In this post truth, alternate fact, quasi-reality America, ignorance and self-hyping nonsense has a real chance of paying off. Just check out this one example of an anti-science entrepreneur extraordinaire:
This is an echo chamber because, in due time, you only hear your beliefs repeated back at you and stop seeing what’s happening on the other side. Echo chambers for the pseudoscience crowd exist as well, though Mike Adams’ online bubble is so vast and self-sufficient, it warrants the term “ecosystem”.
Mike Adams, also known as The Health Ranger, is a fierce advocate of alternative medicine. He is anti-vaccination, anti-GMO, anti-medicine.
There is even an alternative search engine, harnessed not to the web as a whole using keywords, but to providing alternative articles when prompted by searches for legit news and science orgs. It’s an elaborate, impressive feat of webware engineering all designed to separate you from sound medical advice and your healthcare dollars.
Focusing the conversation on the ethics of disseminating speech rather than the actual content of that speech is hugely useful for the far right for three reasons. Firstly, it allows them to paint themselves as the wronged party — the martyrs and victims. Secondly, it stops ...
- PZ started with dissecting a mysterious egg sac a few days ago, and it has since turned into a sort of arachnid reality TV show: The Real Spiders of Minnesota. Spoiler alert: baby spiders are insatiable, murderous little cannibals.
- Here’s yet another unexpected perk of climate change in the Arctic:
As temperatures rise in the Arctic, permafrost — permanently frozen ground — is defrosting at an alarming rate. But the permafrost isn't the only thing in the Arctic that's melting.
Exposed rock that was once covered in ice is dissolving, eaten away by acid. And the effects of this acid bath could have far-reaching impacts on global climate, according to a new study.