Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway co-authored a book, published in 2010 under the title The Merchants of Doubt. The book outlines the use of disinformation–in the guise of honest skepticism–and details instances of bad-faith argumentation and action from industries facing regulation. In 2014, a filmmaker named Robert Kenner, inspired by the book, released a film of the same name. Ms. Oreskes continues to do research in this arena and published a book at the end of 2019 (which I can’t read) titled, Why Trust Science.

Her claim, “scientific knowledge is the intellectual and social consensus of affiliated experts based on the weight of available empircal evidence evaluated according to diverse but time-tested methodologies” speaks not to science as a method, but as consensus, arrived at through evidence. I like this.

In any event, the lecture she gives below is about fifty minutes in length, informative, and entertaining. Other videos are available online, including a recent discussion on how the anti-vaccination, climate-denial, and other movements seem to have prepared us for such a dismal pandemic response.

How to Talk to Coronavirus Skeptics is also a video that might be of use in some circles, perhaps. Ultimately, she has a lot to say about the discourse around and among those acting either in bad faith or with a surplus of motivated reasoning. Of particular revelation to me tonight was the idea of ‘implicatory denial‘ – an ideological distortion arising from the clash between evidence so contrary to one’s ideology, that accepatance of the evidence would render a deeply held principle (or principles) untenable. For those unable to part with the ideology, denial of the evidence is the only option to avoid its necessary implications. Her lectures are littered with gems and insights along this line, and if these are topics anyone is interested in, I would recommend searching her name and spending time with the results.

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