Denialism

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♫ We're not listening ♫

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“”I've read the stories about people who have died of covid, arguing with their caregiver that this is all a hoax, even as they’re hooked up to ventilators and unable to breathe on their own. This is four-star-level denial, but there are many levels below it.

—Tim Carman

Denialism is the refusal to accept well-established theory, law, fact, or evidence. The word "denialist" has pejorative connotations.

In scientific contexts, the denialist can deny a cause (carbon dioxide does not cause global warming), an effect (the Earth is not warming), the association between the two (CO₂ levels are rising and the Earth is warming, but not because of the carbon dioxide), the direction of the cause-and-effect relationship (carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing because the earth is warming), or the identification of the cause-and-effect relationship (other factors than greenhouse gases are causing the Earth to warm). Often denialists practice minimization ("the Earth is warming, but it's not harmful") and use misplaced skepticism to give an unwarranted veneer of scientific thinking.

Major scientific targets of denialism include evolution, global warming, the link between HIV and AIDS, the link between smoking and lung cancer, and evidence that there is no correlation between vaccination and autism. Often, self-interest is the motivation behind denialism, hence politicization or financially motivated arguments often come into play. For example, tobacco companies denied the smoking-lung cancer link (even though they were well-aware of it for decades) as it would have hurt their profits. Likewise, Andrew Wakefield had a strong conflict of interest in ensuring that people didn't take established and effective vaccines. Similarly, global-warming denialists tend to oppose solutions which aim to address the problem (see the logical fallacy of argument from adverse consequences), and get support from energy conglomerates and others who could lose financially from reductions in fossil-fuel use. Because of financial incentive, denialism can take the form of the accounting known as Deferred financing cost (a form of negative externality), i.e., someone else will pay for the costs while the company/denier takes the profits — a future generation, a different stock holder, the government, or an innocent bystander.

Politicians use variations of the phrase "I'm not a scientist but…" to proclaim that they are proudly and willfully ignorant of science while at the same time sportingly showing willingness to offer policy opinions in other areas where they also have no expertise, especially economics or religion. The proudly ignorant have included a frightening cast of Republicans, including Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, John Boehner, Rick Scott, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio.

Denialism on the left has also been a serious problem, albeit primarily focusing on those oh-so-evil "GMO"s and other supposed threats to public health while extolling anything and everything that is (often vaguely defined as) "natural". For instance, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) infamously championed a wide variety of medical quackery and forced the Office of Alternative Medicine, which became the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), into the National Institutes of Health. The NCCAM has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in fruitless efforts to "validate" the patently absurd which have nevertheless given much credence to medical quackery and even the licensure of acupuncturists, naturopaths, and other quacks.

Denial of fact is one of the foundations of woo. Denialism can also fill a deep psychological need, as in the question of why one's child has autism — since in reality there is no known easy answer.

Methods

“”Don't talk to me of independent study or scientific trial I'm in denial, deep in denial And as the waters rise around me I'll just hold my breath and say it isn't so!

—"Denial Tango," Men with Day Jobs

See also: Characteristics of pseudoscience

Mark and Chris Hoofnagle at Denialism Blog use their "Denialists' Deck of Cards" series to describe how denialists of all stripes use remarkably similar tactics. Denialists often claim that an established set of knowledge or scientific theory is not proven or "sound" and lacks evidence (or enough evidence). They say it is a controversy, requires balance, or requires both the strengths and weaknesses to be considered. These tactics make the denialists appear "fair" (and those who oppose them not) and implies doubt in what is being denied with no consideration of evidence. Denialist groups also produce competing evidence through their own "research", which is often poorly performed (if at all), as it often is done by public relations firms with no technical expertise. They encourage people to form their own opinions or do their own tests, rather than relying on studies with appropriate methods and controls. Lists of experts (who may have no credentials in the area) are compiled as testimonials, or public relations campaigns are used to improve denialists' images (and slime legitimate scholars). Actual errors in mainstream science will often be blown out of proportion. Most denialist rhetoric is focused at the layperson and not the expert, and usually paints a contrast between two positions rather than being about one point-of-view. The use of self-generated content on the Internet ("Web 2.0") unfortunately contributes to the dissemination of denialist arguments.

