What is Denialism?

1 1
Note to reader: this is the original
text of the What is Denialism? essay
Mark Hoofnagle and Chris Hoofnagle developed in 2006 and 2007. It was
first outlined on the GiveUp blog,
April 30, 2007 and then published on Denialism
blog as a series of posts, at https:
//denialism.com/about/
Introduction

Here we will discuss the problem of denialists, their standard argu-

ing techniques, how to identify denialists and/or cranks, and discuss
topics of general interest such as skepticism, medicine, law and sci-
ence. I’ll be taking on denialists in the sciences, while my brother,
Chris, will be geared more towards the legal and policy implications
of industry groups using denialist arguments to prevent sound poli-
cies.
First of all, we have to get some basic terms defined for all of our
new readers.
Denialism is the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the ap-
pearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is
none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts
to support one’s viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against
overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in dis-
tracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but
ultimately empty and illogical assertions.
Examples of common topics in which denialists employ their
tactics include: Creationism/Intelligent Design, Global Warming
denialism, Holocaust denial, HIV/AIDS denialism, 9/11 conspira-
cies, tobacco carcinogenicity denialism (the first organized corporate
campaign), anti-vaccination/mercury autism denialism and anti-
animal testing/animal rights extremist denialism. Denialism spans
the ideological spectrum, and is about tactics rather than politics or
partisanship. Chris will be covering denialism of industry groups,
such as astroturfing, and the use of a standard and almost sequential
set of denialist arguments that he discusses in his Denialist Deck of
Cards.2 2
Available as Chris Jay Hoofnagle,
Five general tactics are used by denialists to sow confusion. They Denialists’ Deck of Cards: An Illustrated
Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate
are conspiracy, selectivity (cherry-picking), fake experts, impossi- Consumer Protection Efforts, SSRN (Feb.
ble expectations (also known as moving goalposts), and general 9, 2007). https://ssrn.com/abstract=
962462 and http://dx.doi.org/10.
fallacies of logic. 2139/ssrn.962462
Throughout this first week we’ll be discussing each of these 5
tactics in turn to give examples of how they are used, and how to
recognize their implementation. We’ll also introduce our handy little
icon scheme that we’ll attach to each post discussing denialists. If
you just can’t wait a whole week, well, visit our old blog’s definition
to see what we’re talking about.

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 what is denialism? 2

Finally, some ground rules. We don’t argue with cranks. Part of

understanding denialism is knowing that it’s futile to argue with
them, and giving them yet another forum is unnecessary. They also
have the advantage of just being able to make things up and it takes
forever to knock down each argument as they’re only limited by
their imagination while we’re limited by things like logic and data.
Recognizing denialism also means recognizing that you don’t need
to, and probably shouldn’t argue with it. Denialists are not honest
brokers in the debate (you’ll hear me harp on this a lot). They aren’t
interested in truth, data, or informative discussion, they’re interested
in their world view being the only one, and they’ll say anything to
try to bring this about. We feel that once you’ve shown that what
they say is deceptive, or prima-facie absurd, you don’t have to spend
a graduate career dissecting it and taking it apart. It’s more like a
“rule-of-thumb” approach to bad scientific argument. That’s not to
say we won’t discuss science or our posts with people who want to
honestly be informed, we just don’t want to argue with cranks. We
have work to do.
Second, denialism isn’t about name-calling or the psychological
coping mechanism of denial. The first reaction of any denialist to
being labeled such is to merely reply, “you’re the denialist” or to
redefine the terms so that it excludes them (usually comparing them-
selves to Galileo in the process). However, denialism is about tactics
that are used to frustrate legitimate discussion, it is not about simply
name-calling. It’s about how you engage in a debate when you have
no data (the key difference between denialists and the paradigm-
shifters of yesteryear). There are a few more common defenses that
we’ll discuss in time.
So while the denialists will inevitably show up and suggest my
belief in the validity of carbon dating shows I’m a Bible denialist,
or my inability to recognize the wisdom of some HIV/AIDS crank
shows I don’t understand biology, we won’t tend to engage them.
They’re cranks and we aim to show how you can instantly recognize
and dismiss crank arguments.
Finally, just because some people believe in stupid things, doesn’t
make them denialists. A lot of people get suckered in by denialist
arguments and benefit from having the record corrected or being
shown how to recognize good scientific debate versus unsound
denialist debates. We aren’t suggesting everybody who has a few
wacky ideas is a crank, part of the reason denialists abound and are
often successful in bringing the masses over to their side is that their
arguments don’t necessarily sound insane to the uninitiated. Denial-
ist arguments are emotionally appealing and work on a lot of people.
We’re trying to inform people about denialism and how to recognize

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 what is denialism? 3

denialist arguments so that ultimately they will be less effective in

swaying those that may not be fully informed about science. We hope
that by creating awareness of the ground rules of legitimate scientific
debate, citizens, policy makers, and the media may better distinguish
between sound and unsound scientific debate.

