Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

This is from the National Geographic magazine. I'm sure you'll find it interesting.

Quote:

We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition. Some even have doubts about the moon landing. By Joel Achenbach There’s a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece Dr. Strangelove in which Jack D. Ripper, an American general who’s gone rogue and ordered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, unspools his paranoid worldview—and the explanation for why he drinks “only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure grain alcohol”—to Lionel Mandrake, a dizzy-with-anxiety group captain in the Royal Air Force. Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? Mandrake: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes, yes. Ripper: Well, do you know what it is? Mandrake: No. No, I don’t know what it is. No. Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? The movie came out in 1964, by which time the health benefits of fluoridation had been thoroughly established, and antifluoridation conspiracy theories could be the stuff of comedy. So you might be surprised to learn that, half a century later, fluoridation continues to incite fear and paranoia. In 2013 citizens in Portland, Oregon, one of only a few major American cities that don’t fluoridate their water, blocked a plan by local officials to do so. Opponents didn’t like the idea of the government adding “chemicals” to their water. They claimed that fluoride could be harmful to human health. Actually fluoride is a natural mineral that, in the weak concentrations used in public drinking water systems, hardens tooth enamel and prevents tooth decay—a cheap... More: http://ift.tt/1McjV5Q You may also listen if you like http://ift.tt/1McjSHs

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