Why so many people practice 'denialism’

A segment of the CBC “The Sunday Edition” program, broadcast on August 19, 2018, inspired this curation of articles by asking the question “ Why so many people practice 'denialism’ ?”.

Denial

Keith Kahn-Harris, a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London and at Leo Baeck College, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, offers ideas from his latest book, called Denial: The Unspeakable Truth. Keith Kahn-Harris has a theory about why so many people reject scientific consensus and documented historical fact.

Some issues

He calls it denialism and argues that it is making the practice of politics and public policy more difficult and divisive.

Truth seeking

Statements that are backed by denialism include:

• The Holocaust never happened. 
• The planet isn’t warming. 
• Vaccines cause autism. 
• There is no such thing as AIDS. 
• The Earth is flat. 

The BBC recently reported that measles cases hit a record high in Europe.

Dr Nedret Emiroglu, from the WHO, said: "This partial setback demonstrates that every under-immunised person remains vulnerable no matter where they live and every country must keep pushing to increase coverage and close immunity gaps."
Italy's upper house of parliament recently voted through legislation to abolish the law that makes vaccination mandatory for children before they start school. The amendment will mean parents of unvaccinated children will no longer face fines.

Jeremy Hance, a leading environmental reporter, and occasional contributor to ALERT, reports a trend in temperature that predicts it will be “unseasonably hot till 2022”.

While the prediction for the next 5 years is anything but good, it may provide a political opportunity to convince leaders and the public of the urgency of combating global warming.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, humans are more easily convinced of the reality of global warming when it happens to be hot outside.

Keith Kahn-Harris writes in the Guardian, about trends in recent years where the term ‘denialism” has been used to describe a number of fields of “scholarship”, whose scholars engage in audacious projects to hold back, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the findings of an avalanche of research.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/781D/production/_103094703_measles-spl.jpg

They argue that the Holocaust (and other genocides) never happened, that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a myth, that Aids either does not exist or is unrelated to HIV, that evolution is a scientific impossibility, and that all manner of other scientific and historical orthodoxies must be rejected.

Not all denialists are taking these steps towards open acknowledgment of their desires. In some fields, the commitment to repressing desire remains strong. We are not yet at a stage when a climate change denier can come out and say, proudly, “Bangladesh will be submerged, millions will suffer as a result of anthropogenic climate change, but we must still preserve our carbon-based way of life, no matter what the cost.” Nor are anti-vaxxers ready to argue that, even though vaccines do not cause autism, the death of children from preventable diseases is a regrettable necessity if we are to be released from the clutches of Big Pharma.

The work to develop denialist arguments involves action to produce “scientific facts” that support anti-orthodox claims. The “pursuit of truth” may be available as a common starting point for co-operation between opposing “scholarship”. Let’s hope so.

References

(2018, August 17). Why so many people practice 'denialism' | CBC Radio - CBC.ca. Retrieved August 19, 2018, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-august-19-2018-1.4784795/why-so-many-people-practice-denialism-1.4788057
(2018, May 1). Denial: The Unspeakable Truth - Keith Kahn Harris. Retrieved August 19, 2018, from http://www.kahn-harris.org/books/denial-unspeakable-truth/
(2018, August 3). Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth | News | The Guardian. Retrieved August 19, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/03/denialism-what-drives-people-to-reject-the-truth
(2018, August 20). Measles cases hit record high in Europe - BBC News - BBC.com. Retrieved August 20, 2018, from https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45246049
(2018, August 19). Tonight's Weather Forecast: Unseasonably Hot Till 2022 — ALERT. Retrieved August 21, 2018, from http://alert-conservation.org/issues-research-highlights/2018/8/19/tonights-weather-forecast-unseasonably-hot-till-2022