Friday, June 1, 2012

John Cook lists "The 5 Characteristics of Scientific Denialism

This article from SkepticalScience.com is worth adding as an addendum to my previous post - 
A review of John O'Sullivan's article:"Hansen, Sagan and Venus with magellan probe" > Examining The Art Of Deception

Many thanks to John Cook and that incredibly hard working team of volunteers over at SkepticalScience.com. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 17 March 2010 by John Cook A fascinating paper well worth reading is Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? (Diethelm & McKee 2009) (H/T to Jeremy Kemp for the heads-up). While the focus is on public health issues, it nevertheless establishes some useful general principles…


1 comment:

Pascal Diethelm said...

Re Update 16 April 2012 -
Let us get the record straight. The definition based on five characteristics of denialism did not originate in our paper (Diethelm & McKee 2009)- we never made such claim - nor did they originate in the denialism blog by Mark and Chris Hoofnagle. They originated in an anonymous blog (see http://www.giveupblog.com/2006_09_01_archive.html) which could be considered our common source. The Hoofnagle brothers should be given credit for having greatly contributed to making the giveupblog definition of denialism more widely known. For our part, the aim of our paper, while recognizing their contribution, was simply to put a citeable paper on the subject in the peered reviewed literature, adding new illustrations of these characteristics, borrowed in particular from previously secret tobacco industry documents, and making recommendation on how to deal with denialism.