Friday, August 13, 2010

Read that book!

The Atheologian plugs an important book:

The contents of Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt need to be shouted from every rooftop. The anti-science segments of the right are correct about this much: profit, politics, and ideology have done a tremendous job of obstructing legitimate science, especially where environmental issues are concerned. They just happen to be wrong about everything else. It's quite amazing: a thick chain—same strategies, same players—running all the way from denial of the hazards of direct smoking, through denial of problems from acid rain, CFC damage to the ozone layer, and the dangers of secondhand smoke, all the way to contemporary denial of anthropogenic global warming, and modern revisionism about Rachel Carson and DDT—all driven by hysteria about socialism, and by dedicated funding from corporate interests.
This is the same subject that was covered in 2008 Daily Doubter book of the year Doubt is Their Product, but it can not be stressed enough how this pseudo-doubt machine works at dumbing America.

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