Denialism
From RationalWiki
Denialism is a methodologic school of Woo. It is the art of denying a well-evidenced fact in an authoritative way, despite lack of any empirically acceptable evidence.
Denialists tend to have wide variety of targets from the scientific to the political. The Hoofnagle boys at Denialism Blog on scienceblogs.com have described (using their "Denialists' Deck of Cards" series), how their tactics are remarkably similar. They use a witches brew of half-truths, sob stories[1], conspiracy theories and public relations (or spin) to try to force the public to ignore an important issue. Popular denialist targets include:
- The HIV/AIDS connection (see Peter Duesberg and HIV denial)
- The Holocaust and other genocides (particularly the Rape of Nanking and the Armenian Genocide)
- The efficacy and safety of vaccination (and modern evidence-based medicine in general)
- The existence of Evolution (generally conflated with Big Bang cosmology and abiogenesis by deniers)
- The constitutional basis for the separation of church and state in the United States
- The legal requirement to pay income tax (again, in the U.S.)
- The existence of global warming by invocation of various conspiracy theories
- Ecological carrying capacity and overpopulation (this form of denialism is found in the "there are no limits to growth" belief popular among a range of fringe ideologies from libertarians, to communists, to Lyndon LaRouche).
- Health hazards of some consumer products, most notably cigarette smoking
In addition, heliocentrism and Einstein's theory of relativity have met opposition among some fringe groups.
Denialism has at times been a tool of national policy in some places, including Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union (denial of Mendelian genetics), the defeat of the Kyoto global warming treaty and requirements for abstinence-only sex education in the United States, and the attempted suppression of relativity as "Jewish science" in Nazi Germany.
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- ↑ (generally about the impending impoverishment of multimillion dollar companies, but often involving stories about how brown people/insert_other_religion_heres/small independent artists are going to steal our money, steal our identities, steal our country, steal our dogs and rape our women)
