I think people have to get more serious about separating science as a procedure from scientism (that is, philosophical issues that are often discussed in tandem). When one uses the phrase, “science denier”, it often means, “you don’t agree with my philosophy/metaphysics/economic policy” rather than “you deny these particular facts”, which causes people to be rightly concerned. I’m not optimistic that this is going to change anytime soon, but this, I think, accounts for many of the issues in current discourse.
In the UK we've seen a fascinating evolution from skeptic societies to science denial conspiracy theorists. To _massively_ simplify what's a relatively complex piece of sociological weirdness: using your intuition about how the world works is a good heuristic for spotting charlatans, but it fails you badly when the science tells you something that doesn't accord with your intuition.
I tend to limit my use of "science denier" when an organization or its followers systematically deny scientific knowledge on multiple unrelated fronts.
Interestingly, I have read that in the 1920s and 30s, there was actually an organized relativity denialist movement, that wrote articles and held public protests.
Relativity was a huge philosophical shift from the comparative simplicity of Newton's laws. It's not surprising that there was resistance to it.
Tesla was famously against relativity, telling the New York Times, "Einstein’s relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king".
Indeed, and the anti-relativity movement also had a very strong undercurrent of antisemitism.
Chances are, most of the people marching against relativity had no clue about Newtonian mechanics, and were told stuff such as relativity leading to moral relativism.
Since I read Seeing Like a State, I've started to think "charlatan" whenever I hear the word "science". As in "scientific forestry", "climate science" (scientists who study Earth's climate call themselves meteorologists), "scientific racism". Is "computer science" an exception? I'm not game to speculate.
Which actual scientists describe themselves that way? We're physicists, geologists, botanists, psychologists or whatever. When someone says they're a scientist, it suggests that they're not part of any actual scientific discipline, but making a false appeal to authority.
>scientists who study Earth's climate call themselves meteorologists
This is just incorrect. Meteorologists don't study Earth's climate, they study weather. Meteorologists don't use ice cores or tree rings for their research, they study much shorter-term fluid dynamics. Climate scientists do study climate, and not weather. The disciplines are related (specifically, they're under atmospheric sciences), but to dismiss either one as being less scientific is picking favorites despite all evidence to the contrary. I suppose you could use the synonym "climatology" if you want a word without "science" in it, but it seems like a pretty silly heuristic regardless.
