The ideological minefield

A couple of days ago, I received an email through my author website that started out, "Are you by any chance the Gordon Bonnet who taught science at Finn Hill Junior High in 1987?"

It turned out that it was indeed from a former student of mine, from the very first year of my teaching career, who (alarmingly!) just turned fifty years old.  When I confirmed that I was the guy, he sent me a heartwarming response about how he had made a career working for the National Parks Service as a wilderness educator, and that his love of nature had in no small part been due to my being his teacher when he was in ninth grade.

This sort of thing is why teachers do what they do.  I can say from my own experience that three teachers -- my high school biology and creative writing teachers, and my college calculus professor -- changed my life in hugely positive ways.  But the glow of receiving that email from my former student was dimmed somewhat by the knowledge that if I were in college right now, I would never -- not in a million years -- choose teaching as a profession, and that's after a 32-year career that, all in all, was pleasant and successful.  Not only would I not recommend the profession to anyone, I would counsel current teachers to keep their options open about finding other ways to use their talents to make a living.

[Image is in the Public Domain, courtesy of Michael Anderson (Photographer), Children in a classroom]

The reason is that public education has been turned into an ideological minefield by self-serving demagogues, through the cold, calculated characterization of schools as supposed "hotbeds of indoctrination."  The far right has taken steps -- thus far, scarily successful ones -- to muzzle teachers, stifle their creativity, and prevent them from doing the job they were hired to do with any degree of autonomy.  

This is not a new trend.  I still remember when the New York State Department of Education launched the infamous "Common Core," twelve years ago or so, with the aim of trying to create a curriculum that guaranteed all students receive a certain standard set of information and skills.  While few would argue with that aim as an ideal, the implementation was not only chaotic, it attempted to solve the "standard curriculum" issue by forcing teachers into lockstep -- handing them scripts, each with a certain number of minutes they were to devote to particular topics.  It never went any further than English and math; fortunately for me, by the time they got to science, a lot of the momentum had fizzled, and what they gave us was nothing more than a weakly-revamped version of what we already had.

It's a good thing.  When I saw what was happening in English and math, I said -- in the middle of a faculty meeting -- "the day New York State hands me a script and expects me not to deviate from it will be my last day on the job."

You go through years of training, then undergo a rigorous vetting process wherein you have to demonstrate how creative and competent and knowledgeable you are, and then the b-b stackers in the Department of Education hand you a script to read.  It's maddening... and deeply insulting.

Since that time, it's only gotten worse.  The obvious example is the state of Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has forced teachers to dismantle or make inaccessible their classroom libraries until each book can be approved by a media specialist.  The ostensible reason is to make sure they're classroom-appropriate -- not only at the correct reading level, but that they don't have material unsuitable for the age of the student.  Just as with the Common Core, the stated goal sounds laudable enough.  Nobody's arguing for students having age-inappropriate material.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, however, to figure out that this isn't actually about reading level.  From DeSantis's previous commitment to "anti-wokeness" there's little doubt that the whole thing is a smokescreen for what is largely an ideological move.  What likelihood do you think there is of the state-hired "media specialists" approving a book that displays LGBTQ characters in a positive light?  Or presents a realistic picture of what life was and is like for minorities, especially after his recent (successful) demand that Florida schools drop an AP African American Studies course?

The situation in Florida is that a teacher having copies of Knots on a Counting Rope (about growing up Native American) or The List of Things That Will Not Change (about a child being raised by two dads) available for students would be risking prosecution.  (Yes, both of those have already been banned in Florida schools -- along with 174 others, including the biographies of Rosa Parks, Sonia Sotomayor, Jim Thorpe, Roberto Clemente, Harvey Milk, and Jackie Robinson.  Don't even try to tell me this isn't about ideology.)

Then, a disingenuous CNN story yesterday feigned shock over the fact that in many places in the United States, there's been such a massive exodus of teachers that some schools are finding it hard to keep their doors open.  Gee whiz, I wonder why that could be?  In fact, in Florida they've recently created a "new pathway" for teaching positions to be filled by individuals who don't even have a bachelor's degree in the subject they're teaching.  The Florida Department of Education (speaking of disingenuous) not only claims this has nothing to do with the governor's anti-teacher campaign, but denies there's a teacher shortage at all.   "The purpose of this new pathway," a spokesperson said, "was to value the unique experience military service provides while simply offering additional time for these veterans to obtain a bachelor’s degree and other requirements to receive a full professional educator certification."

