Accusations of hoax resist correction in ways ordinary bias accusations do not

Evidence

The first takes the form of an intense but otherwise conventional political attack charging that climate scientists are biased. It claims that scientists have corrupted the integrity of their research because of their partisan leanings or precommitment to a set of conclusions about global warming and its regulatory solutions. The new conspiracists’ climate-change hoax attack is, by contrast, more fundamental and ultimately more corrosive because it is invulnerable to refutation and correction. When climate change is characterized as a hoax, the charge is not that climate scientists fail to respect the norms of scientific research or that they fail to submit their findings to peer review or that the science is ideologically biased. Climate conspiracists reject the whole of climate science findings with a bare assertion: “Hoax.” — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 243

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the ‘hoax’ charge, which is unfalsifiable, from conventional ‘the science is biased’ criticism, which concedes scientific norms are valid.
• XREF: connects to: Admitting a hoax does not deter believers from accepting its core message. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 433; Factual correction of conspiracism usually fails or backfires — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 119; Factual corrections rarely backfire even on ideologically charged issues — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 137 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Corporate misinformation can be refuted; hoax conspiracism cannot #expands (0.85) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 243
• Even disconfirmation evidence often fails to break a person’s confirmation bias #expands (0.82) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 94
• Confirmation bias and inertia make reputations resistant to disconfirming evidence #corroborates (0.82)
• People resist updating beliefs even at the cost of accuracy #corroborates (0.72)