"A change in administration doesn’t automatically fix the underlying problems, which include the corporate media’s marginalizing of science, ongoing divides over science and religion, and an American culture that all too often questions the value of intellect and even glorifies dumbness."
"When pressed, ideological appropriators of science will rarely relinquish a cherished idea no matter how many times it has been convincingly debunked. They seek to adopt the veneer of science, but not the critical rigor that should accompany it."
"But it is only half the story. If powerful religious commitments lead to politically driven abuses of science, so does an unswerving commitment to the bottom line."
"“Healthy skepticism is an essential and treasured feature of scientific analysis,” Gibbons added. “But willful distortion of evidence has no place at the table of scientific inquiry.”"
"“You can’t prove what’s going to happen in the future,” explains Naomi Oreskes, who has written extensively on the uses of modeling. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a rational basis for action.”"
"But when they don’t like what science has to tell them, those wielding political power of the have another option besides running away from the truth: suppression."
"The Right’s war on science also spreads a massive amount of misinformation, and sometimes even fosters outright ignorance. Consider the creationist quest to thwart the teaching of the theory of evolution to public school children. Science has managed to answer one of the most profound questions around—where does the human species come from?—but religious conservatives don’t want anyone to know about it. And with the spread of ignorance and pseudoscience comes a decline in critical thinking—a lapse in our collective capacity to cut through all the lies and distortions and determine which ideas we should trust."