I'm calling bullshit on this.  Many candidates with excellent credentials are avoiding going into education, and who can blame them?  What highly-qualified individuals in their right mind would want to step into a position where they're devalued and harassed, robbed of autonomy, paid like crap, subjected to arbitrary decisions by policymakers who have never spent ten seconds in front of a group of students, and then threatened with prosecution for addressing the diversity in their own classrooms and presenting history that isn't blatantly whitewashed?  For me -- and again, I say this as a retired career educator who, by and large, had a great run -- it's a case of, "Turn and run.  Fast."

It's blatantly obvious where this is going; if you hobble educators to the point that teachers resign and public schools close, the only options for parents will be private, for-pay schools (including religious ones) where administrators have free rein to promote whatever kind of worldview they choose.  This, of course, has been the goal of the far right for as long as I can recall.  The idea of an egalitarian, even-handed public school system, where there is a set of brakes on ideologically-biased curricula, has been under fierce attack for decades.  (And it bears mention that far from being the alleged hotbeds of indoctrination the far right claims, in my thirty-plus of teaching, I only met two teachers -- one right-wing, the other left -- who honestly spent time trying to shift their students' political leanings.  Neither one, I might add, was particularly successful.  The rest of us teachers were too busy trying to get our students to reach a level of competence in our subjects to spend our time preaching politics.)

It breaks my heart to write this, but it has to be said, and said loudly.  What Ron DeSantis and others are engaging in is the classic technique of accusing the opposition of what they themselves are doing.  In this case, creating classrooms that promote a specific ideology, that turn what used to be a creative, rewarding profession into something intended to produce lockstep automata -- both the teachers and the students.

And unless things change, fast, my advice to any prospective teachers is to find some other way to help improve the world.  Because right now, the system is set up to destroy the very reasons most of us were drawn to education in the first place.

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Ideology vs. hurricanes

There are several topics about which I think, "Okay, I've said all that needs to be said about that.  I've plumbed the depth of absurdity and foolishness on that particular subject."

And then things keep getting worse.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of Skeptophilia that what I'm referring to once again is climate change.  What touched off this particular salvo on that topic was the announcement two days ago that any research grant awards from the Environmental Protection Agency have to go to a Trump administration aide to make certain they're consistent with the party line before they're officially approved.

Yes -- we're at the point where science is being held hostage to the standard of ideological purity.

In particular, the aide in charge, one John Konkus, says he looks for the "double c-word" (guess what that means) and automatically eliminates from consideration any grant proposals that mention The Piece Of Reality That Shall Not Be Named.

The EPA isn't the only place this is happening.  Last month, the Department of the Interior cancelled a $100,000 project by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study the effects of surface mining on the environment and on people living nearby because it doesn't jibe with the "Drill, Baby, Drill" policy of the current administration.

It probably bears reminding people what happens when the politicians start requiring science to abide by party agenda.  You end up with Trofim Lysenko, who became rich and famous under Josef Stalin by falsifying experimental data to make it look as if the environment could change the genetic makeup of an organism (you might recognize this as a latter-day Lamarckianism).  This idea, of course, was in line with Stalin's hatred of the idea of heredity-as-destiny, and it also bolstered his goal of revolutionizing Soviet agriculture.

Unfortunately, it was based on incorrect science and bogus data, invented because Lysenko knew what side his bread was buttered on.  The result was that Soviet scientific progress was stalled for decades, not only in genetics but in other fields, when researchers recognized how Lysenko had succeeded -- and what happened to the people who dissented.

All of this, however, is part-and-parcel of Trump's determination that ideology comes first, profitability comes second, and reality is dead last.  Especially ironic that all of this is happening while the Gulf Coast of the United States is still cleaning up from one of the costliest storms in history, and Hurricane Irma has broken every record for strength in Atlantic storms, and besides Irma there are simultaneously two other hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, but none of that has anything to do with climate change, according to noted meteorologist Rush Limbaugh, who said (and no, I'm not making this up) that hurricanes are part of a liberal plot to push a climate change agenda.