Leah Ceccarelli describes the rhetoric of denialists:

First, they skillfully invoke values that are shared by the scientific community and the American public alike, like free speech, skeptical inquiry, and the revolutionary force of new ideas against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difficult to argue against someone who invokes these values without seeming unscientific or un-American.

Second, they exploit a tension between the technical and public spheres in … American life. Highly specialized scientific experts can't spare the time to engage in careful public communication, and are then surprised when the public distrusts, fears, or opposes them.

Third, today’s sophists exploit a public misconception about what science is. They portray science as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data. Any dissent by any scientist is then seen as evidence that there's no consensus, and thus truth must not have been discovered yet.

Diethelm and McKee introduced the five tactics of denialists, originally described by Mark Hoofnagle, into the scientific literature:

1. The identification of perceived conspiracies. This includes belief of corrupted peer review and inversionism (i.e., attributing some of one's own characteristics and motivations to others).
2. The use of fake experts (often with the smearing of real experts).
3. Selecting or cherry picking sources: picking the weakest papers or only ones that are contrary. Particularly worrisome is looking at only a single study, especially in medicine, as one study rarely conclusively proves something. Others note that this includes anecdotal evidence and quote mining.
4. Demanding impossible standards for research.
5. Use of fallacy, including misrepresentation and false analogy. Informally, this can include a witch's brew of half-truths and sob stories. and/or spin to try to force the public to ignore an important issue.

An example of AIDS-HIV denialist rhetoric is from Herbert Vilakazi:

"The situation in America is one of intolerance," [Vilakazi] continued, never raising his voice. "There are A.R.V.s [antiretroviral drugs]. Only one approach to treating this deadly illness is permitted. You are not allowed to talk about anything else." He said that people are obsessed with whether H.I.V. causes AIDS, but that he considered such arguments "completely academic and not relevant for the treatment of sick people." He went on, "Let us be honest. Who benefits from A.R.V.s? Hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars have been spent on research and you have to get a return on your investment. It is the first rule of pharmaceutical companies, and they simply terrorize their opponents. Very frankly, in America there is an official literature — and there are a lot of people in the African-American community who feel maybe there is a conspiracy and that racism has a lot to do with it. Why, for instance, is AIDS the biggest problem that exists in Africa? You start to wonder if there is a social selection for this disease. Is it not a coincidence that Africa is the poorest continent in the world? Did you ever think that it's in the interest of some people for it to stay that way?"

Plausible deniability

Plausible deniability is a method used to evade blame, wherein the perpetrator gives a statement that claims innocence, preferably using the fallacy of ambiguity, so as to allow deniability. The political use of this strategy was explicitly formulated by Lee Atwater in developing the Southern Strategy used by the GOP.

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Historian Timothy Snyder suggested that Vladimir Putin's "direct assault on factuality might be called implausible deniability." By denying what everyone knew [about the Russian invasion of Ukraine], Putin was creating unifying fictions at home and dilemmas in European and American newsrooms." The reason that Putin's assault on truth was a dilemma for legitimate journalists was because journalists expect their news sources to "accept the factuality of the world and interpret the same set of facts", they are therefore trained to report on multiple sides of a story. When one side of a story has disregard for the truth and is spreading disinformation, it becomes the balance fallacy. The intent of implausible deniability is generally in the furtherance of fake news, and is one of the primary rhetorical instruments of RT.

Denialism vs. skepticism

See the main article on this topic: Pseudoskepticism

“”A skeptic will question claims, then embrace the evidence. A denier will question claims, then reject the evidence.

—Neil deGrasse Tyson

It is possible to conflate skepticism and denialism, as proponents of both seem to "deny" that something exists until they're convinced otherwise. Denialists themselves often claim to be skeptics, and very rarely self-identify as denialists. But to say that a skeptic is a homeopathy denier and that a Holocaust denier is skeptical would be wrong.

