Why "Science Denial"?

While Sinatra and Hofer smear a large and diverse group of people as "Science deniers," they undercut their own claim when they admit that no one actually rejects science per se.

To demonstrate authors' and Shermer's sloppiness, please note that early on they embrace the allegedly near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists on ominous manmade global warming.

Shermer says what impressed him is that all those in the 97 percent "Converged" on that view "Independently," while the others, he says, converged on no particular theory about the climate.

Here is the problem: when the authors and Shermer call someone a "Climate change denier," they are making a slickly illegitimate move; for what's being denied is not climate change or warming between 1850 and 1998, but a looming climate catastrophe, natural or manmade.

Well, actually one group does seem to think this: the alarmists who imply or say outright that except for human activity, climate would not change.

The concept change is baked into the concept climate.

The only sense in which the climate is not changing today is that it never stops changing.

Because of these, no threat to science can arise from within, but only from outside, that is, from "Deniers."

A key part of the politicization of science is government finance of research, which Sinatra and Hofer predictably want more of.

If climate alarmists regard private support for research as tainted by self-interest, the rest of us are entitled to regard government support as similarly tainted.

Then the use of science to advance an interventionist political agenda has sown the very distrust the authors and Shermer abhor.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-why-science-denial/