism So Common On The Right?

Not to mention the birtheres, deatheres, etc.

Answer:Some people are so stupid that they privilege what they WANT to believe over what the evidence supports. If you have a belief concerning the real world (e.g., not a simple moral imperative) that's so strong that no evidence could dissuade you, then you are a stupid person. We should discourage that kind of lazy thinking.

Should All Religions Be Lumped Togethere And Called Denialism?

Since they deny biology, astronomy, chemistry etc... on a regular basis.

Answer:I'm not sure we are the one's in denial when they are so many atheists who hang out in the 'religious' setcion of y!A.

If We Keep Using Words Like "consensus" And "denialism" Will People Notice That It Stopped Warming?

Answer:We should never forget that theree is no "consensus" in science. Science just deals with facts. We don't have enough knowledge how the climate works, so researchers take guesses to fill in the missing information. If 50.1% of the people they ask say their guesses are plausible, then a consensus is formed. It's political, not science. Denialism is a negative phrase used when one doesn't have the intelletcual heft to win an argument. When this happens, the othere person results to name calling.

Have You Seen This Video On GW Denialism From Naomi Oreskes?

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459 If so, what did you think of it? I thought it was fascinating. I encourage everybody to watch through the whole thing.

Answer:Wow, Thank you much for that,I thought it was really interesting. LMFAO that the guy above tried to discredit Oreskes and said that she has been debunked. The irony of his post cracked me up....why did he even try? I have a video for you, it is equally interesting though it is also humorous and if you are not English you may not think it is as amusing as I did, it does however have some really interesting information in it. I hope that you enjoy it. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/12/18149991.php and have you seen this website? http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

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Buy denialism Products

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
Average Rating: 3.0
Price: $18.45
Author: Michael Specter
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN13: 9781594202308
Condition: NEW
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In this provocative and headline- making book, Michael Specter confronts the widespread fear of science and its terrible toll on individuals and the planet.

In Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of science more today than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad-that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn't always in our best interest. We live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically modified grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. In the United States a growing series of studies show that dietary supplements and "natural" cures have almost no value, and often cause harm. We still spend billions of dollars on them. In hundreds of the best universities in the world, laboratories are anonymous, unmarked, and surrounded by platoons of security guards-such is the opposition to any research that includes experiments with animals. And pharmaceutical companies that just forty years ago were perhaps the most visible symbol of our remarkable advance against disease have increasingly been seen as callous corporations propelled solely by avarice and greed.

As Michael Specter sees it, this amounts to a war against progress. The issues may be complex but the choices are not: Are we going to continue to embrace new technologies, along with acknowledging their limitations and threats, or are we ready to slink back into an era of magical thinking? In Denialism, Specter makes an argument for a new Enlightenment, the revival of an approach to the physical world that was stunningly effective for hundreds of years: What can be understood and reliably repeated by experiment is what nature regarded as true. Now, at the time of mankind's greatest scientific advances-and our greatest need for them-that deal must be renewed.

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
Average Rating: 4.5
Price: $17.13
Author: Farhad Manjoo
Manufacturer: Wiley
ISBN13: 9780470050101
Condition: NEW
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Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
Average Rating: 3.5
Price: $17.16
Author: Charles P. Pierce
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ISBN13: 9780767926140
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The three Great Premises of Idiot America:
· Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units
· Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough
· Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it
 
With his trademark wit and insight, veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.
 
Pierce asks how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. But his thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated. Erudite and razor-sharp, Idiot America is at once an invigorating history lesson, a cutting cultural critique, and a bullish appeal to our smarter selves.

Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style
Average Rating: 4.5
Price: $13.57
Author: Randy Olson
Manufacturer: Island Press
ISBN13: 9781597265638
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Drawing on his own hilarious—and at times

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Average Rating: 4.0
Price: $15.64
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Manufacturer: Metropolitan Books
ISBN13: 9780805087499
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A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism

Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis. 

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy
Average Rating: 4.0
Price: $18.25
Author: Seth C. Kalichman
Manufacturer: Springer
ISBN13: 9780387794754
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Paralleling the discovery of HIV and the rise of the AIDS pandemic, a flock of naysayers has dedicated itself to replacing genuine knowledge with destructive misinformation—and spreading from the fringe to the mainstream media and the think tank. Now from the editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior comes a bold exposé of the scientific and sociopolitical forces involved in this toxic evasion. Denying AIDS traces the origins of AIDS dissidents disclaimers during the earliest days of the epidemic and delves into the psychology and politics of the current denial movement in its various incarnations.

