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Some resistance is definitely necessary if you care about whether the claims being made are true, yes. For example, take this article about the oceans supposedl

by makomk 7y ago

Some resistance is definitely necessary if you care about whether the claims being made are true, yes. For example, take this article about the oceans supposedly soaking up much more heat than previously thought, which made it to HN a year or so ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 The comments are full of people confidently taking it as yet more inevitable evidence that we're even more doomed than previously thought, we need to overthrow the entire system of global industry, etc. The article was retracted, followed by the underlying study. One of those pesky members of the climate denial movement spotted that they'd messed up their calculations, and the authors basically copped to this. This shouldn't have been necessary. They were using a bizarre, indirect method to try and estimate something we'd already measured directly, and got an answer that contradicted that existing measurement. The first assumption should've been that their method was wrong and it should've taken a hell of a lot of evidence to overcome it, but there's such a strong bias towards claims of climate doom that it got a spot in Nature and uncritical regurgitation in the global press instead. (Part of the problem is that Nature has a general bias towards shocking, novel claims that leads to them publishing dubious work, but it's hard to imagine them being so gung-ho about work leaning in the opposite direction.) Naturally, most people who read the existing coverage will never see the retractions and will continue to be influenced by the now-retracted claim.

dd36 7y ago
Primary difference is good faith and bad faith. Most denialism is bad faith and doesn’t make honest retractions.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The distinction you'll find leads your 2nd paragraph: the study was retracted. The climate denial movement never budges a nanometer on any of its points. The scientific movement admits its mistakes and errors. And yes, there's dispute in small details of the matter. The grander narrative has been clear since the 19th century. No, not a typo. Not since the 20th, but the 19th.
- makomk 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure they have budged on some of their points, and that folks have taken this as proof they admit they're entirely wrong, but putting that aside for a moment... Suppose for a moment that the scientists hadn't budged. That they'd listened to all the folks who say that climate change deniers are simply liars who aren't worth listening to and not even bothered to look at their complaints. Who would you believe - the Nature-published scientists or the evil climate denial movement? Because unless you'd be willing to believe the deniers over the mainstream scientific community, it seems like we're in unfalsifiable territory here, where if the mainstream scientists admit they're wrong it proves they're right, and if they don't it also proves they're right.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    "Let's suppose what didn't happen and assume it did...." Science, as a process, is a process at arriving at truths. It's fundamentally dialectic, as opposed to rhetorical, the profession practiced by many around the denial movement, several in this thread. Naomi Oreskes' name has already been mentioned here. In addition to writing on climate (and ozone/CFCs, tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc., etc., etc.) denial, she's written on the history of one of the more amazing feats of collective mind-changing in science: the adoption of the theory of plate tectonics, or continental drift, as it was first called. When proposed, the theory was ridiculed as completely crackpot. But what happened was that more and more evidence, and mechanisms, turned up. And, yes, over the course of about a half century, many of the original objectors died. But from roughly 1915 to 1965, established views changed from believing that the continents had always occupied their current positions to the understanding that they very much had not. Geography, geology, fossils, radioactive decay (as both heat source and clock), undersea surveys, earthquake faults, seismic analysis. The preponderance of evidence changed minds. https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-history-of-the-modern-theory-of-the-earth/oclc/1114571537 https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-h... https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drift-theory-and-method-in-american-earth-science/oclc/38989594 https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drif...

by makomk 7y ago

dd36 7y ago

Primary difference is good faith and bad faith. Most denialism is bad faith and doesn’t make honest retractions.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The distinction you'll find leads your 2nd paragraph: the study was retracted. The climate denial movement never budges a nanometer on any of its points. The scientific movement admits its mistakes and errors. And yes, there's dispute in small details of the matter. The grander narrative has been clear since the 19th century. No, not a typo. Not since the 20th, but the 19th.

makomk 7y ago
I'm pretty sure they have budged on some of their points, and that folks have taken this as proof they admit they're entirely wrong, but putting that aside for a moment... Suppose for a moment that the scientists hadn't budged. That they'd listened to all the folks who say that climate change deniers are simply liars who aren't worth listening to and not even bothered to look at their complaints. Who would you believe - the Nature-published scientists or the evil climate denial movement? Because unless you'd be willing to believe the deniers over the mainstream scientific community, it seems like we're in unfalsifiable territory here, where if the mainstream scientists admit they're wrong it proves they're right, and if they don't it also proves they're right.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  "Let's suppose what didn't happen and assume it did...." Science, as a process, is a process at arriving at truths. It's fundamentally dialectic, as opposed to rhetorical, the profession practiced by many around the denial movement, several in this thread. Naomi Oreskes' name has already been mentioned here. In addition to writing on climate (and ozone/CFCs, tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc., etc., etc.) denial, she's written on the history of one of the more amazing feats of collective mind-changing in science: the adoption of the theory of plate tectonics, or continental drift, as it was first called. When proposed, the theory was ridiculed as completely crackpot. But what happened was that more and more evidence, and mechanisms, turned up. And, yes, over the course of about a half century, many of the original objectors died. But from roughly 1915 to 1965, established views changed from believing that the continents had always occupied their current positions to the understanding that they very much had not. Geography, geology, fossils, radioactive decay (as both heat source and clock), undersea surveys, earthquake faults, seismic analysis. The preponderance of evidence changed minds. https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-history-of-the-modern-theory-of-the-earth/oclc/1114571537 https://www.worldcat.org/title/plate-tectonics-an-insiders-h... https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drift-theory-and-method-in-american-earth-science/oclc/38989594 https://www.worldcat.org/title/rejection-of-continental-drif...