Reality Check

Donald R. Prothero

Description

Why scientific knowledge matters

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The battles over evolution, climate change, childhood vaccinations, and the causes of AIDS, alternative medicine, oil shortages, population growth, and the place of science in our country—all are reaching a fevered pitch. Many people and institutions have exerted enormous efforts to misrepresent or flatly deny demonstrable scientific reality to protect their nonscientific ideology, their power, or their bottom line. To shed light on this darkness, Donald R. Prothero explains the scientific process and why society has come to rely on science not only to provide a better life but also to reach verifiable truths no other method can obtain. He describes how major scientific ideas that are accepted by the entire scientific community (evolution, anthropogenic global warming, vaccination, the HIV cause of AIDS, and others) have been attacked with totally unscientific arguments and methods. Prothero argues that science deniers pose a serious threat to society, as their attempts to subvert the truth have resulted in widespread scientific ignorance, increased risk of global catastrophes, and deaths due to the spread of diseases that could have been prevented.

1. Reality Check
Introduction
Belief vs. Reality
2. Science, our Candle in the Darkness
A World Transformed
What Is Science?
Baloney Detection
Whom Can We Trust?
3. Selling Out Science
"Cancer by the Carton"
The Truth Will Set You Free—If You Can Find It
Secondhand Smoke Kills, Too
Star Wars vs. Nuclear Winter—How To Crucify Carl Sagan
4. Making the Environment the Enemy: Acid Rain, the Ozone Hole, and the Demonization of Rachel Carson
The Tragedy of the Commons
Acid Rain: Death from the Skies
The Ozone Hole: Another Environmental Crisis Resolved
Rachel Carson and DDT: How Far Will the Anti-Environmentalists Go?
5. Warm Enough for You?
Political Hot Air
Global Climate Change: the Scientific Evidence
The Global Climate Denialist Conspiracy
It's all Politics—and Our Planet Is the Hostage
6. Gimme that Old Time Religion: Creationism and the Denial of Humanity's Place in Nature
The Battle that Never Ends
Why Do We Say Evolution Is Real?
What Is Creationism?
What Is Intelligent Design Creationism?
The Creationists' Standard (Discredited) Arguments
Why Should We Care?
7. Jenny's Body Count: Playing Russian Roulette with Our Children
The "Good Old Days"
The Anti-Vaxxers
Vaccines and Autism: Is There a Link?
Playing Russian Roulette—With Other People's Children
8. Victims of Modern Witch Doctors: AIDS Denialism
The Strangest Denialism of All
The Scourge of Africa
Ignorance that Kills: AIDS Denialism
Denying Death
9. If it Quacks like a Quack: Snake-Oil Con Artists in an Era of Medical Science
Modern Snake-Oil Salesmen
Homeopathy: The "Water Cure" Revisited
Back-Cracking: The Chiropractic Con Game
Where is the Evidence?
10. Down the Slope of Hubbert's Curve: The End of Cheap Oil and Natural Resources
The Never-Ending Oil Crisis
The Wealth of Nations
The End of Cheap Oil
What Do We Do?
11. Crowded Enough for You? Human Overpopulation and its Consequences
The Ticking Time Bomb
Once Upon a Time . . .
Do the Math!
In Growth We Trust
The Limits of Human Population
Our Fellow Planetary Passengers: Do They Count?
12. Rejection of Reality: How Denial of Science Threatens Us All
Unscientific America
Is our Children Learning Science?
Why Do They Do It?
Idiocracy
Consequences
Index

Sujets

• Social Aspects
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of science
• Paleontology
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780253010360
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

