From an editorial from nature.com, and published in the journal, they seem to think the d-word is proper vernacular.
Volume: 467, Page: 133 Date published: (09 September 2010) DOI: doi:10.1038/467133a
The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.
…
There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.
…
The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.
Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.
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They say in a sidebar that: “The country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”
I don’t disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen. I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences, at least until somebody demands that one of the science organizations embraces or endorses the cause. That’s when the dissent starts. For example:
American Physical Society rejects climate policy plea from 160 physicists
Dissenting members ask APS to put their policy statement on ice due to Climategate
Witness Nature using the word denialism, born of the politically nurtured global warming ideology. If Nature’s editorial staff was not indoctrinated to at least some of that ideology, I wager they’d have used a different word. And they wonder why there is dissent while at the same time they use the word to insult people. I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
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What irks me is why leave the “Anthropogenic” out of their use of “Global Warminig” or “Climate Change” – that’s a weasel move and we should never let them get away with it, and never let everyone else forget that the “human-caused” goes in front of “global warming” and “climate change” when warmists are spouting off their religeous rants about it.
Wow… disappointing.
I guess guys Professor Richard Lindzen & Professor Willie Soon are anti-science now. Funny how when the political left nay say technical innovations like SDI nobody runs around and calls them anti-engineering. Anyway this article may just as well been made to order for the DNC if it wasn’t.
“The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government.”
I will use this article the next time a true believer argues that “science is not political!” And that these so called scientists are only following what the data shows. That argument is dead now. Hopefully the backlash wont be too severe, and what they hysterically claim is just another gross exaggeration.
Opposition to EMBRYONIC stem cell research being FUNDED by govt has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ethics and morality. I for one find science devoid of these two characteristics frightening in the extreme…it is what has led in the past to eugenics and concentration camp experimental horrors. Belief that if you support destruction of human embryos to do stem cell research you’re pro-science is complete BS. It’s an ideologically driven, holier than thou (or other inferiors) that ignores both science for a fairy tale (if we just do this the lame will walk!) and the fact that it’s legal for commercial interests to fund such research (and companies are doing it). It’s also part and parcel of an ideology that worships government and believes nothing can or will happen if it’s not dictated by the State.
AGW is not concerned with “science” but again with ideology and control, hence the complete ignoring of serious problems and issues with the “science” in favor of blind, mindless obedience to the ideology and dogma of the cargo cult.
Nature has devolved into a caricature of itself.
I am sceptical of AGW’s wild claims and I am not right wing. For me it is not about right and left but about getting to the truth.
For some balance in relation to the Nature propaganda here are some left-leaning climate dissenters:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
So according to Nature if I disagree with the methods, statistics, assumptions, and conclusions of the AGW “scientists” I am automatically a gun clinging, right-wing, bible thumping, redneck. Hmmm. Sounds a bit judgmental to me. Especially, since I’m not religious in any sense of the word. Although I do enjoy the shooting sports, and have a fairly significant background in Engineering with emphasis on statistical analysis and design of experiment. Politically, I’d call myself an Independent, with leanings toward that “piece of paper” called the Constitution of the United States of America (which I took an oath to defend “against all enemies foreign and domestic”, and spent quite a few years and some blood doing exactly that).
Their article is political. It is not about science but only about their dogma.
Nature:
They have everything upside-down, accusing others of their own sins. WUWT is the upholder of real science, where they are blind contributors to the current poisoned atmosphere. Even the reply thread shows a remarkable paucity of good scientists (only 1): much of the MSM are currently doing better; Monbiot would improve if he studied his own comments threads (where not censored).
Henry chance, sadly you are correct. Nature is devolving from an scientific magazine into a political screed.
Weird editorial for a magazine like Nature; I wonder who wrote it. It seems very Joe-Romm-esque. Frankly, I agree with almost all of what it says (oh yes, sorry, I’m an AGW proponent) but I felt very uncomfortable reading that in perhaps the top scientific journal in the world. That kind of vernacular should stay in the blogosphere.
Does Nature always have anonymous editorials putting across a certain point of view? And do these editorials speak for the entire journal? (I don’t subscribe to Nature so I wouldn’t know how it works…)
We all know the earth is flat. Don’t be denier and sail a ship off the edge of the earth. We all know whats best for you, so we will not fund your ships to sail! You just need to properly educated in real scientific thought and put away your childish ideas.
This romp from Nature magazine is not surprising.
It is clear that Climate Change is being used as a wedge-weapon to turn scientists upon each other, and to bring political pressure to bear upon Science in general. Bring on the November Pink Slip lottery.
Anthony, you had it exactly right when you say:
“I don’t disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen.”
I’ve told friends that when the IPCC makes so many obvious errors (Himalayagate, North African 50% drop in crops by 2020 gate, etc.) that all go in the same direction, when they invent a hockey stick, when they prevent publication of papers they don’t like, it encourages those who believe in non-science such as creationism, those who want to deny evolution. If those folks gain strength, it will be harder to maintain our leadership in biotech, one of the few growth areas in our economy. I wouldn’t want our scientists going abroad because the pastures get greener. And I want our kids to learn real science. Partly so they won’t be bamboozled by the next IPCC, but also because good science is so engaging, and so important.
