We, along with probably most of you, have been watching the impeachment hearings. Don’t worry, this isn’t another impeachment article! You can get Furious enough watching that abomination without our help! But we are going to focus on one part of the sh*t show, and we’ll do it with an article from our Furious File Cabinet.

Impeachment is a partisan political act by nature, but the endemic partisanship doesn’t by itself mean the case made by either side is wrong. If facts support it, even the most rabid political partisan can make a solid, balanced, reasonable argument for their case. But defense lawyers will tell you that the case goes on even if the client is guilty, and the lawyer is left to make the best defense he can… truth, falsity, or even plausibility be damned.

It’s reasonable to doubt, to be skeptical. It’s one of the foundations of reason. But not believing something without evidence is not the same as believing something in spite of evidence. Given a reason to be suspicious, suspicion is prudence. But prudent suspicion can be dispelled by investigation, and if it is then it’s wrong to hold onto the doubt.

A whole industry has sprung up to flog suspicion long past reason. Tobacco became the poster child for this pattern when scientists and ‘scientists’ were paid (and still are) to question the research-based scientific view without evidence, with tainted evidence, with half-truths, and with lies. Now other industries like fossil fuels and firearms, are pulling out the same playbook. And as we’ve seen from the Republicans in the impeachment hearings, it’s a fantastic play to people who don’t want to believe their own lying eyes.

News To Make You Furious- Doubt is a disease. Meet the carriers.

Posted on March 15, 2016 by tomdwyer

The certainty of Science is paradoxically built around questions and doubt. The most revered theories can always be overthrown by better ones, and some big ones have fallen in the past. No matter how sure we are of today’s science there’s always the possibility we’re wrong and that better explanations might appear. Although they can be proven false, scientific theories can never be proven true. That’s the type of doubt science depends on for its existence.

There’s another kind of doubt, though, a false doubt that perverts this fundamental strength of science and rationality to attack it. This type of doubt doesn’t offer new insights or better explanations of its own, but it says to disbelieve science anyway because it’s not proven. There may be many motivations for this cancerous type of doubt; greed, ideology, ignorance, fear, maybe others. But whatever their motivation these doubtcasters need shills to give their tripe some tenuous connection to reality.

When they do, they turn to a small and reliable stable of carriers ready to transmit their disease. For this month’s News To Make You Furious we introduce you to Scientists for Sale, the intellectual prostitutes (no offense to prostitutes) who spit at the achievements of humanity’s best minds. When you’re suitably apoplectic about their existence you’ll just be getting started… you’ll be incoherent with rage when you find out how little they sell out for!

A Gallery of Sold Science

The CO2 Coalition, website.

Not a joke. A perfect example of scientistic prostitution in service of greed.

Greenpeace Statement On Patrick Moore

Statement on Greenpeace website explaining Patrick Moore, a past Greenpeace member who now shills for anti-environment causes.

The Princeton Academic Testifying for Ted Cruz’s Climate Hearing Is For-Hire by Fossil-Fuel Corporations, Zoe Carpenter in The Nation, Dec 2015

Breitbart News: Go-To Outlet For “Academics-For-Hire” By The Fossil Fuel Industry? Andrew Seifter on Media Matters, Dec 2015

Princeton Prof Loses It On Camera: Climate Science Lies for Cash, Sam Seder Majority Report, Dec 2015

Here’s an example of a Scientist-for-hire getting called out by the actual scientist whose work he twisted…

A Real Climate Scientist Demolishes Bill Nye’s Global Warming Alarmism, Austin Petersen on The Libertarian Republic, Aug 2015

Scientist Slams Daily Caller For Distorting His Research To Suggest Climate Change Is Fake, Emily Atkin on Climate Progress, Feb 2015

This is a pervasive strategy across a variety of industries. Tobacco was the pioneer, but today it’s in every arena where the science is settled but the business isn’t. We’ll close with two of our past “News To Make You Furious” articles that point out this pattern in other areas…