Why Am I Not Surprised?

I have this sort of a hypothesis regarding sceptics of science, basically if someone is sceptical of any one particular scientific standpoint then they are more likely to be sceptical of other scientific standpoints, furthermore these people also tend to lean heavily towards a right-wing political view.

The “scientific standpoints” in question tend to be those where a certain amount of controversy exists – although the controversy is often an artificial construction of people who are opposed to the standpoint for reasons other than scientific. Examples include opposition to Evolution by people who have religiously motivated reasons for opposing the theory rather than scientific and opposition to Climate change based on economic or convenience issues rather than genuine opposing science.

Case study: Christopher Booker, an article of whom I addressed last week. I was curious to see if Booker fit the hypothesis, I already knew he was a Climate sceptic based on that single article, but would he prove to be sceptical on other scientific issues, and where would his political views lie?

The first thing I did was of course Google his name. Thereupon I discovered his primary column is in fact the Telegraph these days. A quick glance down his page on the Telegraph reveals a slew of articles challenging the validity of Climate Change as a man-made occurrence while the other predominant issues grinding his gears were all EU-related – revealing a rightwing political outlook (judging by the UK political compass). Additionally one of his Daily Mail articles expresses scepticism over the legitimacy over both taking precautions over Swine Flu (which continues to claim lives world-wide) and the link between BSE in cattle and variations of CJD in humans – yet more scientific scepticism.

A trip to the Booker Wikipedia article reveals the man supports Intelligent Design over Evolution – more scientific scepticism, and claims no scientific evidence for any link between second hand smoke and cancer, despite all the carcinogens proven to be present in the stuff and completely ignoring the potentially greater threat of damage caused by smoking to the cardiovascular system and the evidence presented for that, basically another count of scientific scepticism to his name.

I was quite amused to discover that Guardian blogger George Monbiot has dedicated a prize to Christopher Booker in the field of misrepresentation of Climate issues. The article contains various links to articles discussing Bookers dishonestly (or plain cluelessness) on a variety of environmental subjects. Worth a look.

So, it rather appears that Christopher Booker fits the hypothesis quite nicely then. He’s not alone unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who’ll oppose science because of discomfort rather than genuine scientific controversy. It’s a sad reality of Humanity.

freedoms_stain, not surprised, but strangely disappointed, out.