REALITY CHECK
Donald R. Prothero
REALITY CHECK
How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future
Foreword by Michael Shermer
Illustrations by Pat Linse
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
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2013 by Donald R. Prothero
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01029-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01036-0 (eb)
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY SONS, ERIK, ZACHARY, AND GABRIEL PROTHERO
May their future be brighter than ours, and governed by more rationality than is our current world. May they not curse the previous generations for the problems we left behind .
Facts do not cease to exist because they ignored .
ALDOUS HUXLEY
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another .
JOHN BURROUGHS
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn t go away .
PHILIP K. DICK
You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts .
FORMER SENATOR DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled .
RICHARD FEYNMAN
CONTENTS Foreword by Michael Shermer Preface and Acknowledgments 1 Reality Check 2 Science, Our Candle in the Darkness 3 Betrayers of the Truth: Selling Out Science 4 Making the Environment the Enemy: Acid Rain, the Ozone Hole, and the Demonization of Rachel Carson 5 Hot Enough for You? The Heated Debate over a Warming Planet 6 Gimme That Old Time Religion: Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Denial of Humanity s Place in Nature 7 Jenny s Body Count: Playing Russian Roulette with Our Children 8 Victims of Modern Witch Doctors: AIDS Denialism 9 If It Quacks like a Quack: Snake-Oil Con Artists in an Era of Medical Science 10 What s Your Sign? The Ancient Pseudoscience of Astrology 11 Down the Slope of Hubbert s Curve: The End of Cheap Oil and Natural Resources 12 Far from the Madding Crowd: Human Overpopulation and Its Consequences 13 The Rejection of Reality: How the Denial of Science Threatens Us All Notes Index
FOREWORD
Denialism vs. Skepticism: How to Think about Controversial Issues
MICHAEL SHERMER
Was 9/11 a conspiracy? Yes, it was. By definition, a group of nineteen al-Qaeda members secretly plotting to fly planes into buildings constitutes a conspiracy. But that is not what the so-called 9/11 Truthers believe. They think that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the Bush administration in order to implement its plan for global domination and a New World Order launched by a Pearl Harbor-like attack (which was also an inside job by Roosevelt and Churchill) on the World Trade Center, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, thereby providing the justification for war.
What is the evidence for this conspiratorial claim? There is no positive evidence whatsoever-no security camera videotape of people planting explosive devices, no explosive device debris in the World Trade Center ruins, no letters, e-mails, memos, or documents of any kind, no confessions by conspirators or their friends, family, or colleagues who might have overheard a clandestine conversation, and no one coming forward to tell all in a book or on a television talk show about what they saw or heard. Nothing. Instead, Truthers rely on alleged anomalies in the government s explanation for what happened, such as how the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, or why WTC building 7 fell, or the damage to the Pentagon, or cell phone peculiarities, or . . .
The belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking, and is easily refuted by noting that beliefs and theories are not built on single facts alone, but on a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry. This principle of converging evidence lies at the heart of determining the difference between skepticism and denial. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical of one s government, for example, because we know that governments lie to their citizens and that politicians can be bought off by special interest groups. But when ideology trumps facts-when commitment to a political, economic, or religious belief takes precedence over evidence-skepticism merges into denial. Never is this more evidence than in politics, particularly regarding such questions as these: Should gay marriage be legal? Should marijuana be decriminalized? Should health care be universal? Science has little to say on these matters except on specific points within the larger questions: For example, does the legalization of gay marriage lead to a decline in traditional marriage? (No, it does not.) On such questions, people typically line up according to their religious, political, or social beliefs and corresponding cohorts, and listen to their opponent s arguments only in order to shoot them down in a public debate.
The adversarial structure of modern politics invites liberals and conservatives to deny the other side s position a priori. In this sense, denialism is part and parcel with politics-you are supposed to deny your political opponent s position, otherwise you are not a good party member. Not so in science . . . at least in principle.
Donald Prothero has emerged as one of America s foremost experts on and debunkers of pseudoscience of various stripes. As a world-class paleontologist and geologist he diverted precious research time to the cause of taking on the evolution deniers-creationists and their intelligent design brethren-because of the threat they pose to good science education in America. Prothero noticed that global warming skeptics and climate deniers employed the same tactics as creationists: focusing on minor anomalies in the data, interpreting normal scientific debates as indications that mainstream science is flawed, and quote mining experts to make it sound as if they were saying something in support of their denialist cause. Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future is Prothero s magnum opus on all things pseudoscience, covering not only creationism and climate denial, but also other threats to a rational and sane society, including the anti-vaxxers (those who believe vaccinations cause autism and other problems and should be abandoned), the AIDS deniers (yes, believe it or not, there are still people who do not believe that HIV causes AIDS ), alternative medical practitioners who deny the benefits of modern science-based medicine, the tobacco deniers (primary smoking deniers have morphed into secondhand smoking deniers), the peak oil deniers (those who hold that the supply of oil is nearly endless), and many others who employ tried-and-true strategies of selling doubt as a product. As Prothero demonstrates, it is almost as if all these deniers went to the same school of denial, employing parallel methods to sow seeds of doubt into the mind of the public, who as non-experts often have a difficult time distinguishing the difference between denial and skepticism.
Denial or denialism is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it-and sometimes even in the face of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology, politics, or religious beliefs, in which the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence for or against it. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to assure that the belief is always supported.
Prothero is a skeptic. So am I. When we call ourselves skeptics we mean simply that we take a scientific approach to the evaluation of claims. Science is skepticism and scientists are naturally skeptical because most claims turn out to be false. Weeding out the few kernels of wheat from the substantial pile of chaff requires extensive observation, careful experimentation, and cautious inference to the best conclusion. Donald Prothero is a scientist s scientist in this regard, and as the editor of Skeptic magazine I have leaned on him many times over the years not only for his expertise in a particular field but for his overall agility in thinking critically about any controversy in mainstream and borderlands science. In this volume you will indeed get a reality check on some of the most important issues of our time.
Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American , adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University, host of the Skeptics Society Distinguished Science Lecture series at Caltech, and author of Why People Believe Weird Things, Why Darwin Matters , and The Believing Brain
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was originally written during summer 2010, and extensively rewritten in spring 2012 as events changed many of the points made in the first draft. It represents over thirty years of research and teaching on my part, from my firsthand familiarity with the issues of creationism and