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hatrack

(59,587 posts)
Mon Dec 22, 2014, 09:47 AM Dec 2014

2014's Stupidest Anti-Science Bullshit

Basically everything said by Donald Trump:

You can always count on The Donald to pull no punches. He got started early this year, when he pointed to freezing temperatures in parts of the country as evidence that "this very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop" and then told Fox News that the global warming "hoax" was merely the result of scientists "having a lot of fun."

In September, Trump went on a Twitter screed linking vaccines to autism. A month earlier, he fanned the flames of unscientific Ebola panic when he objected to efforts to bring American health care workers infected with the virus back the the US for treatment. "The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back," he tweeted. "People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!" Health care experts, meanwhile, insisted that the risk was minimal; the two patients Trump was talking about were ultimately brought back to the US and successfully treated without infecting anyone else. Let's just stick to real estate and beauty pageants, Donald, shall we?

EDIT

Lamar Smith's war on the National Science Foundation:

Republican Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas took his opposition to basic science straight to the source: The grant-writing archives of the National Science Foundation. In an unprecedented violation of the historic firewall between the lawmakers who set the NSF's budget and the top scientists who decide where to direct it, Smith's researchers pulled the files on at least 47 grants that they believed were not in the "public interest." Some of the biggest-ticket projects they took issue with related to climate change research; the committee apparently intended to single out these projects as examples of the NSF frittering money away on research that won't come back to benefit taxpayers. The investigation is ongoing, and the precedent it sets—that scientific research projects are only worthwhile if they directly benefit the American economy—is unsettling.

EDIT

Anti-vaxxers are still a thing:

The first five months of 2014 saw the more measles cases than comparable time periods in any year since 1994; the CDC reported that 90 percent of those cases were among people who hadn't been vaccinated. In May, a Tennessee hospital reported a disturbing spike in cases of infants with a rare bleeding condition that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin injection; doctors there blamed anti-vaccination fears for parents avoiding the injection. Yes, it's not just Jenny McCarthy—a surprising number of people across the country continue to be preoccupied with the totally debunked fear that vaccines will lead to autism or other maladies.

EDIT

And much more . . . (not surprisingly)

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/12/worst-science-denial-2014

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