Conspiracy
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
-Benjamin Franklin

What are denialist conspiracy theories and why should people

be instantly distrustful of them? And what do they have to do with
denialism?
Almost every denialist argument will eventually devolve into
a conspiracy. This is because denialist theories that oppose well-
established science eventually need to assert deception on the part
of their opponents to explain things like why every reputable scien-
tist, journal, and opponent seems to be able to operate from the same
page. In the crank mind, it isn’t because their opponents are operat-
ing from the same set of facts, it’s that all their opponents are liars (or
fools) who are using the same false set of information.
But how could it be possible, for instance, for every nearly ev-
ery scientist in a field be working together to promote a falsehood?
People who believe this is possible simply have no practical under-
standing of how science works as a discipline. For one, scientists
don’t just publish articles that reaffirm a consensus opinion. Arti-
cles that just rehash what is already known or say “everything is the
same” aren’t interesting and don’t get into good journals. Scientific
journals are only interested in articles that extend knowledge, or
challenge consensus (using data of course). Articles getting published
in the big journals like Science or Nature are often revolutionary (and
not infrequently wrong), challenge the expectations of scientists or
represent some phenomenal experiment or hard work (like the hu-
man genome project). The idea that scientists would keep some kind
of exceptional secret is absurd, or that, in the instance of evolution
deniers, we only believe in evolution because we’ve been infiltrated
by a cabal of “materialists” is even more absurd. This is not to say
that real conspiracies never occur, but the assertion of a conspiracy in
the absence of evidence (or by tying together weakly correlated and
nonsensical data) is usually the sign of a crackpot. Belief in the Illu-
minati, Zionist conspiracies, 9/11 conspiracies, holocaust denial con-
spiracies, materialist atheist evolution conspiracies, global warming
science conspiracies, UFO government conspiracies, pharmaceutical
companies suppressing altie-med conspiracies, or what have you, it

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almost always rests upon some unnatural suspension of disbelief in

the conspiracy theorist that is the sign of a truly weak mind. Hence,
our graphic to denote the presence of these arguments – the tinfoil
hat.

Another common conspiratorial attack on consensus science (with-

out data) is that science is just some old-boys club (not saying it’s
entirely free of it but. . . ) and we use peer-review to silence dissent.
This is a frequent refrain of HIV/AIDS denialists like Dean Esmay
or Global Warming denialists like Richard Lindzen trying to explain
why mainstream scientists won’t publish their BS. The fact is that
good science speaks for itself, and peer-reviewers are willing to pub-
lish things that challenge accepted facts if the data are good. If you’re
just a denialist cherry-picking data and nitpicking the work of oth-
ers, you’re out of luck. Distribution of scientific funding (another
source of conspiracy from denialists) is similarly based on novelty
and is not about repeating some kind of party line. Yes, it’s based on
study-sections and peer-review of grants, but the idea that the only
studies that get funded are ones that affirm existing science is nuts, if
anything it’s the opposite.
Lately, there’s been a lot of criticism of the excess focus on novelty
in distribution of funding and in what gets accepted into journals. I
encourage all scientists and those interested in science to watch this
video of John Ioannidis giving grand rounds at NIH on how science
gets funded, published, and sadly, often proven wrong. I put it up at
google video.3 He is the author of Why most published research findings 3
Archived as Translation, replication,
are false published in PLoS last year (i.e. 2005). It’s proof that science and credibility of research findings /
John Ioannidis in the National Library
is perfectly willing to be critical of itself, more than happy to publish of Medicine, 101303645
exceptional things that often turn out wrong, but ultimately, highly
self-correcting.
I realize it’s an hour long, but it’s really a great talk.

