From Pine View Farm

Blinders 0

Farhad Manjoo uses the spread of the coronavirus–more precisely, the spread of misinformation and hysteria and outright falsehoods about the coronavirus–to highlight a larger problem: the failure to pay attention to and heed what science and scientists have to say about real things happening in the real world.

Here’s a bit (emphasis added):

On social networks and in too many corners of the mainstream media, scientific expertise is cloaked by a fog of propaganda, misinformation and scam ads for essential oils and that one mystery food every gut doctor in America is begging you to throw out. From the food industry to the drug industry to the oil and gas industry, corporate America routinely hides science under a haze of well-funded oppo. The gun industry did one better: Under legislation pushed for by the National Rifle Association, the federal government until recently was hamstrung in even funding scientific research into gun violence.

Our collective inability to communicate about science has thoroughly perverted our politics. Because science has become so deeply intertwined with partisan dogma, people’s very conception of scientific expertise has been hijacked by tribal reflex. Today, a lot of people seem to determine how much they trust scientists based on their political ideas, which is backward and bizarre.

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