The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands

The article doesn’t claim that only those who lean right deny science. It claims only the right has embraced science-denial as a major political platform. There are plenty of science-denying democrats. There aren’t many (to my knowledge) science-denying policies, platforms, or official talking points of the democratic party. The same cannot be said of the GOP.

> We, as a general population, have proven that completely uncensored speech gives way too much weight to ideas that have no merit.

That sounds like it'll get pretty scary once you start following the road.

The antivax movement is ridiculous and hopefully the necessity of covid vaccinations will destroy it as should have happened years ago.

Similarly, the evidence for climate change is pretty much undeniable now and I can only assume that those pretending it doesn't exist are not honest actors.

But the lockdown scepticism I can kind of understand as it is more of a political issue - the cost/benefit of lockdown and depending on the type of lockdown, if it will even be effective.

It seems the usual rational decisions over medical intervention based on quality-adjusted life years etc. has been abandoned in favour of emotional arguments.

China showed us lockdowns can work, but these "lockdowns" we have now just seem to be political theatre with little effect on transmission. The politicians want to give the impression of doing something because actually effective measures like closing workplaces and schools would be too expensive/difficult.

This conflates "official positions of authorities" with "science".

It's like a modern religion, with three tenets: (1) science made everything around us (iPhones and airplanes!) (2) we speak for science (3) therefore you must believe our conclusions.

But in fact, that's the opposite of a proper scientific attitude, which always admits doubt, and believes experiment over authority.

As for why authorities are increasingly losing trust, I think it's because they've been rather unreliable recently.

To use just one glaring example, the official advice on masks went overnight from, "they're useless!" to "you're killing people if you don't use them!".

Both positions were condescendingly presented as "the science". A lot of people will start to lose trust when you so glaringly contradict yourself in such a rapid amount of time.

In general, the approach seems to be when crafting public advice to not worry about presenting an accurate picture of our current knowledge, but just pick a position, pretend we are certain it is true, and hand it down as the infallible words of Science. (See also: our ever changing dietary recommendations.)

When science is weaponized by politicians and when the media is lying about everything intentionally, and being concentrated by very few conglomerates, it isn't anti-science as much as it is anti-media. Just because the media screams "science" doesn't make them the voice of science.