Sick to death of this anti science conspiracy nonsense.

[fakenamefornow]

People actually believe the earth is flat.
Anti vaxers.
Creationists.
Young earthers.
Even Brexit, so many people just wrong about stuff and don't believe the facts when they are put in front of them (90% of Boston are now Polish).

Why are these nonsense views increasing?

Anyway, aibu to think people are fucking stupid?

Oh please, creationists/young earthers/flat earthers are just as dumb as the rest being discussed.

Religious adherence doesn't exculpate you from being a twit.

I think a lot of it is because "science" is now taught and represented as a body of philosophy and belief, rather than a method

It's a bit of both surely. Methods and a body of currently accepted beliefs based on what explanations best fit the available evidence.

It may be anti-science to believe in, say, Creationism, but the scientific theories will be themselves based on ultimnately unproven assumptions that people are not obligated to accept.

Before the internet, those with "creative" anti-science views had to search out those with the same views. They had no way to know if Billy-from-the-post-office believed in the 9/11 theories because it wasn't polite to ask. Now at the click of a button, you can find like-minded people all over the world.

My favourite conspiracy story is the Duke of Edinburgh ordering Princess Diana's death and yet people believe this nonsense.

Anti-vaxxers are a bit different. They don't believe the science but want everyone else to protect their children by keeping the immunity levels high in society. Like anyone really enjoys vaccinating babies.. I just think they're incredibly selfish (special medical situations excluded of course).

Ten years ago, the official advice was to avoid peanuts in pregnancy to reduce the risk of allergy. Today, pregnant women are told the opposite. Were people who chose to disregard official advice ten years ago dangerous idiots? Until today's scientific beliefs have moved on it's difficult to say who is an idiot and who is simply exercising their capacity for independent thought

That's not a valid comparison in my view. Of course people who avoided peanuts weren't cranks or idiots, they were following advice from respected bodies, using the best available knowledge at the time and may well have been precautionary and was aimed at people with a history of peanut allergy. The change in advice stemmed from scientists reviewing existing material, conducting further scientific enquiry and revising their advice through methods than can be observed and repeated by their peers.

Nor is health advice issued by the NHS and Scientific method the same thing. My sister occasionally drunk small quantities of alcohol during her pregnancy, despite NHS advice to the contrary, not because she doesn't think that alcohol can damage an unborn child, but because she understood the evidence and that in small quantities, alcohol would be spectacularly unlikely to do any harm, however as a public health body, a 'no alcohol' message is easier to communicate.

It is a world away from not eating peanuts because an unsourced, unaccountable website stuffed with conspiracy theorists tells you that KP & Nobby's Nuts are in league with the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group to add a powerful mind controlling drug to peanuts. Or to eat nothing but liver pate in pregnancy despite medical advice to the contrary, because it is a conspiracy by Big Pharma to prevent pregnant women getting the health benefits of liver pate.

Of course people who avoided peanuts weren't cranks or idiots

You misunderstood me. I didn't say that people who followed NHS advice and avoided peanuts were cranks or idiots. I was asking whether people who disregarded the advice and ate peanuts anyway, before the advice changed, should be seen as idiots.

Since the advice has now changed, science now confirms that their choice was the correct one. If the advice had not changed, perhaps they would still be seen as idiots.

Can we lump homeopathy in with flat eath, anti vaxer and other nonsense? That's a load of massive hairy bollocks if ever I saw it.

Fwiw, I used to be massively into conspiracy theories and then I was diagnosed with a psychotic illness (I had other symptoms) and was given medication.

The flat earth theory is bonkers even by my standards. I seriously struggle to understand how a non-psychotic person can believe this stuff.

That is interesting nightterror. My brother has schizophrenia and prior to his diagnosis was hugely into conspiracy theories, fuelled by the Internet. (Obviously this wasn't the only manifestation of his illness) The conspiracy theories stopped when he started taking regular medication.

I think the Internet allows people to say/ think 'I have done my research'. Meaning they have read some pseudoscientific rubbish and believe it. As if this is somehow on a par with real research. Maybe we need to teach more understanding of the scientific method and critical thinking?

On a positive note this thread has taught me about the Flynn effect. That's what I love about Mumsnet.

