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posted by on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-like-a-massacre dept.

According to our dear friends over at Wired, we are losing the war on science. This interview with Shawn Otto, author of The War on Science [no-script hostile] ranges from the American presidential election to Albert Einstein:

His new book The War on Science explores ways that citizens can fight back against a creeping tide of anti-science nonsense promulgated by everyone from postmodern academics to greedy oil companies to nature-loving hippies. An important step is to make journalists understand that science and opinion should not be given equal weight.

"The purpose of a free press in a democracy is to hold the powerful accountable to the evidence," Otto says. "Journalists have really lost sight of that purpose, of their entire reason for being."

Fair enough. But things have gotten worse?

He fears that the war on science will only intensify once Donald Trump takes office in January. "I'm very concerned, as is the rest of the global scientific community," Otto says.

As a personal aside, I find it unlikely that the public, those who executed Socrates, burned the Library of Alexandria, and imprisoned Antoinio Gramsci, could fall for such a diaphanous fraud as the Republican attack on science! People back then were truly and profoundly stupid. But people today have the internet, and facebook, and a total misunderstanding of science, politics, ethics, and math. So, this will not end well? Help me, Soylentils, give me hope.


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  • (Score: 3, Troll) by SuperCharlie on Friday December 09 2016, @12:15AM

    by SuperCharlie (2939) on Friday December 09 2016, @12:15AM (#438938)

    This would assume either actually existed at this time.

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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday December 09 2016, @12:40AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday December 09 2016, @12:40AM (#438946)

    Even better, it assumes Democracy is a good thing, something every one of our Founding Fathers believed to be false. If one is looking for their defective premise we can stop our search right there if we like.

    So much wrong with the article it would be like seriously critiquing the athletics at the Special Olympics to fisk it line by line. Progressive anti-intellectualism in an almost perfect Platonic form. Solyent's own aristarchus's rant just completes the ensemble of stupid on display. The sin was that Gramsci wasn't executed before he could write his Communist drivel, drivel I might add that has absolutely nothing to do with science, the supposed subject under discussion, making it a perfect example of how the progs whining the loudest about the horror of the coming Trumpreich are projecting. They just assume their opponents are as corrupting as themselves and will naturally proceed to corrupt science to at least the same extent they have, only imposing their different biases. To believe otherwise would imply they had the capacity for self reflection and could someday ask if it isn't just themselves who corrupt everything they touch; history does not record this ever happening on any sort of scale beyond an individual here and there.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @01:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @01:10AM (#438950)

      Power corrupts. One of the worst things about progressives being in their debauched state is that there isn't even the loyal opposition to point out rampant stupidity (not that the right has done such a good job since the 80's, but at least aspects of the Tea Party made an attempt) on the right.

      What's worse is that the liberals really have nothing to their name. For all the bluster about the alt-right and Trump, they are seemingly styling themselves as old school democrats (working class, populism, economic equality).

      That leaves liberals with no place to go.

      I have no idea what will happen to the Democrats, but Trump has taken their mantle and even Goldwater conservatives may be left out in the cold.