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Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/12/epi…

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Cory should print a button badge "I did my own research, ask my how"
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in reply to Cory Doctorow

Oh, that was a wonderfully cheeky "over-clickbait". I clicked. I wanted to know: What, this person? Should I have misjudged him?

And then I had a huge pleasure as the article chased me through the polarities to present its finely differentiated findings. It got exciting.
It's been a long time since I've enjoyed reading something so serious so much! 👏

#mustread #science #conspiratorialism

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

an older example of the same thing: to be gay in the 1970s, in many countries you had to think you knew better than the health authorities, who believed this was an illness you should try to cure.

and then, a couple of years later, the same health authorities ask you to believe that there's a dangerous illness going around that somehow mysteriously requires gay people to limit their sex lives.

knowing which scientific claims to trust is _very hard_.

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in reply to Cory Doctorow

I don't think this science denial. A big part of science is rigorous debate of the evidence. If you have evidence to the contrary, whether it's "anecdotal" lived experience or published data, then not blindly trusting established narrative *is* science. Dissenting views and contradictions are more valuable to the scientific process than confirmations* because it's evidence of some misunderstanding that can be used to push science as a whole forward.

*Of course you need some confirmations, and the replication crisis is a whole separate issue that leads to mistrust in science