{"id":618,"date":"2009-11-08T05:26:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/?p=618"},"modified":"2009-11-08T05:26:29","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:29","slug":"my-slate-dialogue-with-michael-specter-begins-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/my-slate-dialogue-with-michael-specter-begins-the-intersection.php","title":{"rendered":"My Slate Dialogue with Michael Specter Begins | The Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>See <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2234719\/entry\/2234720\/\">here<\/a>. We&rsquo;re discussing <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1594202303?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=chriscmooneyc-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1594202303\"><em>Denialism<\/em><\/a>, which I recommended earlier. I start of the dialogue with Michael Specter like this:<\/p><p>Hi Michael,<\/p><p>First, let me say it has been a pleasure to read <em><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1594202303?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1594202303\">Denialism<\/a><\/em>, a book I&rsquo;ve wanted to dig into ever since you came to speak about it to our <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/knight-science\/seminars\/current.html\">Knight Science Journalism Fellows seminar<\/a> at MIT. It&rsquo;s heartening to see another author beating the drum about America&rsquo;s dysfunctional relationship with science, and making the point so vividly and memorably. Your narrative about vaccine skeptics&rsquo; attacks on an unassuming and rigorous scientist like Harvard&rsquo;s Marie McCormick&mdash;whom I have <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/discovermagazine.com\/2009\/jun\/06-why-does-vaccine-autism-controversy-live-on\">also interviewed<\/a>&mdash;made me so angry I wanted to hurl the book across the room (and that&rsquo;s a good thing!).<\/p><p>What&rsquo;s more, your book looks past some of the more obvious cases of &ldquo;denialism&rdquo;&mdash;of climate change, HIV\/AIDS, evolution, and so forth&mdash;to lesser known realms like personalized medicine and synthetic biology, where our qualms about where science is taking us are likely to manifest next. You don&rsquo;t deny the older and more famous instances of anti-science sentiment, but you smartly move along to the ones we&rsquo;re going to be dealing with for years to come.<\/p><p>That&rsquo;s not to say I agree with everything in <em>Denialism<\/em>; I think there are some aspects of the big picture that you haven&rsquo;t painted quite right. Take, for instance, the baffling fact that despite all of our irrationality on topics like vaccination, Americans aren&rsquo;t actually &ldquo;anti-science&rdquo; in any meaningful sense of the term&hellip;..<\/p><p>You can read my full entry <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2234719\/entry\/2234720\/\">here<\/a>. Michael Specter will be replying sometime this afternoon and we&rsquo;ll take it from there&hellip;<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/ajOA3rWw77CMS1iCTYjqxAQ_-Yg\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/17d51_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/ajOA3rWw77CMS1iCTYjqxAQ_-Yg\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/17d51_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/AsSDp7SVheKJ-V2wV21XnLbiAE0\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/17d51_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/AsSDp7SVheKJ-V2wV21XnLbiAE0\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/17d51_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/17d51_p80EizhSNq8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>See here. We&rsquo;re discussing Denialism, which I recommended earlier. I start of the dialogue with Michael Specter like this:Hi Michael,First, let me say it has been a pleasure to read Denialism, a book I&rsquo;ve wanted to dig into ever since &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/my-slate-dialogue-with-michael-specter-begins-the-intersection.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}