Conservatism in the "skeptic" community

David Walsh, a historian I follow on Twitter, posted this:

I’ve never liked Michael Shermer and the “skeptic” movement, and I’m not surprised by this, but... when did these guys go all in for the far right? https://t.co/Weh5qJJVvO

— David Walsh (@DavidAstinWalsh) August 8, 2019

The skeptic movement has done great work in countering pseudoscience and its popularization. But the best-known advocates (Skeptical Inquirer, Shermer's Skeptic, Prometheus Press) sometimes support conservative positions.

Not all of them, of course. The now-deceased skeptic stars Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould tended to speak more in a politically left-liberal way than Shermer and some others. Part of the conservative bent has to do with a postivist-empiricist philosophical position. Karl Popper and his "falsification" principle are very influential among this group, which attracts a lot of physical science practicitioners.

Popper was also politically conservative. Or "classical liberal," if you prefer. I just recently read the series of debates between Popper and Theodor Adorno and other participants, which highlight some of the key implications for social theories in Popper's approach. (Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, 1969)

But Popper was also not like some rightwing postmodernist arguing that reality is whatever Republicans say it is. And the emphasis on empiricism and verifiability often does put the skeptics on the opposite side of American conservatives like anti-evolutionists and climate deniers. But also on the other side of some libertarian and left-leaning advocates of "alternative medicine."

Ideological atheism is also popular among the skeptic movement. Atheists like Sam Harris who consider all religion destructive and evil have also jumped on the Islamophobia bandwagon, which generally puts them on the right side of political debates. (The "empiricism" of their Islamophobia also deserves careful scrutiny.)

Michael Shermer is also an advocate of Ayn Randish, Hayekian, "free-market" economics. (Why Ayn Rand Won’t Go Away michaelshermer.com 10/23/2012) The effectiveness of Hayekian economic theories have been empircially disproved time and again.

That's also consistent with an excessive fondness for Karl Popper-type thinking. The effectiveness of Hayekian economic theorists have been empircially disproved time and again. But economics is not subject to the same kind of discrete, controlled, "falsifiable" experiments as in physical science. The "skeptic" views of pscychology and psychiatry also stumble for a similar reason.

Just to be clear, Skeptic magazine does adopt a distinctly politically conservative framing of some public issues. For instance, Great Untruths by Anondah Saide and Kevin McCaffree Skeptic 24:1 (print March 2019, apparently posted online in October 2018) is a review of a book on "emotional resoning", but opens with a polemic defending the repulisve Brett Kavanaugh, framing in typical conservative-victimhood manner. And their critical comments on the book itself amount to complaints that the authors didn't adhere closely enough to stock rightwing complaints about the alleged leftist deviations among American universities.

Uncritically promoting highly dubious, stock rightwing talking points complaining about all the Mean Libruls at colleges also doesn't help to promote the kind of reality-based skeptical thinking the journal tries to support on hard-science issues.