news sciences: Friday Fun: We all believe in science at some point…or did we? [Confessions of a Science Librarian]

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. But at least we can laugh as we’re sucked relentlessly into the Hellmouth.

Maybe if we all collectively understood science and evidence better, the path to Hell wouldn’t be quite so straight and narrow. So maybe that’s what’s making me think of these particular funny bits today. And by funny I mean so funny in hurts.

First up, we have retired basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal, who apparently really and truly believes the world is flat. He has a doctorate in Education, by the way, which I just can’t even.

Shaquille O’Neal agrees with Kyrie Irving, believes the Earth is flat

At this point, you might as well just assume that your favorite NBA person fundamentally rejects a basic tenet of astronomy, and believes that the Earth is in fact flat, and not a sphere. You can now add Shaquille O’Neal to the list of people who buy into the theory that Kyrie Irving revealed he subscribes to over the All-Star Break.

Other Cavaliers have backed him in this belief, and other players have hinted at it. Maybe it’s just one big marketing stunt. Maybe it’s just players toying with fans and the media.

Or maybe they really believe this, rejecting accepted scientific principles and the first-person accounts of those who have, you know, actually been to space. As this mindset willfully ignores and rejects evidence accepted as fact by the entire scientific community, there’s no real way of arguing against it. We’ve reached a point where basic elements of human existence in the universe are subject to interpretation and subjective reassessment. Whatever that says about the state of the world, at least it shows a level of intellectual curiosity and contemplative thought from NBA players have that has been absent in years past.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if some really bad news scientific facts were in fact hoaxes or conspiracies or fake news. Right? Right? In any case, leave it to The Beaverton….

World’s climate scientists now cling to hope that global warming is Chinese hoax

GENEVA — Some of the world’s top climate scientists have penned a letter to the International Journal of Climatology, Friday, expressing their belief that humanity’s only hope for survival is the accuracy of Trump’s global warming Chinese hoax connection.

The authors wrote that with Trump’s plans to tear up the Paris Agreement, install a climate change denier as head of the EPA and crank the heat in government buildings while opening all of the windows, climate change being a hoax was the only way the authors could avoid crying at the sight of their children. The close to four hundred esteemed scientists who signed the letter added that this far-flung hope was also what was keeping them from “replacing their dietary water with pure grain alcohol.”

Of course, there’s also the Borowitz Report point of view, in which we’re basically all fucked.

Nation apparently believed in science at some point

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report)—Historians studying archival photographs from four decades ago have come to the conclusion that the U.S. must have believed in science at some point.

According to the historian Davis Logsdon, who has been sifting through mounds of photographic evidence at the University of Minnesota, the nation apparently once held the view that investing in science and even math could yield accomplishments that would be a source of national pride.

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