So you are so right: separate good science from the IPCC bandwagon, for the sake of science itself.
Anti-science is synonymous of science that does not condone the alarmist AGW views. Nature and its editorial bias and activism keeps lowering its scientific credibility.
“the defenders of science have few easy remedies”
They could debate “deniers”.
And lose.
It would be easy.
Nature is scared because a lot of people aren’t volunteering to be spoon-fed anymore. Tapping into a suspicion of elites and expertise? You bet, because those very elites and experts have failed to demonstrate their way works better than the alternatives. I think you can make a compelling case it has gone significantly downhill instead.
I listen to Rush and don’t remember the quote in the article, but he has opined that the environmental movement is the new home of the Communist party and you’d have a hard time proving him wrong on that one. I’m probably a poster child for the type of individual they are insulting in the article, i.e. a conservative, rural midwestern Christian (even worse, a Catholic). Oddly enough I’ve never found my political and religious views to interfere with the process of scientific discovery. I have had issues with being called anti-science because I didn’t swallow some of the pet theories being shoved down my throat.
They wouldn’t have written the article if they weren’t worried.
” I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.”
Would if I still did.
Last gasp desperation on the part of that editorial board.
To pretend that AGW is not a settled science, and to pretend that skeptics are deniers, is simply dishonest.
To skip over the inconvenient part of stem cells and to dishonestly characterize the concerns- as well as to deny the problems- embryonic stem cells, is cynical and dishonest.
To assert that only right wing nuts resist the policies they call for is clever, but ignorantly childish.
Nature is joining the rest of the imploding media that flatters themselves that by clever lies and artful deceit they can impose their will on the larger public square.
They will fail as well.
Americans, by and large, have a healthy respect for science.
But only lately are they able to identify science from snake oil.
God bless Al Gore for inventing the internet.
Gee, my guess would be editorials like this one turning people off………
Does the word fanatic ring a bell?
Did NewsWeek really sell for $1?
Nature only shows why they are losing credibility be pretending that there is no legitimate reason for skepticism for catastrophic global warming, as well as their pathetic attempt to pretend there is no difference between embryonic stem cell research and stem cell research in general.
Their predicable derivative position that skepticism and clarity on these and other science issues is a sign of evil right wing double ungood thinking is only demonstrating how shallow and ignorant the writers at Nature actually are.
I fear the backlash these dopes are earning environmentalism. They seem incapable of simply growing up.
Ordinarily people have their youthful idealism tempered by pragmatism, which has led to quotes such as Winston Churchill’s, “Anyone who isn’t a liberal when they are twenty has no heart; anyone who isn’t conservative at age fifty has no brain,” and Mark Twain’s, “When I was eighteen my father was a fool; now I am forty and it’s amazing how much he’s learned.”
This gradual maturity shows up in the lives of composers as improvements in their music. Even an individual oppressed, such as Beethoven was by deafness, shows a greatness of greater and greater clarity, which we notice in the comparison between Beethoven’s first symphony and his ninth.
However some modern environmentalists had a brilliant thought or two back in 1969, but haven’t had one since, it seems. It is as if Beethoven’s ninth symphony sounded no different from his first. They seem stuck, and seemingly feel frustrated by being stuck, and therefore turn to crude politics in an attempt to force changes which they cannot effect using a mature mind’s ability to reason and persuade.
Remembering how brilliant these fellows were back in 1969, I wonder why it is they never grew up. Could it have anything to do with what they smoked, and in some cases still smoke? I can see no other reason for minds being so stubbornly stuck in a rut.
well i consider myself extremely liberal and this article simply offends me.
as soon as i get time i plan to pen an LTE to these guys
this piece lays bare the machinations of the marketing/PR/propaganda machine…
Divide et Empere
Tragic that science has been so badly hijacked that the null hypothesis is now that AGW predictions are 100% correct and the idea that there may be some flaws in AGW modelling is being treated as something wild and whacky akin to alchemy.
My colleagues and I organized the APS petition referenced in the link provided above. This was followed by a petition by 266 physicists asking that the Society undertake an independent scientific study and assessment. The signatories included about 100 Fellows of major scientific societies (almost all APS), 17 members of national academies, and two Nobel laureates. A number have published major research on the global warming issue, authored books on the issue, or worked in contiguous areas of meteorology and climate. Nearly all have backgrounds in key science areas that underlie the global warming issue.
It is unreasonable and insulting to characterize these physicists as “deniers” or “tools of the right wing.” By doing so and by continuing to deny the legitimacy of a large body of scientific work critical of large AGW, Nature continues the slide that has eroded its scientific integrity and contributed to the decline of public trust invested in science and scientists. This decline will continue unless and until there is a recognition that scientific debate must proceed, unencumbered by advocacy and accusations of political interests.