[GavinMcG]

I think you're talking about certain subjects being more prevalent in left- or right-wing communities.

That's different from making opposition to science a political priority. Yeah, there's kooks on the left who go for healing crystals–but that's not incorporated into left politics. On the other hand, elected Republicans have actively fought in the political arena against climate issues being taken seriously.

This shows up in other areas, too, such as the Dickey Amendment that discouraged CDC research re: guns as a public health matter.

[Udik]

> elected Republicans have actively fought in the political arena against climate issues being taken seriously.

Climate science ended mixing up entirely with left wing ideology: de-growth movements, anti-nuclearists, anti-capitalist, etc. First they appropriate whatever they need from scientific discourse to support their agenda, then they denounce everyone who is against their agenda as "anti-science".

[tzs]

What makes Republicans deserve denunciation as anti-science on climate change is not their rejection of left wing solutions. It is their rejection of right wing solutions, too.

There are conservatives working to address climate change. Here was a plan [1] from a bunch of people who were prominent members of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations, for example. It's economically and scientifically sound. Good luck getting Republicans currently in Congress to even consider that.

[1] https://www.clcouncil.org/media/2017/03/The-Conservative-Cas...

[luckylion]

> Yeah, there's kooks on the left who go for healing crystals–but that's not incorporated into left politics.

Mhh, critical race theory, the whole gender studies joke etc seems to be pretty deeply settled in left politics. It's just something that progressives "like" and therefore don't question the absurdity and consider it "science".

[GavinMcG]

Do they consider it science? I haven't seen racial justice movements incorporating that. And if they do, that's evidence of an orientation toward science that the right actively opposes—i.e. an effort to dress up views with a scientific gloss.

You're talking about misusing science, or relying on junk science. Those are problems, of course, but they're not the opposition to the scientific project as a whole that this article focuses on.

[luckylion]

> You're talking about misusing science, or relying on junk science.

I don't think critical race theory and similar stuff is science. They're not misusing it, they're pretending somebody's ramblings are scientific, funding it at universities and then presenting it as "the science is in".

> they're not the opposition to the scientific project as a whole that this article focuses on

If you only pick those parts that you like and invent the rest, that's very much in opposition to the idea of the scientific method.

[GavinMcG]

No, I disagree. Misuse and opposition are fundamentally different things.