"There is a desire to advance this climate-change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest [ways] to do it," Limbaugh said.  "You have people in all of these government areas who believe man is causing climate change, and they’re hell-bent on proving it, they’re hell-bent on demonstrating it, they’re hell-bent on persuading people of it...  Unlike UFOs, which only land in trailer parks, hurricanes are always forecast to hit major population centers.  Because, after all, major population centers [are] where the major damage will take place and where we can demonstrate that these things are getting bigger and they’re getting more frequent and they’re getting worse.  All because of climate change."

Hurricane Irma [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's funny, I always thought that gays were the most powerful force known to nature, given that they've been blamed for causing earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires.  But that's apparently incorrect.  Liberals cause all of that stuff.

You know, I kind of wish that were true, because if I could create a hurricane, I'd send one to Rush Limbaugh's house, and also one to Mar-a-Lago.  But I'd want it to be a really focused hurricane, so no one else gets hurt, because I'm just a bleeding heart snowflake that way.

What gets me most about all of this is how much of this political posturing is based on ignorance.  I'd be willing to bet cold hard cash that most of the Trump supporters who are snarling about "government inefficiency" and "government red tape" and "bureaucracy" couldn't give you facts about a single specific example.  It's why bloviating gasbags like Rush Limbaugh are still around; he can make idiotic claims like the one above, and people just nod and go, "Yeah!  Damn liberals!  That all makes sense!"

So here we are, once again discussing climate change deniers.  All of which makes me feel like we're moving backwards, that our leaders are actually getting progressively stupider.  And I'd like to say this is the last time I'm addressing this in Skeptophilia, but chances are, circumstances will prove me a liar.

An obituary for facts

Of all of the things to be appalled about over the last few days -- and there is a wide selection to choose from, something for everyone -- nothing chilled me like the announcement by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the crowds attending Donald Trump's inauguration set a record.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," Spicer said.  "That's what you guys should be writing and covering."

Which, of course, is blatantly and demonstrably false.

Then, when Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was asked about Spicer's claim on NBC's Meet the Press, she said that it wasn't a lie -- that Spicer had simply given the public "alternative facts."

On the face of it, this may seem like a small matter -- the people who are in charge of presenting Donald Trump's public face to the media stretching the truth to assuage the new president's ego.  But think about it.  What Spicer and Conway are saying is, "Facts don't matter.  Accurate reporting doesn't matter.  All that matters is believing what you're told."

And even more terrifying is that Trump's followers, by and large, did believe what Spicer and Conway said.  "I don't believe one damned thing that comes from the crooked, bought-and-sold mainstream media," one person posted on Facebook.

"The liberal press will do anything to disparage our president," said another.  "No lie is too big or too small as long as it casts him in a hateful light."

This last one is the same person who posted the following photograph:

And I've already seen the following three times, with a caption of "Finally allowed back in the White House:"

We're being consistently steered away from respecting facts and evidence toward ideology, belief, confirmation bias, and a cult of personality -- an approach far more consistent with North Korea than with the United States, where Dear Leader is the center of near-worship on the basis of everything from his flawless statesmanship to his golf game.

But that's the direction we're heading.  Unsurprising, then, that governmental positions are being filled with people who have the same attitude-- predominantly climate change deniers (Tom Price, Rex Tillerson, and Scott Pruitt) and young-Earth creationists (Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Vice-President Mike Pence himself).  None of these views are based on logic, rationality, or fact; they're either blind, doctrinaire belief in the face of evidence, or confirmation bias to accept a claim because it's politically or economically expedient.

What blows my mind is how far this ignore-the-facts approach can take you.  If you believe that the crowds at Trump's inauguration were yuuuge, then that's what they were, photographs (or any other evidence) be damned.  If you think the Earth is 6,000 years old, none of the mountains of evidence showing this to be untrue will convince you -- but you will swallow that Beowulf was an "eyewitness account of dinosaurs showing that they coexisted with humans," as was just claimed this week by Answers in Genesis spokesperson and "scientist" Andrew Snelling.