Selectivity (Cherry Picking)

For our next installment of the big five tactics in denialism we’ll
discuss the tactic of selectivity, or cherry-picking of data. Denialists
tend to cite single papers supporting their idea (often you have to
squint to see how it supports their argument). Similarly they dig up
discredited or flawed papers either to suggest they are supported by
the scientific literature, or to disparage a field making it appear the

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 what is denialism? 5

science is based on weak research. Quote mining is also an example

of “selective” argument, by using a statement out of context, just like
using papers or data out of context, they are able to sow confusion.
Here at denialism blog we’ll use the cherries to denote the presence
of selectivity in a denialist screed.

Examples abound. Such as when HIV/AIDS denialists harp about

Gallo fudging the initial identification of HIV (a famous dispute
about whether or not he stole Montagnier’s virus) to suggest the
virus was never actually identified or that the field rests on a weak
foundation. Jonathan Wells likes to harp endlessly about Haeckels’
embryos to suggest that the tens of thousands of other papers on
the subject of evolution, and the entire basis of genetics, biology and
biochemistry are wrong.
One of the main reasons this is such an effective tactic to use on
science is that when something is shown to be incorrect, we can’t
“purge” the literature so the bad papers stay there forever. Only
when a paper is retracted is the literature actually restored, and
there’s a lot of research and researchers that got things wrong on the
way to figuring out a problem. It’s really just the nature of research,
we make mistakes, but the self-correcting nature of science helps get
us incrementally closer to some form of scientific truth. It is up to the
individual researcher to read and quote more than the papers that
support their foregone conclusion, as one has to develop theories that
effectively synthesize all the data and represent an understanding of
an entire field, not just quote the data one likes.
Then there is the issue of selective quotation of perfectly good
science or scientists. For example, see our post on how the Family
Research council misrepresents data on contraception to promote
their political agenda. Talk Origins has an entire quote-mine project
devoted to documenting how creationists misrepresent scientists to
advance their agenda.
This tendency towards quote-mining and misrepresentation of
science is really the clearest proof of the dishonesty inherent in de-
nialist tactics (with the possible exception in the case of Intelligent
Design Creationism of the wedge document – but an internal state-
ment of denialists’ goals is usually hard to come by). Selectivity is
exceedingly common, and proof that many denialists aren’t just intel-
lectually, but morally bankrupt.

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 what is denialism? 6

Fake Experts

You know who they are—those organizations that have words like
“freedom” and “rights” “choice” and “consumer” in their names
but always shill for corporate interests. . . those occasional MDs or
engineers creationists find that will say evolution has nothing to do
with science. They are the fake experts.
But how do we tell which experts are fake and which are real?
To figure out who is a fake expert you have to figure out what a
real expert is. My definition would be a real expert is someone with
a thorough understanding of the field they are discussing, who accu-
rately represents the scientific literature and the state of understand-
ing of the scientific enterprise. There has been some other discussion
on scienceblogs from Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science, it
also reiterates some of the same points in relation to what she feels
comfortable discussing as an expert. It also stresses the importance of
context in evaluating the validity of expert opinion. But I’m not the
god of the dictionary so let’s consider some other definitions.
The OED gives the definition simply as “One whose special
knowledge or skill causes him to be regarded as an authority; a spe-
cialist. Also attrib., as in expert evidence, witness, etc.”
I don’t think this is adequate to describe what we really mean
though, that is, how do you identify a trusted source of scientific
information?
Legally (in the US), scientific expertise had been defined by whether
the testimony the expert provided conforms to the so-called Frye rule
from 1923 until 1993 when the Daubert vs. Merrell Dow Pharmaceu-
ticals case changed the definition to be consistent with the federal
rules of evidence. The Frye rule was that scientific testimony was
valid if the theory it was based on was “generally accepted”, that is it
was admissible if the theory on which the evidence was based had a
somewhat arbitrary critical mass of followers in the scientific field.
In many ways Daubert was a big improvement, although it puts
more onus on the judge to determine if the science presented should
be considered valid as it merely stated that experts were defined by
the federal rules of evidence which allow the judge to determine:

If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the

trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in is-
sue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience,
training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or
otherwise.

