Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives

105 Pages·2009·0.54 MB·English

by  Specter Michael

001
Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction

Chapter 1 - Vioxx and the Fear of Science
Chapter 2 - Vaccines and the Great Denial
Chapter 3 - The Organic Fetish
Chapter 4 - The Era of Echinacea
Chapter 5 - Race and the Language of Life
Chapter 6 - Surfing the Exponential

Acknowledgements
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Copyright © Michael Specter, 2009
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Specter, Michael.
Denialism : how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet,
and threatens our lives / Michael Specter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15102-0
1. Science—Social aspects. 2. Research--Forecasting. 3. Belief and doubt.
4. Science—Philosophy. I. Title.
Q175.5.S697 2010
306.4’5—dc22 2009028489

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To Emma, who all by herself
is reason enough to reject denialism.
INTRODUCTION
Ten years ago, while walking through Harvard Yard, I saw a student wearing a
button that said “Progressives against Scientism.” I had no idea what that meant,
so I asked him. Sci entism, he explained, is the misguided belief that scientists
can solve problems that nature can’t. He reeled off a series of technologies that
demonstrated the destructiveness of what he called the “scientific method
approach” to life: genetically modified foods, dams, nuclear power plants, and
pharmaceuticals all made the list. We talked for a few minutes, then I thanked
him and walked away. I didn’t understand how science might be responsible for
the many scars humanity has inflicted upon the world, but students have odd
intellectual infatuations, and I let it slip from my mind.
Over the next few years, while traveling in America and abroad, I kept
running into different versions of that student, people who were convinced that,
largely in the name of science, we had trespassed on nature’s ground. The issues
varied, but not the underlying philosophy. Society had somehow forgotten what
was authentic and there was only one effective antidote: embrace a simpler,
more “natural” way of life. No phenomenon has illustrated those goals more
clearly than persistent opposition to genetically engineered food. “This whole
world view that genetically modified food is there so we have no choice but to
use it is absolutely terrifying and it is wrong,” Lord Peter Melchett, a former
British Labour minister, told me when I met him a few years ago.
Today, Lord Melchett, whose great-grandfather founded one of the world’s
largest chemical companies, is policy director of the British Soil Association, the
organic food and farming organization. The first time we spoke, however, he
served as executive director of Greenpeace, where he was in the midst of leading
a furious campaign against Monsanto (which he referred to as “Monsatan”) to
rid the world of genetically engineered foods. “There is a fundamental question
here,” he said. “Is progress really just about marching forward? We say no. We
say it is time to stop assuming that discoveries only move us forward. The war
against nature has to end. And we are going to stop it.”
I felt then—as I do now—that he had gotten it exactly wrong; scientists
weren’t waging a war at all, he was—against science itself. Still, I saw Lord
Melchett as a quaint aristocrat who found an interesting way to shrug off his