Deniers are Not Skeptics

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 04/25/15

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry reports that public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term skeptic. The Nov 10, 2014, New York Times article - Republicans Vow to Fight EPA and Approve Keystone Pipeline -referred to Sen. James Inhofe as a prominent skeptic of climate change. Two days later Scott Horsley of NPR Morning Edition called him one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress. These are not equivalent statements. The members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry are concerned that the words skeptic and denier have been mixed by the popular media. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration, aka rejection of any evidential arguments. Real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Inhofe believes that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people is an extraordinary claim indeed. He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him, and others of the same views, from using the title skeptic. As scientific skeptics, the members of the Committee are well aware of the political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality, and but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong. The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is denial. Not all individuals who call themselves climate-change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.