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Neil deGrasse Tyson

science denialism politics

Science denialism politics – vaccines, GMOs, evolution, climate change

On an episode of his HBO political talk show, Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher repeated his contention that the Republican Party, more generally the right wing of the American political spectrum, is the party of science denialism politics.

I am no fan of Bill Maher, because, in fact, he himself is is a science denier. Maher hits some of the top 10 list of science denialism: he’s an anti-vaccine crackpot, he’s pro-alternative medicine, he’s on the verge of AIDS denialism, and, to top it off, he hates GMO foods.

In other words, Maher, a leftist by any stretch of the meaning, embraces science denialism politics in a way that would probably inspire your local climate change or evolution denier on the right.

HBO’s other political news-ish program, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, features British comedian Oliver, who is pro-science on every issue I’ve heard, including scientific research and vaccines.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was a guest on Maher’s episode, and contradicted him regarding the claim that Republicans hold the monopoly on junk science:

Don’t be too high and mighty there, because there are certain aspects of science denials that are squarely in the liberal left.

I like to generalize about the politics of science denialism politics – I and many others have claimed that the anti-GMO crowd is nothing more than the left’s version of climate change deniers. But some people have taken umbrage with Tyson’s comments, and believe that science denialism cannot be correlated with political beliefs.

One caveat about this article – it is primarily focused on American politics. In many countries, both the left and right accept the consensus on scientific principles like evolution and vaccines. Only in America is science denialism the default position, crossing party boundaries.

Let’s take a look at left vs. right ideas about science, and how each embrace science denialism and pseudoscience. It’s quite a bit more complicated than you can imagine.

Read More »Science denialism politics – vaccines, GMOs, evolution, climate change

anti-GMO anti-vaccine

Anti-GMO anti-vaccine activists – convergent evolution

I naively once thought that anti-GMO activists only occasionally crossed paths with the anti-vaccine ones. Sure, on the Venn diagram of anti-science beliefs, anti-GMO anti-vaccine activists overlapped quite a bit, but I just thought they were separate species. Maybe they once were, but there appears to be a substantial amount of convergent evolution between the separate species of anti-science activists. It’s hard to distinguish the two these days, as I regularly see one or the other type of activists just lump GMOs and vaccines together as one evil against all children.Read More »Anti-GMO anti-vaccine activists – convergent evolution

Neil deGrasse Tyson tells GMO haters to chill out–liberals get angry

Credit to Wikimedia.

Credit to Wikimedia.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, probably the most popular astrophysicist, if not scientist, of this generation, replaced Carl Sagan as the spokesman of all things science for the country. While not ignoring Bill Nye‘s impact on making science education fun and approachable (and who took classes from Carl Sagan at Cornell University), Sagan literally passed the baton of being the country’s science teacher to Tyson.

For those of us on the left side of the political spectrum, Tyson is like the hero of the pro-science crowd. This past spring, Tyson hosted a program, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which described and supported some of the great science ideas of our time–evolution, age of the universe, human caused climate change, and other major scientific principles. Ironically, the show was broadcast in the USA on the Fox TV network, whose news division can be charitably described as ultraconservative. Right wing Christian fundamentalist groups, one of the main key demographic groups who watch Fox News, loathed Cosmos for trumpeting scientific knowledge over religious interpretations in just about every one of the the 13 episodes.

Of course, for every reason that Fox News hated Cosmos (even though it was a huge ratings success for Fox, and has garnered a significant number of TV awards and nominations), those of us on the pro-science side loved it. Now, I’m a rarity in the science community in that I did not enjoy the show (the animations offended me on so many levels, but apparently kids loved it), I did watch every episode and would have to rank the episodes on evolution and global warming as some of the best science TV I’d ever seen–despite the lame graphics.Read More »Neil deGrasse Tyson tells GMO haters to chill out–liberals get angry

The moon is made of cheese–Big Milk’s coverup of the Truth

moon-cheesePresented herewith is an online discussion with someone about the science of the earth’s moon. Or, pseudoscience.
Skeptical Raptor: The moon is a large, rocky body that orbits the earth. It is approximately 4.4 billion years old.
Moon Denier Society: The moon is made of cheese. That is the truth.
SR: The moon is not made of cheese. NASA landed on the moon and brought back rocks.
MDS: The moon is made of cheese. NASA faked the moon landings, everyone knows that. Those are just earth rocks.
SR: The moon is not made of cheese. We have evidence of the moon landings. And moon rocks differ so much from earth rocks, you couldn’t just exchange some rocks found on the ground with moon rocks. And they found no evidence of cheese anywhere.

Read More »The moon is made of cheese–Big Milk’s coverup of the Truth

One hour of research on Google–obviously all science is wrong

I’ve been told that I need to quit relying on the peer-reviewed journals for my scientific knowledge, because they are paid for by Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Hebrew and Big Whatever. They’re all just big with every single person involved dedicated to providing information to fool the people of earth. 

Science is obviously wrong about everything. Including unicorns. Obviously wrong about unicorns.

Science is obviously wrong about everything. Including unicorns. Obviously wrong about unicorns.

Apparently, the only acceptable type of research is doing it yourself using Google. Or in a pinch, Bing. 

Because I wanted to be more open-minded and to learn the Truth™ about everything. And here’s what I found.Read More »One hour of research on Google–obviously all science is wrong

Natural News claims it follows evidence like Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The lunatic Mike Adams, self-styled Health Ranger, pusher of pseudoscience, and publisher of the ignorant self-congratulatory, pseudoscientific website, Natural News, has issued an insane “challenge” to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, eminent astrophysicist, real scientist, and inheritor of Carl Sagan’s common-man touch… Read More »Natural News claims it follows evidence like Neil DeGrasse Tyson