Hard-core science deniers are out there right now spreading misinformation and recruiting new members. Those with selfish interests are all too happy to churn out disinformation and exploit any preexisting confusion or skepticism wherever they can. In the meantime, empirical truth is available for anyone who cares to find it – so why don’t more people care to look? We can try to make them care more, but some just won’t. They are happy to remain in a cocoon of partisanship, propaganda, and willful ignorance that tells them they already know the right answer. Which means that some of them will be prepared to deny the truth even when it is right in front of them. That is what is so frustrating in talking to a science denier. By the time you get to them, often it’s not just their beliefs but their anti-science values that have begun to harden into cement. But of course they don’t see it that way. No one self-identifies as a science denier. Often they see themselves as more scientific than the scientists. What you think of them, many will think of you. When you engage in conversation with a science denier, it’s good to remember the rule that every novelist lives by: the villain is the hero of his own story.
In some ways, our job is both harder and easier than we might have imagined. The challenge is not just to get people to accept certain facts, or change their beliefs, but to begin to understand and appreciate how scientists have acquired their hard-won knowledge through a process of rigorous examination, cooperative testing, and tolerance of uncertainty, so that deniers might begin to identify more with the values (and reasoning processes) of scientists.