Seth Kalichman focuses not on the “difficult” or doubting patient, but on organized, widespread forms of denial (including the idea that HIV itself is a myth and HIV treatments are poison) and the junk science, faulty logic, conspiracy theories, and larger forces of homophobia and racism that fuel them. The malignant results of AIDS denial can be seen in those individuals who refuse to be tested, ignore their diagnoses, or reject the treatments that could save their lives. Instead of ignoring these currents, asserts Kalichman, science has a duty to counter them.

Among the topics covered:

• Why AIDS denialism endures, and why science must understand it.
• Pioneer virus HIV researcher Peter Duesberg’s role in AIDS denialism.
• Flawed immunological, virological, and pharmacological pseudoscience studies that are central to texts of denialism.
• The social conservative agenda and the politics of AIDS denial, from the courts to the White House.
• The impact of HIV misinformation on public health in South Africa.
• Fighting fiction with reality: anti-denialism and the scientific community.

For anyone affected by, interested in, or working with researchers in HIV/AIDS, and public health professionals in general, the insight and vision of Denying AIDS will inspire outrage, discussion, and ultimately action.

See http://denyingaids.blogspot.com/ for more information.

Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future
Average Rating: 3.0
Price: $9.60
Author: Chris Mooney
Manufacturer: Basic Books

In his famous 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University, the scientifically-trained novelist C.P. Snow described science and the humanities as "two cultures," separated by a "gulf of mutual incomprehension." And the humanists had all the cultural power—the low prestige of science, Snow argued, left Western leaders too little educated in scientific subjects that were increasingly central to world problems: the elementary physics behind nuclear weapons, for instance, or the basics of plant science needed to feed the world's growing population.

Now, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated "two cultures" polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow's time, some of our gravest challenges—climate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitiveness—and gravest threats--global pandemics, nuclear proliferation—have fundamentally scientific underpinnings. Yet we still live in a culture that rarely takes science seriously or has it on the radar.

For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. The public is polarized over climate change—an issue where political party affiliation determines one's view of reality—and in dangerous retreat from childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, only 18 percent of Americans have even met a scientist to begin with; more than half can't name a living scientist role model.

For this dismaying situation, Mooney and Kirshenbaum don't let anyone off the hook. They highlight the anti-intellectual tendencies of the American public (and particularly the politicians and journalists who are supposed to serve it), but also challenge the scientists themselves, who despite the best of intentions have often failed to communicate about their work effectively to a broad public—and so have ceded their critical place in the public sphere to religious and commercial propagandists.

A plea for enhanced scientific literacy, Unscientific America urges those who care about the place of science in our society to take unprecedented action. We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science's message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense. An impassioned call to arms worthy of Snow's original manifesto, this book lays the groundwork for reintegrating science into the public discourse--before it's too late.

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Average Rating: 4.5
Price: $19.80
Author: Richard Dawkins
Manufacturer: Free Press
ISBN13: 9781416594789
Condition: NEW
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In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42 percent believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.

In 1859 Charles Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, shook society to its core. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke. But he surely would have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed theologians, yet millions of people continue to question its veracity. Now the author of the iconic work The God Delusion takes them to task.

The Greatest Show on Earth is a stunning counterattack on advocates of "Intelligent Design," explaining the evidence for evolution while exposing the absurdities of the creationist "argument." Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics. Combining these elements and many more, he makes the airtight case that "we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection."

The Greatest Show on Earth comes at a critical time: systematic opposition to the fact of evolution is menacing as never before. In American schools, and in schools around the world, insidious attempts are made to undermine the status of science in the classroom. Dawkins wields a devastating argument against this ignorance, but his unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master's vision of life, in all its splendor.

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
Average Rating: 4.0
Price: $18.45
Author: Ken Auletta
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN13: 9781594202353
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.

There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses-from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.

Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google's closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with-and against-them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the "secret sauce" of Google's success, and shows why the worlds of "new" and "old" media often communicate as if residents of different planets.

Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results- Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. And with its ownership of YouTube and its mobile phone and other initiatives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Auletta his company is poised to become the world's first $100 billion media company. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google's future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google's faith in mathematical formulas and in slide rule logic will be tested, just as it has been on Wall Street.

Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta will offer insights into what we know, and don't know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.