Guest post: They believed science was in the clutches of ‘big’ everything
Originally a comment by iknklast on Break everything.
As for how [anti-vaxxers] can live with themselves, they are sure they are doing the opposite of killing people. They believe they are saving people. (I don’t think that’s the case with Trump; I think he doesn’t think at all, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.)
I met a lot of anti-vaxxers in the years I was part of the environmental science program in my doctoral program. For the most part, they were the youngsters, those born after we managed to solve so many problems of diseases. They had been raised on a media drumbeat of the evils of big Pharma, big Medicine, and science denialism, but they didn’t believe it was science denialism. They don’t remember what it was like to have half the class out with the measles, mumps, or other diseases, and the risk that came from these diseases. They grew up in a world where the diseases were not manifest in large numbers. If people are so healthy, why do we need vaccines?
A frightening number of students in the science program were anti-science based policies. It was even worse in the environmental philosophy program, with which I was required to engage for two graduate level classes. They outright believed all science was evil. They believed science was in the clutches of ‘big’ everything. They were woke before there was ‘woke’. They had avoided all science classes, and gave us (the scientists required to engage with philosophy) regular renditions of what exactly science said and did – and they were never right. They stuck by their beliefs even in the face of half the class being scientists who were capable of correcting their mistaken beliefs.
I think at the time I underestimated the numbers of science deniers in the program, because our program tended toward older. Most of the students were Baby Boomers who grew up with diseases and new the benefits of vaccines and other scientific advances. The only one of the older students who had any anti-science beliefs was actually a devout Catholic who believed that abortion was bad for women and society. He wasn’t anti-vax, though.
Kennedy has been awash in the environmental movement for some time. To most people, environmental movement and environmental science are synonymous, so they don’t realize that people like Kennedy have been associated with anti-scientific people who don’t know what the science says, don’t like it anyway, and are determined to bring ‘purity’ back to the Earth.
I don’t know if these groups and individuals shaped his beliefs, or if he helped shape theirs. I suspect more than anything they were all the result of multiple anti-science sources that sound more appealing to them than the rigorous science practiced by the environmental scientists.
Science is hard work. I suspect Kennedy is lazy, at least intellectually. A lot of the students who passed through my classes were intellectually lazy, and felt the science was too hard to understand. It was common practice for them to dismiss the actual science because the articles were filled with graphs and charts and large, unfamiliar words.
There is also the ubiquitous and ill-informed worship of the ‘natural’. Yes, natural can be good. It can be very good. But arsenic is natural. Rattlesnakes are natural. Earthquakes are natural. All of them can kill you. Meanwhile, Pepsi isn’t natural, and while it might kill you if you drank too much of it, a glass of Pepsi is not going to affect you in the same way that a glass of arsenic would.
Vaccines don’t seem ‘natural’. They seem to a lot of people like ‘playing God’. They are ‘chemicals’. (One of the first things I told my students, often the first day of class, is that everything is chemicals. Water is chemicals. Food is chemicals, no matter how ‘natural’. We are chemicals.) Hatred of ‘chemicals’ is also intellectually lazy thinking. There are chemicals that harm us, and chemicals that are essential to maintain our health. Some fall in both categories, depending on dosage or interactions. It can be hard work to sort that out.
And now, Ls & Gs, the newest Evil —
Seed oils.
I shit u not.
https://apnews.com/article/seed-oil-beef-tallow-kennedy-4fdf0f30134277fd6dd20b4ede789295
I was watching a NetFlix documentary produced and narrated by Peter Dinklage, “How to Become a Tyrant.” An episode on Stalin explained why he had promoted Lyshenko. There were two main reasons. Stalin didn’t want the people to be able to trust the truth, so then they would have to look to him for the Party Truth. Not only did the Soviet Government take over the press, they took over science. And it didn’t matter whether Lysenko’s methods would increase the harvest, because he had applied “Marxist Methods” to cultivating grains.
I think Trump is very crafty. He brought RFKjr because he had made a name for distrusting “mainstream science” among the conspiracy theory base that supports him. Isn’t it weird how the Ultra-Right are so enamored of the Kennedys when they hated them for so long until QAnon and claimed that Trump and the living JFKjr were working in tandem to eradicate pedophilia?
The wellness industry has told enough lies for a long enough time that this is what people believe to be the truth, as long as Trump also supports it. And Trump does because it broadens his base. What the Trump party believes now becomes what the base believes: That scientists lie just as baldly as the New York TImes and CNN lie.
If Trump isn’t stopped, this will become the Truth, even as millions die due to the belief in the Miasma Theory of Disease.
@ Mike B # 1
Your intro, “And now, Ls and Gs . . ,” made me jump immediately to “Lesbians” and “Gays.”. I wondered how the anti-science crowd were attacking them specifically . . .
Insert roll-eyes smile here.
I’d think Big Ag would have some complaints… I doubt beef tallow is something they’re having a hard time unloading.
The seed oils thing has perfect Insane Troll Logic if you consider the following:
1. Lots of people looking for the One Weird Trick where they get to eat fries every day without it being bad for them.
2. Sad little men with masculinity issues who think it’s manly to eat something from an animal and girly to eat something from a plant.
3. Everyone who’s an adult in America has experienced multiple iterations of “this food used to be fine; now it’s poison” in their lifetime, some more justified than others.
Piglet:
And the excuse of:
4. The existence of people like me, who have multiple genetic health problems and who have been forced into a plant-free diet, despite and against our wishes, and are less sick as a result.
Humans are omnivores, and the vast majority can eat everything without any problems, provided that they don’t eat too much of any one thing (and that is what catches most; too much of their favourite food). The fact that there are healthy vegans and healthy carnivores is to be expected; there will always be a few individuals thriving at either end of any bell curve. Only someone trying to make money out of manipulating others would point to the outliers and claim that everyone should emulate their diet.
Tigger: totally. I have really low BP, so for me the standard salt advice simply DOES NOT WORK.
Since my favorite food is broccoli, I don’t have to worry too much about that. My problem comes with my long list of second favorites, which includes pasta and Mexican, both of which can be quite high in carbs.
Piglet, sort of the same here. I have had problems with high potassium, which necessitates reducing potassium or increasing sodium. When faced with giving up bananas or adding a little salt to my food, I chose the latter.
As the old saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
I, too, have to have a high salt intake. Medication which is vitally necessary to keep my heart in rhythm has what used to be a beneficial side effect when my BP was high; it relaxes blood vessels. My blood pressure is no longer high. My cardiologist has halved the dose, but can’t reduce it further. It’s been quite amusing to have my GP respond to a message from me about my BP being low by phoning me and telling me to eat lots of salty bacon with salted butter and salty cheese!
Belief makes a mockery of intellect and reason. Also, people just purely love thinking they have special knowledge that the rest of chumps don’t, that they, and only they, really know. It is just another form of emotionalized belief, much the same as burn them at the stake religion, holding a burning cross Klan rally because mud people are inferior and inter-racial love is unnatural.
We also purely hate being wrong and will tie ourselves in knots in denial of reality. The true essence of a spiritual connection is humility and that old maxim: not my will, but Thy Will. Listening with an open heart and seeing the grace in all.
It further occurred to me..
Trump offers up an affirmation of all the BS we’d like to believe, all the intolerant, destructive nastiness of the dark corners of our minds….and says, Feast on it, it is goodness. And it sells like hot cakes.