Stephen Lewandowsky: Confronting the Anti-Science Thought Police
March 21, 2014
Stealing data, hacking servers, dressing up as “computer technicians” to infiltrate scientific institutions, threatening scientists with death, and intimidation of scientific journals through internet trolling and threats of legal action. All in a days work for the anti-science movement.
Quick – is this 2014 or 1420?
Anyone that’s been on the receiving end of intimidation and threats knows how dangerous the thought control machinery of right wing media has become.
Psychologist Dr. Stephen Lewandowski walks us through the intimidation and censorship tactics of the denial industry:
The evidence for global warming is overwhelming. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences stated as “fact” that the globe is warming from human economic activity. This overwhelming scientific consensus is, however, vociferously opposed by a vocal minority of actors. Who are those people and by what means do they oppose mainstream science?
“In whose hands the future” is a video by a cognitive scientist who studies the denial of science and who has himself been attacked for his work. The video takes viewers on a personal and scientific journey into the murky world of climate denial and the blogs that serve as staging ground for attacks on climate scientists and other scholars and public intellectuals in the climate arena.
The video analyzes the public aspect of the attacks on scientists and presents evidence that the blogosphere’s discourse differs considerably from conventional scholarly discourse. Instead of providing scholarly critique, the discourse in the blogosphere fits many criteria for conspiratorial thinking. The video also reports some of the less visible, subterranean means of attack, such as the attempted intimidation of journal editors and publishers by parties external to the scientific process.
The material in the video suggests that the public’s right to being informed about a critical issue is being violated by a small number of agitators. There is also some reason to believe that scientists themselves may be unduly cautious in their public statements because of the anticipated harassment from political operators and their allies in the blogosphere.