While both have a negative or critical tone, the positions are different in how they view and acquire and interpret data. Skepticism is a method while denialism is a position. The opposite of "skeptic" is not "believer", and it is possible to embrace something while remaining skeptical. This is an essential part of the ethos of science as it suggests new experiments to strengthen or falsify a proposition. Skeptics look at experiments to ensure that they were performed properly with the appropriate controls, proper data analysis, and so on. The skeptical method involves examining all data and coming to a conclusion that it produces. Denialists, on the other hand, view data slightly differently, as a means to a predetermined end – minimizing its importance if it goes against their opinion, highlighting it if it supports them, or just plain misrepresenting it for their own purposes. Skeptics keep an open mind until data shows that a hypothesis is invalid, while denialists start with the conclusion and look for support. To put it another way, denialism embraces confirmation bias while skepticism seeks to avoid it.

One blogger put it this way:

Skeptics also ask questions, but a big difference between skeptics and denialists is that skeptics listen to answers and regard evidence as paramount. Denialists tend to see the piles of evidence against their claim, and see a conspiracy theory to perpetuate a hoax. But skeptics accept good evidence. Skeptics have a lot of respect for science, and denialists are usually out to undermine scientists working in the field where they have an agenda. Denialists will wear the costume of scientific thinking, but they usually show a piss-poor understanding how … the accumulation of studies and data work. (For instance, they promote the idea that if one study can be found to be flawed, this brings down the whole theory, as if the other hundreds of studies don't count.)

This distinction is really important, because the role of skeptics is to dispute and even disprove outrageous conspiracy theory claims. Skeptics fight against denialists. That’s why I'm interested in skepticism — I fear that there's a surge of denialist thinking in our culture fueled by new media (which is great at a lot of good things, but also good at spreading misinformation) and the explosion in both complications in world politics and the everyday person's awareness of them. As science begins to dictate more and more of what we know, there's also a cultural backlash that's related to the overall backlash against modernism. Skepticism is becoming more and more important as the political troops to defend science. So when people who are part of the anti-science backlash call themselves "skeptics," this confuses the issue.

And another blogger:

Carl Sagan popularized the skeptical mantra: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Authentic scientific skepticism is an intellectual and scholarly pursuit that requires honesty, rationality, logic, and evidence. Real skeptics do not cling to absurd conspiracy theories for which there is no evidence, nor do they engage in obfuscation, misrepresentation, data fabrication, smear campaigns, or intimidation tactics. These are the methods of deniers.

The scientific community's response to the possibility of an arsenic-based life form is a current example of skepticism. Take Carl Zimmer:

None of the scientists I spoke to ruled out the possibility that such weird bacteria might exist. Indeed, some of them were co-authors of a 2007 report for the National Academies of Sciences on alien life that called for research into, among other things, arsenic-based biology. But almost to a person, they felt that the NASA team had failed to take some basic precautions to avoid misleading results.

Denialism also differs from legitimate historical revisionism in that the latter acknowledges that a historical event occurred, but uses a different interpretation of evidence. Denialism is usually historical negationism.

See also

• Anti-environmentalism
• Anti-intellectualism
• Anti-science
• Armenian Genocide denial
• Bosnian genocide
• Cherry picking
• A comparative guide to science denial
• Denial of the victim
• Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
• Fox News
• Gish gallop
• Holocaust denial
• I'm not prejudiced, but... — used by science denialists as well as by bigots
• Just asking questions
• One single proof
• Stalin apologetics
• Statin denialism
• Vaccine denialism

• Essay:Elisions, in which blogger Stephanie Zvan discusses the use of lying by omission in denialism (specifically in the case of sexism, but it applies overall)

External links

• Michael Specter's TED talk on science denial
• Denialism blog's list of denialist organizations
• Naomi Oreskes on denialist tactics and global warming
• The Science of Why We Deny Science by Chris Mooney
• Skepticism and Denial by Steven Novella, compares AIDS denial, mental illness denial, evolution denial/creationism, and Holocaust denial.
• Science Controversies Past and Present by Steven Sherwood in Physics Today
• 5 Characteristics of Scientific Denialism, Skeptical Science
• Ahmed Ezz el-Arab, leader of the Egyptian party Wafd, denies the reality of the Holocaust, the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank and the authenticity of Babylonian exile antiquities uncovered in an archaeological excavation beneath the al Aksa Mosque
• Climate of Doubt, a Frontline report on climate change denialism
• How to be a Real Sceptic at RealClimate