And once you believe that facts and evidence don't matter, it's apparently a small step to believing that a thin-skinned, narcissistic egomaniac who is a serial adulterer and (by his own admission) guilty of sexual assault could be the anointed one of god.

As George Orwell put it in 1984, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command."

We've got a rough road ahead.  I'm cheered by the numbers of people who turned out for the Women's Marches Against Trump -- literally millions of people came out for what were almost entirely peaceful demonstrations against what this administration stands for.  But we've got our work cut out for us.  We have elected and appointed officials, and (apparently) a significant slice of the voting public, who have written the obituary for a fact-based understanding of the world, in favor of "alternative facts" that fit the way they wish things were.  And I'm at a loss for how to approach this.  Because once you've decided that anything other than evidence is the best guide to determining the truth, I have no idea how you could be convinced that you were wrong about any belief you might hold.

Heaven knows I'm not infallible myself, but I do have one thing going for me; if you think I'm wrong, show me the evidence.  I might not like it, but faced with the facts, I'll have no recourse but to say, "Huh.  I guess I was wrong, then."  But if the media lies 100% of the time (except when they say something you happen to have already believed), when your favorite political figure has no flaws and was elevated to the position by god himself, when the hard evidence itself is suspect -- you have erected an impenetrable wall around yourself, locking yourself in with nothing but your ideology for company.

And a nation full of people like that might be the most dangerous thing in the world.

Social media echo chambers

A guy named Donald Cyprian has come up with an idea that he says he got directly from god.

It's a social media platform he calls "Instant Christ."  On it, you can post Christian messages, and you can ask for prayers from other members.  Not only that, people can record themselves praying for you, and post the audio file so you can hear the prayers you're receiving.

"It’s basically a Facebook for Christians in a safe environment, because if you’re on Facebook you’re liable to get anything on your timeline," Cyprian said.  "It’s very distracting to a believer when you’re trying to walk in the spiritual realm.  When you’re going through something you want to know that you’re fishing in the right ocean."

The hope is that "Instant Christ" will draw away Christians from the more freewheeling sites like Facebook and Twitter, giving them a place to meet the like-minded and to express themselves without fear of criticism or ridicule.

I think this is a bad idea, but I wonder if you'd be able to guess why.

It's not because I'm critical of their belief in Christianity.  As I've said more than once, anyone is free to believe anything they want, as long as they accord me the same right.

For me, the problem with this is that it turns online social media into an echo chamber.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Some platforms already have this tendency; Reddit, for example, is divided into hundreds of "subreddits" each devoted to a different set of interests and ideologies, and many "Redditors" never venture outside the ones peopled with the like-minded.  For good reason, sometimes.  Christians who post to the r/atheism subreddit, even with the intention of  asking a question or spurring reasonable discussion, are taking a chance of exposing themselves to ridicule and being accused of trolling.

There are many downsides of places like Facebook, but one of the upsides is that it exposes you to lots of differing viewpoints -- if you choose to "friend" people who aren't exactly like you.  Humans naturally already tend towards surrounding themselves with people who agree with them, and places like Facebook and Twitter give us the opportunity to see other points of view expressed, if we're willing to listen.

This is why I've resisted the temptation to pare down my Facebook and Twitter contact lists, to unlink from people who post content that annoys me, angers me, challenges me.  I have deliberately stayed in contact with people who are from all sorts of different ideological backgrounds -- my Facebook friend list contains Christians (from moderate to evangelical), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and the unaffiliated.  I see links posted by Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and people who don't care about politics one way or the other.  

Let me be clear about this; I'm not bragging about how incredibly open-minded I am.  I have strong convictions about a lot of issues, and some of what I see posted I think is dead wrong.  Being willing to expose yourself to multiple viewpoints doesn't mean that you believe them all, nor that you think there's truth to be found in homogenizing whatever you see.  I more agree with Richard Dawkins on this point; "If two people have differing opinions, it is not necessarily the case that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  It may be that one of them is simply incorrect."

