Underseer
Contributor
Back in the late 70s, a documentary series called In Search Of... came out. I remember reading something in the news about the documentary series. Apparently, people were upset that the show included a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense and was presenting it the same way as academically credible information was presented in other documentaries.
In Search Of... made enough money that lots of other documentary makers have fallen suit. To name one infamous example, the fairly recent documentaries on the History Channel that covered the
ancient aliens topic in a wildly irresponsible manner. While this was the source of a particularly funny Internet meme, the fact that a documentary channel presents this stuff as facts to the public and takes those "experts" seriously undermines the public's ability to discern between science and pseudoscience, and this blurring effect has been going on for decades now.
Have you noticed that anti-science sentiments have been growing since the 1970s? Liberals have wild health claims about GMO and "organic" foods. Conservatives have an ever-growing list of established science they deny: anthropogenic climate change, evolution, big bang cosmology, the relationship between gun ownership rates and gun violence rates, etc. All of the above-mentioned anti-science movements propose ridiculous conspiracy theories to explain why the consensus opinion of the relevant academic field disagrees with them.
I don't think it's just documentary makers that have been blurring the lines between science and pseudoscience. The journalists contribute to this as well with their recent obsession with being "unbiased" and always dutifully presenting the "other side" as being equally valid even when the other side claims that the universe was created thousands of years after the domestication of the dog. On almost any topic they will present both sides as having experts whose opinions are equally valid.
Is it any wonder that the public has so much difficulty discerning between science and pseudoscience these days? Is it any wonder they think some random kook on an anti-vaccine web site knows as much about vaccines as immunologists? After all, the media has presented an endless parade of "experts" using equally batty arguments to support claims that GMO produce will make you sick or that evolution is an atheist plot by a tiny number of radical scientists or that anthropogenic climate change is the result of a vast international money-making conspiracy that involves over 90% of the scientists on the planet and is being run from an obscure school in the UK.
I posit to you that because documentary makers and journalists (and perhaps other parts of the media) have been blurring the lines between science and pseudoscience for so long that the public is simply losing the ability to discern real facts from pure quackery, real scientists from brain dead politicians who claim scientific expertise. I suspect this is why the number of anti-science movements on both the right and left seem to grow every year, and why so many people are willing to give enormous credibility to people who have very little understanding of the subjects on which they pontificate.
I suspect that the media made this measles outbreak inevitable, and that we will probably see even more anti-science movements spawn in the next ten years. At this point, the public has been trained by the media to regard random kooks as having opinions that are just as valid as the consensus opinion from the relevant academic field, so when some soccer mom visits an anti-vax web site, she has no way of discerning what she reads from real opinions from real experts.
Anyway, I realize that I'm hanging all of this on very little information, anecdotal observation, and at least one post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, so I'm wondering what you guys think. Does the media play a role in the growth of anti-science movements? Did they inadvertently play a role in the measles outbreak by giving so much credibility to quacks over the years? Or am I grasping at straws here?
In Search Of... made enough money that lots of other documentary makers have fallen suit. To name one infamous example, the fairly recent documentaries on the History Channel that covered the
ancient aliens topic in a wildly irresponsible manner. While this was the source of a particularly funny Internet meme, the fact that a documentary channel presents this stuff as facts to the public and takes those "experts" seriously undermines the public's ability to discern between science and pseudoscience, and this blurring effect has been going on for decades now.Have you noticed that anti-science sentiments have been growing since the 1970s? Liberals have wild health claims about GMO and "organic" foods. Conservatives have an ever-growing list of established science they deny: anthropogenic climate change, evolution, big bang cosmology, the relationship between gun ownership rates and gun violence rates, etc. All of the above-mentioned anti-science movements propose ridiculous conspiracy theories to explain why the consensus opinion of the relevant academic field disagrees with them.
I don't think it's just documentary makers that have been blurring the lines between science and pseudoscience. The journalists contribute to this as well with their recent obsession with being "unbiased" and always dutifully presenting the "other side" as being equally valid even when the other side claims that the universe was created thousands of years after the domestication of the dog. On almost any topic they will present both sides as having experts whose opinions are equally valid.
Is it any wonder that the public has so much difficulty discerning between science and pseudoscience these days? Is it any wonder they think some random kook on an anti-vaccine web site knows as much about vaccines as immunologists? After all, the media has presented an endless parade of "experts" using equally batty arguments to support claims that GMO produce will make you sick or that evolution is an atheist plot by a tiny number of radical scientists or that anthropogenic climate change is the result of a vast international money-making conspiracy that involves over 90% of the scientists on the planet and is being run from an obscure school in the UK.
I posit to you that because documentary makers and journalists (and perhaps other parts of the media) have been blurring the lines between science and pseudoscience for so long that the public is simply losing the ability to discern real facts from pure quackery, real scientists from brain dead politicians who claim scientific expertise. I suspect this is why the number of anti-science movements on both the right and left seem to grow every year, and why so many people are willing to give enormous credibility to people who have very little understanding of the subjects on which they pontificate.
I suspect that the media made this measles outbreak inevitable, and that we will probably see even more anti-science movements spawn in the next ten years. At this point, the public has been trained by the media to regard random kooks as having opinions that are just as valid as the consensus opinion from the relevant academic field, so when some soccer mom visits an anti-vax web site, she has no way of discerning what she reads from real opinions from real experts.
Anyway, I realize that I'm hanging all of this on very little information, anecdotal observation, and at least one post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, so I'm wondering what you guys think. Does the media play a role in the growth of anti-science movements? Did they inadvertently play a role in the measles outbreak by giving so much credibility to quacks over the years? Or am I grasping at straws here?
