street-food: Denialism

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

In the sciences and in historiography, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus or historical record on a subject, in favor of ideas that are radical, controversial, or fabricated. Examples include Holocaust denial, AIDS denialism, and climate change denial. The forms of denialism present the common feature of the person rejecting overwhelming evidence and trying to generate political controversy in attempts to deny the existence of consensus. In psychology, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in an uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational human behav…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 88

Scratching where it doesn’t itch: science denialism, expertise, and the probative value of scientific consensus. In recent years, several strategies have been proposed to counteract scientific denialism, among which one of the most influential is that of Elizabeth Anderson, who argues that any lay person with access to the Internet and basic education can reliably assess the acceptability of various claims involving expert knowledge. In particular, the author shows that this procedure can be successfully applied to the case of anthropogenic global warming. In this article we will try to argue why, although Anderson's proposal is satisfactory in that particular case, it fails when applied to…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 80

Due deference to denialism: explaining ordinary people’s rejection of established scientific findings

Evidence: 35 • authority: 88

The necessary "GMO" denialism and scientific consensus. "Genetically Modified Organisms" are not a consistent category: it is impossible to discuss such a miscellaneous bunch of products, deriving from various biotech methods, as if they had a common denominator. Critics are too often pre-emptively suspicious of peculiar risks for health or the environment linked to this ill-assorted ensemble of microorganisms, plants or animals: yet, even before being unscientific, the expression "GMO(s)" has very poor semantic value. Similarly, claims that recombinant DNA technology is always safe are a misjudgement: many unsatisfactory "GMOs" have been discarded, as has happened also for innumerable agri…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 72

The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the fringe view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance. Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, it is the view that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity." The mainstream scholarly consensus, developed in the three quests for the historical Jesus, holds that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who lived in first-century AD Roman Judea, but his baptism and crucifixion are the only facts of his life about which a broad consensus e…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is the falsification, trivialization, or distortion of the historical record. This is distinct from historical revisionism, a broader term encompassing academic reinterpretations of history driven by new evidence or reasoning. In attempting to revise and influence how the past is seen, historical negationism acts as illegitimate historical revisionism by using techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, manipulating stati…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Denial of genocides of Indigenous peoples, a form of genocide denial, consists of claims in which the multiple genocides and atrocity crimes which have been committed against Indigenous peoples are denied. The denialism claims contradict the academic consensus, which acknowledges the fact that genocides were committed. The claim is a form of denialism, genocide denial, historical negationism and historical revisionism. The atrocity crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. During European colonization, many empires have colonized territories inhabited by what would be known today as Indigenous peoples. Many new colonies have surviving Indigenous peo…