(A good article on this issue here from the NEJM and a more
updated article.)
Luckily the justices didn’t just leave it at the federal rules of evi-

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dence and Blackmun created a set of guidelines for judges to deter-

mine if the expert was “reliable”. They require the theory presented
by the witness to have undergone peer review, show falsifiability, em-
pirical testing, reproducibility, and a known error rate for a scientific
theory to have some validity in addition to the general acceptance
rule of Frye. While the individual states remain a patchwork of Frye,
Daubert, and Frye-plus rules for admissibility of evidence, at least
federally this is the new requirement (although it still does suffer
from being a bit vague).
The experts that present such evidence must have some credentials
and/or experience with the discipline, and the evidence they present
must pass these tests. It’s actually not a half-bad way to identify a
trusted source, in particular if the judge is intellectually honest about
the witness meeting these requirements. Although the law currently
allows a lot of latitude on this as it’s really up to the judge to deter-
mine if the expert testimony satisfies the Daubert requirements.
The commonalities between the different accepted definitions are
that experts have experience in their field, and they can provide an-
swers that are consistent with the state of knowledge in that field that
are useful. The legal definition appears more stringent, in that it re-
quires the expert to speak in a clear fashion and discuss science that
actually meets Popperian requirements of epistemology (falsifiability,
testing, etc.) – but I’m not about to jump into that quagmire today.
Clearly, the exact definition of what an “expert” is still eludes
us, but it becomes readily apparent from the legal, dictionary and
common practice definitions employed by scientists what experts are
not. They aren’t merely an empty set of credentials and they aren’t
merely people who have at some point published in some random
field. Even the rather silly expert wiki would seem to agree on this.
Therefore I would say a fake expert is usually somebody who is
relied upon for their credentials rather than any real experience in
the field at issue, who will promote arguments that are inconsistent
with the literature, aren’t generally accepted by those who study the
field in question, and/or whose theories aren’t consistent with estab-
lished epistemological requirements for scientific inquiry. Sheesh. I
just described Michael Egnor, Bill Dembski, Michael Fumento, Patrick
Michaels, Steven Milloy, Richard Lindzen. . .
So, in honor of the false experts hired by everyone from creation-
ists to global warming deniers, I present to you, the thinking chimp.
Our mascot of the false expert, who isn’t as good at telling you accu-
rate information about science as he is at flinging poo.

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 what is denialism? 8

**Janet points us to another post of hers discussing how to identify

a trusted source.

Impossible Expectations (and Moving Goalposts)

I’m sorry for mixing terminologies. But moving goalposts isn’t ade-
quate to describe the full hilarity of the kinds of arguments denialists
make. For instance, the goalposts never have to be moved when they
require evidence that places them somewhere in the land before time.
What I mean is the use, by denialists, of the absence of complete and
absolute knowledge of a subject to prevent implementation of sound
policies, or acceptance of an idea or a theory.
So while moving goalposts describes a way of continuing to avoid
acceptance of a theory after scientists have obligingly provided addi-
tional evidence that was a stated requirement for belief, impossible
expectations describes a way to make it impossible for scientists to
ever prove anything to the satisfaction of the denialist. They’re re-
lated though so we’ll group both together. Let’s take the example of
the global warming deniers. One finds that they harp endlessly about
models, how much models suck, how you can’t model anything, on
and on and on. True, models are hard, anything designed to prog-
nosticate such a large set of variables as those involved in climate is
going to be highly complex, and I’ll admit, I don’t understand them
worth a damn. Climate science in general is beyond me, and I read
the papers in Science and Nature that come out, blink a few times,
and then read the editors description to see why I should care. But
with or without models, which I do trust the scientists and peer-
reviewers involved to test adequately, that doesn’t change the fact
that actual measurement of global mean temperature is possible, and
is showing an alarmingly steep increase post-industrialization.
The next thing the global warming deniers harp on is about how
we don’t have enough records of temperature to make a educated
statement about whether our climate is really heating up that much
as the instrumental record only goes about 150 years back. Then
you show them proxy records that go back a thousand years, and
after they’re done accusing people of falsifying, they say it’s still not
enough, then you go back a few tens of thousands of years, and it’s

