Scientific American: Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More

[MisterP]

44. right, there's no use building up a culture war: the CSICOP types are locked into this

50s-60s paradigm where you just had to do a little more highschool education, a little pop science and publicized debunkings, and "irrationalism" would fade away; they then panicked about "the new Dark Ages" when it didn't and doubled down on the tactic--"it's not working because we didn't do it HARD enough!"

the barbarians were at the gates and they were their own students: it's hard to understate the panic that academics were expressing starting 1968--the anti-Vietnam protests, the new wave of sexual liberation, the incipient New Age movement, Afrocentrism were all harbingers of a new era, a swift and brutal end to the postwar consensus and its shiny germfree nuclear-powered future: even scientists were growing beards and pointing out that some things couldn't be managed, that the world was getting poisoned, that the reactors were leaving waste everywhere and not actually profitable, that maybe those natives actually might know something about the local plants: thus the 70s were born

and all the while history's passing them by: SRI caught Randi's honeypots, ball lightning was accepted with a shrug after having been a career-killer for decades, homeopathy turned out to have been rooted in the 1800s' vaccination movement, and eugenicists have infiltrated the defenders of science-as-humanism: they're building up the fortress walls while the foundations crumble--as they always have

Brazil incorporated uMbanda into its HIV fight while Honduran doctors intensified the attacks on Santeros and linked them to the Commies spreading tales of VD--you can guess the result; Germany gets higher vaccination rates by taking a few minutes to address the parents' concerns while Americans panic as usual and demand ever-tougher measures: the mano dura; this "bar the door Sally" mentality is counterproductive, but won't be reversed because the worldview can't be admitted to be wrong, so double down as usual

and note that even he lumps GMO opposition together with AGW denial: heck, it's the Dick Taverne "science roxx!" GMO pushers that give the most credence to warming denial since the language of the "scientific skeptics" fits with his reactionariness