I think the Internet allows people to say/ think 'I have done my research'. Meaning they have read some pseudoscientific rubbish and believe it. As if this is somehow on a par with real research. Maybe we need to teach more understanding of the scientific method and critical thinking?

Oh yes. 'Research' for some apparently means 'google, find something which supports my beliefs, C&P some of that while ignoring anything which refutes my beliefs'. In some debates (I use the term loosely) you can sometimes predict which chunk of 'Answers in Genesis' will be produced.

Since the advice has now changed, science now confirms that their choice was the correct one. If the advice had not changed, perhaps they would still be seen as idiots.

Depends on why they didn't follow the advice to not eat peanuts.

If they'd done so after reading and understanding scientific literature and concluded that the NHS advice was over cautious and the risks were negligible they made an informed choice - no-one would have seen them as cranks or idiots.

If they had eaten peanuts because they thought they'd read online that they had magic healing properties and the prohibition was a conspiracy to placate Big Pharma then yes they'd be considered cranks.

There is a lot of money to be made from new age products. Have a look at Goop.

Ironic to see that on a thread about people talking unscientific bollocks, we've got people asserting that IQs are decreasing. Yes the average is set at 100 by fiat, so they have to keep rebasing the tests: and they're rebasing them upwards year after year after year as IQs increase as per the Flynn . It's possible that that's flattened off very in the U.K., possibly because we've maximised the benefits of nutrition and banning lead in petrol, but it's amazing how many people will assert that people today are dimmer than they were in the past based on pure prejudice.

I have intelligent, creative, and otherwise sensible friends who are highly sceptical and mistrustful of what they seem to see as the scientific establishment.

They seem to find a sort of superior virtue in embracing 'spirituality' and all things green, which they, erroneously IMO, conflate with anti-science and technology.

In their case I think it is a mixture of:

• A feeling that science operates outside a trusted ethical framework, that human decision making is not a part of the 'March of science' and they feel helpless / not like stakeholders
• cynicism, rooted in many case studies, that science is a tool of evil capitalists , who will frack the ground from under us and kill us all with unecessary privately produced semi-toxic drugs in pursuit of nothing but money

-science is not seen as 'green'

• a need for a touchy-feely relationship to our world as pressure mounts. science is not seen as touch feels. Look at the rise of 'hygge ', pampering, mindfulness, even ludicrously overpriced scented candles as people seek comfort and reassurance. ScIence is not seen as meeting this need.

JAPAB - It may be anti-science to believe in, say, Creationism, but the scientific theories will be themselves based on ultimnately unproven assumptions that people are not obligated to accept.

Bollocks. Scientific theory is based on years of research, experimentation and all have been tested, peer reviewed and accepted by the general scientific community.

Science isn't based on opinions, it's based on experimentation using acquired knowledge to go forward.

I used to be part of a FB group for parents of infants that have vascular tumours which are categorised as birthmarks. These are mostly cosmetic, but are potentially permanently disfiguring/scarring and are very well treated with several types of medication (usually a tiny, tiny dose of beta blockers much lower than you'd give a cardiac patient) which is very low risk. These things are low risk, unless they are near eyes/mouths/throats because of potential of vision damage/breathing and eating difficulties especially in babies.

The number of times I'd see a post from a parent whose child had a potentially dangerous tumour which was on course for growing to the size of an orange on their face/throat saying 'we really don't want to put child on the medication, does anyone know of any natural/alternative/holistic remedies?'.

The usual answers? 1) Breastmilk 2) Coconut Oil 3) Change in diet

WTAF? Honestly, they were nuts. I left the group! Lots of anti-vaxxers on there too who thought that 8 week vaccines caused them. No you fools, these birthmarks just don't generally appear until babies are 8-16 weeks. A fact - a researched by dermatological experts, medical fact.

It's what happens when you remove all the predators.

Twenty-odd years ago I heard a woman say on an LBC phone-in that she was smoking while pregnant because that way her baby would be immune to lung cancer. Cue polite laughter.

But nowadays anyone who falls for it can set up a group of True Believers with a website - so it must be true - and any doctor who said she was wrong would be "part of the problem ".

It is partly down to the lack of understanding and misrepresentation of bias in the media. We are encouraged to think that two opposing views are both 50% likely to be correct and must be equally represented. That is wrong and the idea that an anti vaxxer should be given an equal platform, despite having no real qualifications, is a natural consequence of that.