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 what is denialism? 9

still not enough, then finally you go back about 750 thousand years
and they say, that’s just 0.0001% of the earth’s history! That’s like a
blink of the eye in terms of earth’s climate. Then you sigh and wish
for painless death. I’ll let real-climate fight the fights over proxy
records and CO2 lag, because, simply, they know a lot more than
me, and if you really want to argue with global warming denialists
I recommend reading A Few Things Ill Considered’s Faq first. But
what I can recognize is the tendency of the global warming deniers
to constantly move the goalposts back and back, and once they whip
out the argument we’ve only got proxy measurements for a fraction
of earths life (a mere few hundred thousand years), you know they’ve
graduated to impossible expectations.
A person who wasn’t just obviously stonewalling would say after
you’ve shown them this much data that maybe we should take the
data as is before we’re all under water. You don’t need to know the
position of every molecule of air on the planet, throughout the entire
history of earth to make a prudent judgement about avoiding dra-
matic climate change. (If they say that we don’t know what ideal is
say, “yeah, but Florida will still be under water). You don’t need to
know the position of every molecule in the galaxy before deciding
you need to jump out of the way of a speeding train. Similarly, we
don’t need to have a perfect model of the earth’s climate to under-
stand that all the current data and simulations suggest decreasing
carbon output is of critical importance right now, and not when hu-
mans have obtained some impossible level of scientific knowledge.
The honorary gif for making these tiresome arguments is – the
goalpost (and no Chris you may not animate it).

P.S. This does not mean that I endorse all efforts to model complex
systems. In the future I’ll probably complain about some modeling
implementation of systems biology which I tend to think is total BS.
I’ll explain the difference then. P.P.S To see an example of some really
hilarious creationist goalpost moving see our post on Michael Egnor
demanding biologists provide an answer for something he can’t even
define.

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 what is denialism? 10

Logical Fallacies

Almost everybody knows about the fallacies of logic, formal and

informal, that are routinely used in arguments with denialists. While
these fallacies aren’t perfect examples of logic that show when an
argument is always wrong, they are good rules of thumb to tell when
you’re listening to bunk, and if you listen to denialists you’ll hear
plenty. I wish they’d teach these to high school students as a required
part of their curriculum, but it probably would decrease the efficacy
of advertisement on future consumers.
The problem comes when the denialists get a hold of the fallacies
then accuse you, usually, of ad hominem! It goes like this.

Denialist says something wacky. . .

Commenter or blogger corrects their mistake. . .
Denialist says same thing, changes argument slightly. . .
Commenter or blogger again corrects their mistake. . .
Denialist says something even wackier, says it disproves all of a field of
science. . .
Commenter or blogger, exasperated, corrects it and threatens dis-
emvowelment. . .
Denialist restates original wacky argument. . .
Commenter or blogger’s head explodes, calls denialist an idiot.
Denialist says he won because commenter or blogger resorted to ad
hominem.

The thing to remember about logical fallacies is that their violation

isn’t proof or disproof of the validity of the opponent’s argument.
Your opponent might just be an idiot, but ultimately right. Some
people just don’t know how to argue or keep their temper. Logical
fallacies are rules of thumb to identify when portions of arguments
are poorly constructed or likely irrational. They are dependent on
context, and aren’t really rigorous proofs of the validity or invalidity
of any argument.
Further, some fallacies, like ad hominem are poorly understood,
so when an opponent says you’re wrong because of this this and
this therefor you’re an idiot, the poor victim of the ad hominem feels
like they can claim victory over the argument. When in reality ad
hominem refers to the dismissal of an argument by just insulting the
person. Time and time again you see someone exasperated by the
crank who won’t turn despite being shown again and again where
their error is, and finally just call the guy an idiot. That’s actually not
an ad hominem. That might be totally true and highly relevant to
the argument at hand. Sometimes people are just too stupid or too
ignorant to realize when they’ve been soundly thrashed, and true
cranks will stubbornly go on, and on and on. . .
But that doesn’t mean the fallacies of logic aren’t useful as rules of

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 what is denialism? 11

thumb for detecting the BS. The ones you hear most are arguments
from metaphor or analogy (prime creationist tactic), appeals to conse-
quence (creationist and global warming denier), appeals to ignorance
(all – see moving goalposts), appeals to authority (all), straw men and
red herrings.
For instance, the classic creationist example of using the analogy of
the mouse-trap to suggest “irreducible complexity” as a problem for
biology. Fallacies let you dismiss this instantly by saying, analogies
aren’t science pal, how about some data. Analogies are often help-
ful for getting concepts across, but you routinely see them used by
denialists as evidence. And more frequently you see their analogies
aren’t even apt. For instance the mouse-trap is perfectly functional
as its constituent parts. It’s a platform, a spring and a hook, just be-
cause they’re not assembled doesn’t mean they’ve lost their function.
They just can’t kill mice anymore unless you throw them with suf-
ficient velocity at rodents. Similarly the watchmaker analogy, the jet
airplane analogy, or when a few months ago I saw this endless silly
analogy about arsonists and design. Uggh. Pointless. Don’t even
bother, you see things like this being used to challenge actual honest
to goodness data? You’re done. If you spend too much time piecing
together looking for a method to the madness you’ll end up like our
poor robot. He’s the mascot for logical fallacies.

