The trend toward intentionally ignoring data that does not agree with one’s biases only continues. A 2010 article from Scientific American discussing emails received by climate scientists:
Trenberth* says that is the most dispiriting aspect of the e-mails: Facts don’t carry more weight in the public debate. The nature of public discourse - be it climate change or health care - has changed; information that does not fit one’s worldview is now discounted or rejected.
“Increasingly,” wrote Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald recently, “we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.”
Added Trenberth: “In science there’s a whole lot of facts and basic information on the nature of climate change, but it’s not being treated that way. It’s being treated as opinion.”
“Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned”, Scientific American, 2010.03.01 *Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.