Traits Shared by All Science Deniers

This is a great talk given at TAM 2014 by Donald Prothero about the debilitating mental impairments afflicting most if not all science deniers.

I have only one small quibble. At about 29:25, we get the typical "be nice" or "don't be a dick" speech. This comes, oddly enough, after Prothero shows us an "Indenial Ham" fake movie poster, displays a cartoon calling climate deniers dense, labels some right-wing politicians clowns, etc. Mind you, I personally do not have a problem with these insults, nor do I find them offensive or counterproductive. Quite the contrary, I think they're spot on and helpful. That's just me. However, they do conflict with the stated peace-making purpose. If you think they don't, well, that is exactly the problem. "Don't be a dick" is an appeal based on a subjective standard. We each have different ideas about when someone has crossed the line into dick-dom. Prothero himself makes the point, more or less, that even disagreeing with certain people is a sign, to them, that you are a dick. Therefore concerning ourselves about being dicks is a pointless, tail-chasing exercise. As much as I like this talk, and am a fan of Phil Plait's blog and science advocacy, we waste entirely too much time tiptoeing around screwball, thin-skinned people who at times prove to be irreversibly deluded and unreachable. And, at least as far as climate change is concerned, after decades of explaining the plain, inarguable science to them in as inoffensive a manner as humanly possible and ending up with basically zero meaningful policy, we can all of us but conclude that being nice is about as red a herring as you can throw into the discussion. In fact, it's probably time to go out of our way to purposefully humiliate these nitwit deniers, trample their feelings, and use them as foils as often as possible. Some people (namely those who are offended by mere disagreement) serve no other purpose than to be made examples.

Also, I would point out that the recent secular, rational strides society has made which Prothero mentions did not arise out of the blue, by luck, or because we decided not to be dicks to religious people. Instead, they came about due to the hard work of some very influential and relentless polemicists. One might even go so far as to call them strident. :)

Have a watch.



BTW, you will most likely need to crank up the volume. Audio is somewhat muted for some reason.