Poor guy. One too many fallacies, now he’s broken.

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 what is denialism? 12

Postscript (2022)

We developed the concept of denialism in response to what we saw

as an illiberal trend in public discourse. In order to have a function-
ing democracy, we have to take each other seriously. We have to be
earnest in our understanding of others. But we both witnessed, in
different domains, a strategic communication that had a purpose of
short-circuiting discourse. We began to recognize the strategy and its
cliché.
At the same time, we acknowledge that identifying communica-
tion as strategic—like the invocation of “fake news”—can itself be
illiberal and even dangerous.

Foundations
What we called denialism can be recognized today in debates sur-
rounding disinformation and misinformation. Mis- and dis-information
have an ancient provenance. Lucian of Samosata’s second-century
work, On Slander, defines it nicely.4 Specific examples of disinforma-
tion’s use appear in Caesar’s Commentaries and in Plutarch. Plato’s
Gorgias notably addresses the issue of disinformation in a dialogue
in which Socrates’ opponent, a rhetorician, dismisses expertise as its
convincing power paled compared those who know how to manipu-
late through technique and motivated reasoning.5
Albert Hirschman moved the ball forward in his 1991 book,
The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991), where Hirschman identified
“rhetorics of intransigence.” A profound contribution also comes
from Thomas Rid’s Active Measures (2020), which not only chron-
icles information problems, but explains how postmodernism seeds
a truth-denying landscape: the purpose of disinformation is to “to
engineer division by putting emotions over analysis, division over
unity, conflict over consensus, the particular over the universal.”
We also acknowledge the work of Deborah Lipstadt on the most
egregious example of denialism in Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1994). Lipstadt ex-
poses the techniques in action in the context of dehumanizing Jews
and diminishing their memories and experiences. Holocaust denial
is inevitably motivated by a desire to allow its repetition. Lipstadt’s
work, more than any other, emphasizes the importance of conspiracy
as a tool of hate. Of all the tactics, conspiracy is designed to “other”
opponents, and rob the believers of empathy for groups of people.
If one comes to believe, for instance, a group of people are Satan-
worshiping child molesters, what actions against such a group are
unjustified?
4
“In a word, [slanderers] invent and
say the kind of thing that they know
will be most irritating to their hearer,
and having a full knowledge of his
vulnerable point, concentrate their fire
upon it; he is to be too much flustered
by rage to have time for investigation;
the very surprise of what he is told is
to be so convincing to him that he will
not hear, even if his friend is willing to
plead.”
5
Socrates: And the same holds of the
relation of rhetoric to all the other arts;
the rhetorician need not know the truth
about things; he has only to discover
some way of persuading the ignorant
that he has more knowledge than those
who know?
Gorgias: Yes, Socrates, and is not this a
great comfort?—not to have learned the
other arts, but the art of rhetoric only,
and yet to be in no way inferior to the
professors of them?

