The new Cosmos couldn’t have come at a better time, but the real question is whether or not it can undo the damage that science deniers have done.

Being a climate change proponent or supporting evolution while denying the usefulness of vaccinations can make you a dangerous hypocrite – the same scientific rigors prove all of these. Yet, a large number of Americans continue to make artificial distinctions between them, leading to a rampant belief in dangerous and foolish conspiracies. In fact, a new study published this week in the highly-respected Journal of the American Medical Association shows that nearly half of the population subscribes to some form of medical conspiracy.

Looking at them individually:

A full 37% of the population believes that the FDA is working with “Big Pharm” to squelch evidence of the effectiveness of non-traditional, alternative medical treatments for things like cancer and disease because they won’t make money. Here’s a question you should ask yourself: how much do you think it costs to produce a new drug? If you guessed $5 billion, you’re right. Furthermore, just how many of the new drugs tested meet FDA rigor and standards so that they make it to market? If you said only 5% of all drugs created make it to market, you’re right again. Which isn’t to say that drugs aren’t money makers, but… how much do you think it costs to produce a new herbal supplement, slap “all natural” on the front, and then ship it to market, and how many do you think fail FDA testing procedures? Not enough to keep the vitamin and natural supplement industry from becoming a multibillion dollar a year industry.

One in five people think that vaccinations cause autism. This link has been disproved before. Andrew Wakefield was a lair, the BMJ has called him an elaborate fraud, and as a direct result of his bogus study, he’s caused vaccination rates to drop. This one is particularly offensive, because while there’s no evidence that vaccinations cause autism – none – it suggests that some parents would rather have a dead child than a child who is on the autistic spectrum. Vaccinations work; if you doubt it, look up Variola major and get back with us.

Another 20% of respondents believed that cellphones cause cancer. There’s no reliable study at all to suggest this. There isn’t just one study, either; a trip to PubMed to search for the subject turns up hundreds of studies with different search terms ranging from “cell phones and brain tumors” to “cell phones radiation,” with most of them not supporting the link between cell phones and cancer, leading to the conclusion that there isn’t any viable connection between the two.

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/new-study-nearly-half-all-americans-are