Scientific American: “A large part of the answer is that this is what the party’s spokespeople have been saying for 40 years, from the early days of acid rain to our ongoing debates about climate change.” “It has mostly been Republican governors resisting mask mandates, even when science showed they slowed the spread of COVID-19. And it was, by and large, Republican governors lifting those mandates in the spring, even while Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, begged them not to.” “Everyone deserves accurate information to be presented in an apolitical way and to be addressed with respect and not condescension. But the reality is that most of the science that matters most comes from the government or from scientists funded by the government. Until Republican leaders stop telling voters not to trust the government, many of them won’t trust science.”
"Everyone deserves accurate info" What does mean when a free country begins a play called totalitarianism. Waiting for the retrace and return to freedom.
When your "science" says there's no biological difference between men and women, pretends that there was no climate shift prior to the 1800's, tells us that it's unsafe in a small store or restaurant, but completely safe in a large store or restaurant, and now tells us even though you're vaccinated you should still wear a mask, or not, depends on the day, well, you have pretty much all credibility to tell anyone about anything regarding "science". You fucking dopes wouldn't know science if it clubbed you over the head.
Driving this morning I had a chance to listen to an NPR story on the early days of AIDS and the shifting science as we learned more about the disease. So the first published scientific article in the US about AIDS (we can’t use the term HIV yet because at the time all we saw was the immuno deficiency and had no idea HIV was the cause) was a denial article citing 11 isolated cases in NYC of gay men with a mysterious syndrome who were dying of pneumonia. I thought of today of the Covid deniers who claim Covid doesn’t kill people it’s their underlying medical condition or obesity or pneumonia or blood clots, etc. So in the early days of AIDS, like today, everyone was an expert, especially the deniers. When it was determined to be an acquired syndrome the deniers began saying things like it only can be caught by gay men, people with poor diets, drug users, etc. And to be fair the flip side terrified people claimed you can catch AIDS through aerosolization of germs, by touch, saliva, sitting in the same seat as someone, etc. As we learned more through science we discovered HIV was the culprit. And again deniers argued it can’t be the culprit because the human body actually produces antibodies to HIV and the deniers claimed HIV was a harmless virus we just never discovered before. As a caveat to this, the human body does in fact produce antibodies to HIV but HIV is a tricky virus that can learn to evade those initial antibodies and continue to live in the host. Anyway, the point is that denialism isn’t new. A lot of this stuff is a psychological impact on people who can’t come terms with the truth. They just can’t reconcile that so many people are dying or the earth is heading for crisis. So they tell themselves little stories and believe what they want to believe. It’s actually a very sad but very natural part of human nature.
When you have academics who are hacks and willing to overlook "real" science for monies lining their pockets and betraying the science they claim is infallible, you have hired hacks willing to say anything if that is what they are being paid for. No different when academic researchers are paid huge sums to arrive at what their patrons wanted from them. Now, anyone taking monies for their academic research should have to disclose such fact when claiming to be so called experts in their field. That will end all the BS right there. Also, they should have to disclose the total amount they were paid by their patrons. Who paid them, needs to be disclosed. Otherwise, it is an obvious, conflict of interest with any of their so called findings suspect and untrustworthy.