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 what is denialism? 13

Conspiracy is inherently a call to violence, and a tool to instigate

political violence as we have seen on January 6th , 2021. When one li-
bels and slanders a group with conspiracy, they rob the target of their
humanity, and take from the believer their faith in legal and demo-
cratic recourse. Lipstadt explains the moral importance of countering
denial as one that is required to preserve the humanity of persons,
because by denying their history, and casting allegations on par with
the conspiracies used originally to perpetrate the Holocaust, one
recreates the circumstances under which a genocide may be repeated.
Finally, while we emphasize that denialism is illiberal, and may
have both immoral motives and violent outcomes, one also has to
understand the reason that it works: fundamental human flaws in
cognition and decision making heuristics. Behavioral research from
the last 20 years has devoted a great deal of focus to understanding
the cognitive models behind motivated reasoning that allow people
to accept seemingly absurd argumentation. In particular, understand-
ing the importance of heuristics for decision making has allowed
us to understand how humans deal with conflicting information.
Humans are not rational computers, they are social apes. Their in-
teraction with the outside world is shaped as much by the social
importance of beliefs for belonging in-group as they are for being
factually-accurate.6 Dan Kahan has performed extensive research into 6
“It is generally true that what we
this concept of cultural cognition with goal of understanding how we want, we also believe, and what we
think, we hope other people think, too.”
deal with contrary information when it conflicts with other culturally —Julius Caesar
important (or overvalued) ideas or belonging to an identity-group.7 7
Kahan, Dan M. "The politically moti-
Kahan both helps explain and humanizes the believers in denial- vated reasoning paradigm, part 1: What
politically motivated reasoning is and how
ism, as denialism represents a set of heuristics that are likely in-born, to measure it." Emerging trends in the
that allow us to contextualize information in terms of how it will social and behavioral sciences 29 (2016).
affect our immediate social group. Kahan also makes apparent the
problem when facts are inconvenient to a group identity, and with
a global community of fractured and fractious groups with compet-
ing interests, humans will inevitably settle on different patterns of
facts convenient to their perceived belonging.8 Denialism is funda- 8
“In effect, someone engaged in moti-
mentally a human reflex, a way of coping with confusing or contrary vated reasoning derives the likelihood
ratio for new information not from
information in a way that we have evolved to be successful—in a so- truth-convergent criteria independent of
cial group. The knowledge of how to manipulate these levers using her priors but from the impact crediting
it will have on aligning her beliefs with
emotion, threat, belonging, etc., by the unscrupulous thus becomes those of others in an identity-defining
immediately obvious when evaluating populist rhetoric. group.” -Dan Kahan

Denialism in Research
Diethelm and McKee adopted the denialism framework and intro-
duced it for the first time into the scientific literature in the European
Journal of Public Health in 2009.9 Denialism has subsequently served 9
Pascal Diethelm, Martin McKee,
Denialism: what is it and how should
scientists respond? (2009) Volume 19,
Issue 1

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4002823

 what is denialism? 14

as a framework for counter-programming against anti-global warm-

ing propaganda.
Cook, Lewandowsky, and Ecker demonstrated that informing peo-
ple of techniques of denialism, in addition to the existing consensus
science prior to exposure (inoculation), could then serve to dimin-
ish the effects of misinformation.10 John Cook has notably revised 10
Cook J, Lewandowsky S, Ecker UKH
and simplified the five tactics to the acronym FLICC: Fake experts, Neutralizing misinformation through
inoculation: Exposing misleading argumen-
Logical fallacies, Impossible Expectations, Cherry pick- tation techniques reduces their influence.
ing, Conspiracy for easier recall and accessibility, and used this in (2017) PLOS ONE 12(5)
teaching about countering global warming denial in a Massive Online
Open Class (MOOC) entitled Denial101x 11 11
Cook J, Winkler B, Finn C, Dodgen T.
This framework has also been adapted by Schmid and Betsch in Challenges and learning opportunities in
a controversial MOOC forum on climate
a series of experiments that elegantly demonstrate that recognition science denial. (2017) Policy. Jan 1;6(7):8.
and identification of the techniques can help defuse the damage done
by denialist misinformers.12 Their results emphasize an important 12
Schmid, P., Betsch, C. Effective strate-
aspect of denialism and misinformation - exposure of the tactics of gies for rebutting science denialism in
public discussions. Nat Hum Behav 3,
denialist debate is as effective as “topic rebuttal” or use of the specific 931–939 (2019)
facts and expertise to rebut denialism. As it is challenging to have
enough knowledge of all topics to effectively rebut disinformation
in all domains, "technique rebuttal" or exposure of the fundamental
dishonesty of denialist argument structure, remains an excellent
generalist tool.
These findings and others inform an evidence-based and rou-
tinely updated handbook for countering denialism by Cook and
Lewandowsky entitled The Debunking Handbook which emphasizes
inoculation and tactical approaches to debunking misinformation
with the best and most updated techniques for challenging climate
disinformation, which, given the tactics are universal, generalizes
across multiple fields as a tool for effective science communication
and debunking denialism.

Denialism in a Global Pandemic

The five denialist tactics have attained special importance in the
face of a global pandemic that has featured numerous disinform-
ers, misinformers, minimizers and grifters seeking to financially or Figure 1: The FLICC Framework.

ideologically gain from the pandemic response. The World Health

Organization has incorporated the 5 tactics of denial into best prac-
tice guidance How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public, which
serves as an extensive guide for science communicators on counter-
ing vaccine disinformation and is potentially life-saving.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4002823