But what this does is keeps me honest.  When all you see is what you already believed, you never have to face the fact that you might be blindly accepting biases, that you may not have all the facts, that your being surrounded by a Greek chorus of the similar-minded has made you unlikely to recognize truths that others see clearly.  I'd rather be occasionally pissed off than to turn away from a source of intellectual, political, and philosophical checks-and-balances.

And this, to me, is the problem with platforms like "Instant Christ."  It might be comforting for Christians to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, but that comfort comes with a cost -- cutting yourself off from even having to acknowledge that other people may not think exactly like you do.

Single causes and simplistic thinking

A friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia called me out a couple of days ago for a statement I made in the post "Tribal mentality," regarding the tendency some people have to romanticize (or at least, to avoid criticizing) beliefs of other cultures.  Here's the passage he objected to:

At its extreme, this tendency to take a kid-gloves attitude toward culture is what results in charges of Islamophobia or (worse) racism any time someone criticizes the latest depravity perpetrated by Muslim extremists. Yes, it is their right to adhere to their religion. No, that does not make it right for them to behead non-Muslims, hang gays, subjugate women, and sell children into slavery. And the fact that most of their leaders have refused to take a stand against this horrifying inhumanity makes them, and the ideology they use to justify it, complicit in it.

He responded, in part, as follows:

ISIS is engaged in civil wars, and 99% of their victims are also Muslim.  Surely, Muslims on the whole are not in favor of slaughtering other Muslims...  (P)ointing at Islamic ideology as the culprit, rather than a complex set of political forces, just seems way too "Fox-Newsish" for a sophisticated blog like yours.  If Islam was inherently incompatible with pluralistic democratic values, then countries like Turkey couldn't exist.  The Islamic masses in Egypt rose up in a mass exercise of democratic revolution in 2012... only to be slapped down by a US-backed secular dictatorship.  There's just so much going on, with so many different factors...  I look at the 6 million Muslims living in the US and peacefully contributing... to blame it all on "their ideology," to say their beliefs are to blame for, among other things, the US-backed Saudi regime.... it just seems unfair.

Which certainly made me give some serious thought to what I'd written, and even more so, to what I think about ideology vis-à-vis responsibility for immoral actions.

Of course, in (at the very least) one sense, he is right; by attributing to "Islamic ideology" the atrocities of ISIS, and the lack of human rights in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and many other Muslim countries, I avoided one fallacy by leaping headlong into another.  To wit: the single-cause fallacy, which is considering complex events to have a simple cause.  (Commonly-cited examples are "The American Civil War was caused by slavery" and "World War I was caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.")

There's a lot more to the chaos in the Middle East than Islamic ideology; there's tribal factionalism, the history of exploitation and colonialism by western Europe and the United States, and the have/have not distribution of oil wealth, to name three.  It is facile to say, simply, "Those evil Muslims!" and be done with it.

The Islamic recitation of faith [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But still, I have to ask the question: to what extent does ideology bear the blame for some of the evil done in its name?  And by extension, do the peaceful adherents of a religion -- for example, the six million Muslims in the United States that my friend referenced -- also share some of the responsibility?

And it's not Islam alone, of course.  Christianity has much to answer for, as well, and I'm not just talking about events in the distant past such as the Inquisition and the Crusades.  The current upsurge of anti-gay legislation in several countries in Africa, some of which calls for the death penalty, is largely the result of American fundamentalists encouraging and financing such measures.  Do the stay-at-home members of the Christian churches from which these "missionaries" come bear some of the blame, if for no other reason because of their silence?

Does Christian ideology as a whole?

Now, I know that because of the huge variety of beliefs within Christianity (and Islam as well), to talk about a "Christian ideology" is a little ridiculous.  You have to wonder whether, for example, a Pentecostal and a Unitarian Universalist would agree on anything beyond "God exists."  But as my friend also pointed out, there are passages in the Christian Bible that are as horrific as anything the Qu'ran has to offer; stoning to death for minor offenses, men being struck dead right and left for damn near every reason you can think of, not to mention a prophet who called in bears to tear apart 42 children who had teased him about being bald and a man who offered his daughters to be raped by a mob rather than inconvenience a couple of angels (who, presumably, could have taken care of themselves).  It's why I find it wryly amusing when I hear people say that they believe that every biblical passage is word-for-word true, and that they live their lives according to a literal interpretation of the biblical commands.  If they did so, they'd be in jail.