All doctors saying Brexit will harm the NHS is a story- but poor understanding of bias means they always dredge someone up to give the other side. If something is 90% likely to be a disaster, it is actually biased in its favour to suggest it is only 75% likely. However, the press and poorly educated are told this is biased against it as not 50%. People then dismiss arguments as "no-one knows."

I read a really interesting (for a statistician) article pre Trump explaining how this phenomenon would lead to Trump. We need to educate people now there is such availability of information so they can assess the quality better.

I think flat earth is different as still an extreme position.

There is precisely one assumption in the scientific method, which is that observation of the universe provides meaningful information.

This may turn out to be incorrect - for instance in the case that the universe isn't real and is instead some sort of simulation.

But that is the only assumption. Everything else flows from that one point.

I agree that people view science as a collection of factoids, some of which have already changed many times and all of which are likely to change at some point. But that couldn't be less what it is about. It is about looking at the universe and making a guess about how it works...then (and this is the important bit that separates it from religion or any thing else) TESTING the guess to see if it matches to the evidence available....then rinsing and repeating...FOREVER.

Anybody who rejects either the core assumption or the application of the scientific method should try living for a month without the products of it...including phones, computers, the internet, google, MRI scanners, medicine of any level of sophistication above willow bark stew......

Essentially our entire civilisation is the product of the scientific method...and people should put up or get out.

MoonriseKingdom, interesting that your brother went through something similar. My interest in conspiracy theories has also waned with medication. Also a lot of it was fueled by the internet too. I'm glad your brother is feeling better!

1. There are actually many respected scientists who believe in intelligent design. Professors, Doctors... but yes, they probably have low IQ's, and you obviously know much more than they do, OP (I'm assuming from your post that you are a scientist?).

1. The above point plus the fact that we can clearly see with our eyes that the earth is NOT flat means that it's not really reasonable to equate a belief in intelligent design and belief that the earth is flat. One can be empirically proven,the other cannot.

1. Creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Most of the people I know who believe the world was created have no problem with microevolution; they are only sceptical about macroevolution.

1. Re. Brexit: people voted to leave the EU for as many reasons as they chose to remain. It's only anecdotal, but personally, none of the people I know who voted to leave believed the £350 million thing, and all voted to leave in SPITE of the leave campaign, which I think most people can agree was pretty awful.

1. This sort of superior and condescending attitude towards those who don't share your worldview seems to be becoming more and more common. Just so you know, it's not really likely to win anyone over and make them see the "error" of their ways - if anything it's more likely to have the opposite effect.

interesting to see how outlandish opinions are automatically associated with low IQ and no job

because no over-educated MP with a top IQ ever believed that the Iraqi war was going to make for a safer world or that Brexit was going to be a piece of cake or that climate change wasn't happening, oooh noooo

"1. There are actually many respected scientists who believe in intelligent design. Professors, Doctors... but yes, they probably have low IQ's, and you obviously know much more than they do, OP (I'm assuming from your post that you are a scientist?)."

This comes up a lot. Often followed by some names. It's a good idea to
look at the background, discipline and dates of the scientists concerned.

An apparently little known, though blindingly obvious, fact about scientists is that we are specialists. We are capable of holding all sorts of nonsense opinions outside our areas of expertise, usually by means of never having seriously thought about it. I am sure there are urban myths out there that I, a fully paid up card carrying scientist, have never thought to question or investigate.

I mean until recently I assumed that purple was actually a colour in the rainbow...and that the colour of the midday sun could be perceived as something other than white.

Both obviously untrue but embedded in my head nonetheless.

A scientist isn't someone who doesn't have these incorrect concepts. A scientist is someone who changes their mind about purple being in the rainbow when shown an actual picture of a rainbow....

"A scientist isn't someone who doesn't have these incorrect concepts. A scientist is someone who changes their mind about purple being in the rainbow when shown an actual picture of a rainbow...."

This. Absolutely.

Wtf has believing the Earth is flat got to do with Brexit? Lumping those together sounds like someone who has been brainwashed to believe only nasty, meany right-wingers could vote for such a thing. Basically someone incapable of using the brain cells they have to think independently.