OT: denialism, denialist

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/2/2010 02:21 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Not in OED but Wikipedia has an entire article. Half a million Googlits.
>
>Basically, these refer to the worldwide practice of denying established
>facts (I guess I should say "'established'  'facts'") for political,
>religious, psychological or similar reasons (I guess I should say
>"'political,'  'religious,' 'psychological' or 'similar'").

Or medical (but perhaps this is a subclass of "religious" or
"psychological" reasons).  The latest denialists to come to grief are
those who denied scientific evidence that vaccinations are not the
cause of autism.  Lancet has withdrawn a 12-year-old article that
claimed so.  The UK General Medical Council "will next decide whether
to revoke Wakefield's [the lead author's] medical
license."  [Bloomberg.com, BusinessWeek.]

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org