Scientific American has an article called The Denialist Playbook.
It starts with a reflection on the denial of COVID-19 and then looks at past denial movements. Chiropractors denied that Jonas Salk's vaccine would prevent polio. (Author Sean B. Carroll attributes this to #6 below. Chiropractic is based, he says, on the belief that all disease has its origin in the spine, so a vaccine contradicts their basic principe). He then mentions creationists denial of evolution, the climate change deniers, and the campaign to deny the negative health impacts of tobacco.
Looking through all these movements, he saw a pattern in how denial is practiced.
In brief, the six principle plays in the denialist playbook are:
- Doubt the Science
- Question Scientists’ Motives and Integrity
- Magnify Disagreements among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as Authorities
- Exaggerate Potential Harm
- Appeal to Personal Freedom
- Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy
Unfortunately, Carroll does not lay out strategies to deal with each tactic. However, just knowing the list and being able to identify and label what someone is doing, and to tie it to the tactics of other well known denial campaigns is surely a first good step.
Right now, in addition to COVID denial, we also have election denial. While this is less science and more administration, the principles seem to hold up.
1. Doubt the Science - There's doubt about the numbers.
2. Question Motives and Integrity - They're fake, it's political, they're liars and cheaters . . .
3. Magnify Disagreements - a lost ballot here or there means there are millions of lost ballots
4. Exaggerate Potential Harm - the election is being stolen
5. Appeal to personal freedom - get your guns and demonstrate against the ballot counters
6. Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy - It violates your sacred vote, it's a plot to install the extreme liberal agenda and destroy America
You get the point. I suspect that, however, the Trump side could also use these points to say that the Democrats are denying reality too. But then, every solution spawns new problems. That's why we have constant change, even though basic things stay the same. That is, human behavior hasn't change much over time. Ancient literature - the Bible, Greek plays, Shakespeare - all are timeless because they reveal truths about human behavior. What changes are the ways those behaviors are played out in different geographies, different cultures, and with different technologies.
You can read details of each tactic in the original article.
Also, remember, only 35% of US adults has a bachelors degree or more education. The chart below is from Wikipedia. That does affect how susceptible people are to the arguments of organized deniers.
| Education | Age 25 and over | Age 25-30 |
|---|---|---|
| High school diploma or GED | 89.80% | 92.95% |
| Some college | 61.28% | 66.34% |
| Associate and/or bachelor's degree | 45.16% | 46.72% |
| Bachelor's degree | 34.98% | 36.98% |
| Master's and/or doctorate and/or professional degree | 13.04% | 9.01% |
| Doctorate and/or professional degree | 3.47% | 2.02% |
| Doctorate | 2.03% | 1.12% |
Excellent breakdown. To know how DENIAL has always been achieved on a mass scale is a good first step, but so far reason/common sense don't seem to have made a dent in irrationality/beliefs, as usual.
ReplyDeleteI see no chance of a denial reversal, but I'm a pessimist. I remain wary of Biden actually being inaugurated -- too many days to the Electoral College (rigged?) vote, then possible assignation -- I take it the whole inauguration will be virtual... no walking (exposed) down Pennsylvania Avenue or Washington Parties/Balls ... what a time this is. Isolation can't be helping mental health.
Barbara, actually, for those of us who are a bit on the not-so-great-at-being-social-animals, I'm doing just fine. And that does seem to be the report from many of us who really do find the work of being social difficult business.
DeleteSteve so often writes of his concerns that we should all be scholars in life, but I am one of those folk who never could sit still for college study. I'm one of his 'stupid' people who don't have a college degree (as evidenced in his chart and its implication to thinking things through).
It shows a sort of prejudice that I, not being a Trump supporter, still feel from folk who think themselves better for having achieved. I read. I write. I think. But I don't have an institutional degree.
And I'm thought worse for it, in what work I can do; in what people think of me; of what people assume my ability to think at all. No wonder too many Trumpers think of the 'other' side as being elitist.
Steve, these people I would wager do not have degrees ,Carpenter.
ReplyDeleteCarpet installer .Electrician .Heavy equipment operator (or anyone in the construction trades) .Insulation installer .Landscaper .Painter. Plumber, auto mechanic but might possess a few smarts. I would take anyone of them over a room full of Fine Arts majors or anyone who's degree ends with the word 'studies'.
Oliver
Oliver: too simplistic. I have known painters and plumbers who were total jerks, and landscapers who have college degrees and make art in their spare time. I know several fine arts majors who are dear friends and fine people.
ReplyDeleteI take your remark that you "would take any one of them over" the more educated people as rhetorical. For what purpose would you take them? To be your friends, your caretakers, your source of trusted and accurate information, or to fix your wiring?
Agreed that there are elitists who are obnoxious, entitled, arrogant and horrid. There are also elites who humbly believe that people lucky and gifted enough to have achieved a lot have a duty to help those who were not lucky, etc. They used to call it "noblesse oblige," maybe a bit elitist from the start but it built many a library, school, settlement house, athletic field and church.
Also let's don't forget that many well educated people came from modest backgrounds and when they get the precious education, they turn around and use it to help those like their own families. Doctors who return to the Mississippi Delta or the Navajo reservation; teachers who go back to their home states; lawyers who devote themselves to community organizing or work for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I would take any one of them over a room full of aggrieved carpet installers who sneer at my college degrees. Just to make a silly overgeneralization of my own.
Jacob and Oliver, I've tried to clarify what I said in response to your comments in a new post
ReplyDeleteKathy does a good job of outlining what I was thinking. (Thanks.)