pinocchio.jpg Recently, I sat in on an off-the-record meeting about political fact-checking. I can’t report or quote from the event, but it spurred along some general thoughts that had already arisen in the context of writing The Republican Brain, which focuses a great deal on fact-checking—and thus, helped propel this post.
Continue readingTag: Desmogger
DeSmogBlog: A Democrat Undermines Science
planb_200x170.jpg In my debate a few months back with Kenneth Green about the left, the right, and science, my colleague really could have used some more strong examples of left wing science abuse. Now, he has one. There is no other way to spin it: The Obama administration’s decision to ignore the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: BP Accuses Halliburton Of Destroying Evidence In Gulf Deepwater Horizon Disaster
halliburton-logo.jpg Just months before trials are set to begin, BP is accusing Halliburton of destroying evidence related to their shoddy cement work that helped cause last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. According to Reuters, BP has officially filed their allegations with the courts, hoping to get the ball rolling
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Old Talking Points Die Hard: "Climate Change Is Beneficial" Edition
Climate-Change.jpg If you follow the cycle of anti-climate change talking points, you’ll notice a pattern that repeats itself every few years. In between spurts of outright denial, the anti-science crowd will occasionally revert back to a less-heard talking point: Climate change is actually a good thing. Even as the year
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Science of Debiasing: The New “Debunking Handbook” Is a Treasure Trove For Defenders of Reason
dbh_large.gif For quite some time here at DeSmogBlog, I’ve been writing about the growing science of irrationality—in other words, our ever-better scientific understanding of why people reject clearly correct information. I believe we can’t possibly get to a better place, in debates over issues like global warming, until we understand
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Do Developing Nation Journalists Cover Climate Science Better (or at Least Better Than U.S. and U.K. Papers)?
ronaldo-brazil-world-cup-top-scorer.jpg As the European debt crisis scrapes along, there has been talk about the possible need for developing nations, like China and Brazil, to ultimately help bail out some spendthrift “developed” nations. A new study suggests that maybe they should also help bail out some of our media. The study comes from
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Fox News Viewers are the Most Misinformed: A Seventh Study Arrives to Prove It (and to Vindicate Jon Stewart!)
cavuto-20070117-global-2.jpg Two of my most popular posts here at DeSmogBlog were a pair of items documenting 1) just how many surveys have found Fox News viewers to be more misinformed about factual reality and 2) taking PolitiFact to task for giving Jon Stewart a “false” rating when he pointed this out.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Anthony Watts and Defensive Reasoning: Three Episodes
anthony-watts.jpg Over the last year, I’ve had numerous blogospheric encounters with the conservative climate “skeptic” Anthony Watts, the author of WattsUpWithThat. In the process, I’ve been particularly struck by how Watts handles inconvenient evidence. Twice now, I’ve seen Watts make a mistake, and then seem to rationalize it, rather than simply correct
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Conservatives Attack and Misunderstand A Book They Haven’t Read…A Book About Flawed Conservative Reasoning
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This would be sad, if it weren’t also so telling.
On Monday I announced my new book The Republican Brain, which will be due out next spring. And I provided a brie…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Rush Limbaugh: Meat Eater, Science Denier
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Recently, Rush Limbaugh went on another of his anti-science rants. This one was particularly fascinating, though, because of the things he actually got right—even as he &n…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don’t Believe in Science (or Many Other Inconvenient Truths)
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Over the last year here at DeSmogBlog, my writings have converged around a set of common themes. On the one hand, I’ve shown just how factually incorrect today’s political …
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann, and the Freedom of Inquiry
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Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann—who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science—triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, an…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Is There a Bias Asymmetry Between Democrats and Republicans?
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There’s a must read item today at the Huffington Post by Jonathan Weiler, co-author of the excellent book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American P…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Hard Core Climate “Skeptics” Don’t Change Their Minds
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I’ve been watching with interest the blogosphere uproar over the release of results from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project centered around physicist Richard Mulle…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Communicating Science is So Money
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I’ve been meaning to thrown in my congratulations to Gavin Schmidt of NASA and RealClimate.org, who is the first recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s new…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Did Climate Progress Stall? It’s Called Conservative Ideological Activation
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There has been much reaction to this weekend’s Elizabeth Rosenthal New York Times piece—“Where Did Global Warming Go?” Clearly, the issue has falle…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Old War on Science Returns Under Rick Perry
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In an August post about the return of the “war on science”—prosecuted by the political right—I drew a key distinction between attacks on knowledge that h…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Once And For All: The Precautionary Principle is Not Unscientific
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Some conservatives are immensely more fun to debate than others.
In the past month, a debate over left-right science abuse with Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Insti…
DeSmogBlog: Evolution and Climate Deniers: Natural Allies?
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On the face of things, there is no clear reason why the same person—like, say, Rick Perry—ought to deny accepted science about both evolution, and also global warmin…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhemingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left
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Last week, I took to task a really poor USA Today op-ed making the following claim:
"In short, for every anti-science Republican that exists, there is at least one anti-scie…