OT: denialism, denialist

[Jonathan Lighter]

How about "pseudoscientific"? (Or "'pseudoscientific'"?)
As a remedy against extreme subjectivist positions and the extra quotation
marks they demand, I recommend Thomas Nagel's optimistically titled _The
Last Word_ (2001).

JL


On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: OT:  denialism, denialist
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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  Lancet has withdrawn a 12-year-old article that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
>
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