If you have heard, let’s say in the pub, on Twitter or in any regional parliament, that climate change has always been there, it is possible that although it bothers you, there is some science in this hoax. Will technology save us from climate change? Is China responsible? Do animals and plants adapt easily to higher temperatures or lower precipitation?
Training, tarot, graphene and xenophobia: this is how anti-vaccine denial moves in Córdoba
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Well, if there’s anything to the scientific method, it’s grey. Science is always ready to make mistakes, correct and improve its diagnosis. On the contrary, hoaxes are made into dogmas, however absurd and simple they may be. In this dialectic, intelligence will always come later, so you must rule the race by different rules.
For this reason, the Scientific Culture Unit of the University of Córdoba (UCO) has organized a marathon of hoaxes against climate change during Science Week. The work’s presenter, Elena Lázaro, President of the Spanish Association for Scientific Communication (AEC2), saw fit to present the work as a “first banner event”. In practice, it was about removing some of the doubts about such an important and global issue as climate chaos.
“One of the unit’s goals in all of its outreach events is to encourage critical thinking, so we’ll tell truth and lies, and see what we all agree on,” Lazzaro explained minutes before the event began. “In any lie there is a danger to democracies. Disinformation is a danger to democracy, not only in terms of climate change, and we have just gone through a crisis like the Covid one, where disinformation has spread dangerously through social networks, virtual and real networks too, because lies flow through Many channels,” he recalls.
In fact, the head of AEC2 advocates that you have to be as prepared to deal with information as you are to deal with disinformation, and warns that “the critical sense is not to doubt everything simply because you have to know how to analyze and find arguments and reliable sources.” So he has They try to do the same, play and have fun.
Three bands and a lot of trola
In order to try to discern how much is true and how much lies have been detected in different channels, Cordoba University He has challenged three of his investigative teams. Specifically, it groups terrestrial ecology, river dynamics and hydrology, and assessment and restoration of agricultural and forest systems.
Led by Cristina Crespo, Cristina Acosta and Eva Contreras, the three teams competed to confirm or deny the information circulating about the case at the event, which was organized under the ironic name “By the Sea of Rabbits; por el monte las sardines”, and which took place in the El Astronauta restaurant with a full house absolute. Among the audience, in addition, from time to time, an expert in this field, some philosopher, professor and former parliamentarian closely associated with the propagation of climate change.
Chance wanted, perhaps without anyone at the event realizing, that this trick-or-treating competition had coincided with the same day as Concentration of anti-inoculation in the City of Justice, Cordobawhose organizers could perfectly compete in a marathon of anti-science shenanigans, despite the lack of any kind of informational purpose.
