4 ms·

I hate this framing. It's not a matter of people denying that science is real, but a question of not trusting scientists. There are a lot of reasons for that, s

I hate this framing. It's not a matter of people denying that science is real, but a question of not trusting scientists. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of them good (e.g. people cloaking their agendas in pseudo-science or misrepresenting the claims of science) others not so much (anti-intellectualism, motivated reasoning). The article itself acknowledges it's a trust issue, but still calls it anti-science rather than what it is: anti-distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. That doesn't fit on a yard sign or make people feel as intellectually superior, but does at least suggest possible solutions.

jfengel 4y ago
And yet they engage in it by putting faith in their own distant-impersonal-authority-that-claims-to-know-better-but-has-its-own-agenda. It's not as if they've actually done any primary research themselves. "I've done the research" means "I engaged my confirmation bias and cherry-picked authorities who agree ideologically with me". That's why it looks like an anti-science bias, rather than a matter of trusting scientists. The trust is still there. They're just choosing that trust on the most unscientific of bases.