But to return to my original question; does an ideology, or its law-abiding followers, bear some of the blame for what the true believers do?  At the very least, for not speaking out more fervently against the deeds done in the name of their religion?

It's not a question that admits of easy answers.  I'm torn between feeling certain that the most basic truth is that you are only responsible for what you yourself do, and having the nagging thought that remaining silent in the face of depravity is itself an immoral act.  After all, one of the criticisms leveled against Americans by many Muslims in the Middle East is that we stand by silently and allow our leaders to continue pursuing exploitative and unjust actions.  How is their holding America, and all Americans, responsible for what some Americans have done in the Middle East any different from our holding Islam, and all Muslims, responsible for the actions of ISIS and the shari'a judges in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere?

I don't know.  But the moral ambiguity inherent in these sorts of situations should push us all to consider not only our acts, but our refusal to act, as carefully as we know how.  And we should all be less hesitant to repudiate the individuals who would use our religions, ethnicities, and nationalities to perpetrate evil in the world.

Plausible deniability

One of the things I've never understood is the certainty a lot of people have that the universe is designed in such a way as to line up perfectly with their personal opinions.

It crops up fairly regularly in religion.  You think gays are icky?  Well, what a coincidence.  God doesn't like them, either!  You would rather that the power structure keep men in control of everything?  How about that, Allah would like that, too!

It'd be kind of an odd coincidence, don't you think?  Conservatives think god is conservative, liberals think god is liberal.  Never once do you go to a conservative church and hear the preacher say, "Sorry, brethren and sistren.  God told me that we need to welcome in illegal immigrants."  Nor do you go to a liberal church and hear, "God has a new directive.  Balancing the federal budget is more important than funding social programs."

Doesn't it seem like people are designing their religious beliefs so that they support their political biases, and not the other way around?

To be fair, there are exceptions, such as Reverend Danny Cortez of the New Harmony Community Baptist Church of Los Angeles, who recently broke with the party line of the Southern Baptist Convention and came out in support of LGBT individuals.  But it's rare.  Most of us are convinced we live in a comfortable little universe that in the Big Picture, works exactly the way we would like it to.

This tendency isn't confined to religion, though.  A study done at Duke University and published just this month supports the troubling notion that we even approach scientific findings this way.  Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate in Duke's School of Business, and his team found that when test subjects were presented with scientific evidence of a problem, followed by a policy solution that would run counter to their political beliefs, they were more likely to believe that the problem itself didn't exist.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Conservatives, for example, were given a statement to read that showed evidence that the global average temperature would rise by 3.2 degrees in the 21st century.  Half of them then read a proposed solution requiring increased government regulation -- carbon emissions taxes, restrictions on fossil fuel use, and so on.  The other half were given a solution that involved support of the free market, such as reducing taxes on companies that use green technology.

When asked whether they believed that the Earth's temperature would rise by the predicted amount, only 22% of the first group said they did -- compared to 55% of the second group!

Liberals are no less prone to what Campbell calls "solution aversion."  Liberals showed a much lower belief in statistics about violent home break-ins if they were then presented with a solution that doesn't line up with liberal ideology, such as looser restrictions on handgun ownership.

"Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem.  However, we find it does,” Campbell said about the study.  "The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem...  We argue that the political divide over many issues is just that, it’s political.  These divides are not explained by just one party being more anti-science, but the fact that in general people deny facts that threaten their ideologies, left, right or center."

All of this strikes me as kind of bizarre.  Whatever my other biases, I've never thought it was reasonable to deny that the disease exists because the cure sounds unpleasant.  But apparently, that's the way a lot of people think.

But it does give some hope of a solution.   Says study co-author Aaron Kay:  "We should not just view some people or group as anti-science, anti-fact or hyper-scared of any problems.  Instead, we should understand that certain problems have particular solutions that threaten some people and groups more than others.  When we realize this, we understand those who deny the problem more and we improve our ability to better communicate with them."

To which I can only say: amen.