Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Junk science and holocaust denial

A few months ago, in criticising an article on academic freedom (or the alleged lack of it) authored by David Klinghoffer, I compared some examples of junk science to holocaust denial and got ribbed for it:

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2007/06/03/academic-freedom-evaporates/

(See comment #2.)

Well, I just discovered that my comparison was not original. Ellen Goodman had made a similar comparison months earlier. I had not seen her article until today:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

I yield to Ms. Goodman the dubious honor of having to point out the analogy between junk science and junk history. (She got ribbed for this as well.) I ask my right wing blogger opponents the following: Why is holocaust denial taboo in academic circles when equally-unsupported-by-fact junk science is ok?

And why has there been absolutely no cry from the right wing bloggers in support of this academic who was recently denied tenure:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Controversial-Professor.html

Maybe the right wing bloggers want academic freedom only for those who share their ideology?