Reporting on the recent million dollar judgement in favor of climate scientist Michael Mann, PBS takes a nice turn and interviews epidemiologist Dr Peter Hotez who has been getting the same type of treatment from MAGA anti-vax maniacs.
Hotez also, importantly, makes the connection to Putin’s Russia as a major driver of anti-science paranoia on social media.
Below, Mann on CNN discusses a new initiative in cooperation with Hotez to produce a book, and further press the case against science deniers of all stripes.
The right wing was already telegraphing this larger attack on the modern world a decade ago, when well-known misinformer Marc Morano called for “public flogging” of scientists – see below.
The agenda of the fossil fuel industry has been to maintain their power at all costs – but a serious side-effect of the war on fact is that society is sliding back into the Middle Ages.
Well, all of those evolutionary biologists who were declared minions of Satan by the Creationists missed their payday.
Sticks and stones. “Minion of Satan” almost anyone can laugh off; it’s not really slander.
But accusations of falsification of data and fraud… that’s hitting a scientist where their life’s work is. If colleagues take such accusations seriously, it would end a career.