Thursday, January 14, 2016

People's Ability to Delude Themselves is Amazing

The Australian reported a couple of days ago that the University of Wollongong gave a PhD for a thesis by an anti-vaccination activist, Judy Wilyman. It's the comments on the article where the delusion is amazing. Many people comment that it is totally outrageous that the University of Wollongong gave this PhD because obviously anti-vax is total nonsense and a conspiracy theory. At the same time, some of them are complaining that climate scepticism doesn't get sufficient respect from academia. Of course, climate scepticism is just as much nonsense and a conspiracy theory as anti-vax.* But these people believe that one of these theories is totally correct and the other totally bogus. I'm a bit surprised, as I thought that both these theories were right-wing anti-government theories. Apparently not in Australia?

This is, of course, exactly the same as people who are convinced that their religion is true and all other religions are false.

* I am open-minded about both anti-vaccination and climate change sceptical hypotheses. Also UFOs, yetis...

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