Galileo would be turning in his grave. His achievement was to set science on the course which has made it into an astonishingly successful means of generating knowledge. Yet some people not only reject the truths of the science that Galileo did so much to advance; they do it in his name.
Intro: In Denial?
Scientific truth is increasingly disbelieved, and this is a new phenomenon, so much so that new words have been invented to describe it. Leah Ceccarelli defines manufacturoversy as a public controversy over some question (usually scientific) which is not considered by experts on the topic to be in dispute; the controversy is not a legitimate scientific debate but a PR tool created by commercial or ideological interests.
Probably the best example is the attempts by tobacco companies to cast doubt on the association between tobacco smoking and cancer. The techniques involved are now well known. ...
