Okay, so this is going to be a kind of rambling discussion topic thing… First off:

What is ‘anti-science’?
Well, technically, ’anti-science’ isn’t actually a single large movement… Rather, it’s a group of different smaller movements who share the same core belief: that the scientific method is ultimately flawed, that people should move away from science and into mysticism. From fundamentalism to the ‘alternative medicine’ craze, increasing numbers of people are moving away from conventional science, and this topic will look at:
1. Why they’re rejecting science
2. Some of the beliefs and institutions they’re embracing instead.
3. Why this is a problem.
So anyway…

WHY PEOPLE ARE REJECTING SCIENCE:
First off, the thing to remember is that the biggest issue regarding public perception of science is the issue of ‘trust’. Trust is what allows the public to accept the claims that scientists make: most people just don’t have the training to be able to understand the papers written on a certain subject, and so they take it on trust that this research is correct. The problem is that in recent years that sense of trust has been broken down somewhat, due to a number of factors: the politicization of science, media alarmism, the fact that so much modern research is completely removed from day-to-day life, the way that science is being taught in school. I’ll go into all those later, but the point I’m trying to make is that this trust should be there. I’m not talking about unwavering acceptance of every study, because that would be stupid… I’m talking about trust in the institution of science, trust in the idea that the universe can actually be explained through rational thought and trust in the idea of rational thought itself. And that’s an important thing to have, because otherwise you get faith healers, homeopathic medicine at $45 a pop, creationism being taught in science class, and even worse.
I should note here that the idea of trust in the scientific method can have some fairly large problems, which I’ll go into later, but the point is that even those problems don’t justify discarding the entire edifice of science and reason, as many people have done.

Science and Counterintuitivity:
All right, overlooking the fact that 'counterintuitivity' isn't actually a real word, what that means is that science is generally rejected if it runs counter to someone’s intuitive ideas on how things work. This is why little kids generally can’t get a handle on the idea that the Earth is a sphere instead of being flat. This is actually an easy enough problem to counter, since you just have to hammer the point home enough times and eventually it’ll stick. The problem is that some people don’t want it to stick, or want to control what information sticks and what doesn’t. Ever heard of the ‘Teach the Controversy’ movement? Well, it’s basically about how schools should actually tell children about the supposed controvery surrounding subjects like evolution, and present them with alternatives; in this case, intelligent design.
The problem is that this approach is a blatant appeal to the whole ‘counterintuitive’ problem… You tell a kid that “we’re here due to a complex system of chance genetic variation and natural selection that meant we gradually evolved from other animals” and then you tell him that “we’re here because a big guy made us”, then which one do you think he’s going to believe? This approach also fosters an inbuilt suspicion of science in children, so it should come as no surprise that it’s being repeatedly advocated by the religious right. This page http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html gives a particularly good description of the problem.



Science and Morality:
I mentioned before how we should have ‘trust’ in the scientific method. Well, that statement needs to be taken with a sizeable grain of salt, since the area of ethics and morality is where strict scientific efficiency doesn’t necessarily hold up. I’m not going to say that science doesn’t shoulder some of the responsibilities for stuff like the hydrogen bomb or chemical warfare, since that’s basically just the tired “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument in a different form. And I won’t deny that stuff like cloning brings up a lot of tricky ethical problems. But just denouncing science as inherently evil is just as ridiculous and cowardly as declaring it to be infallibly good. There is a very real gap between certain areas of scientific progress and moral integrity, but that problem can only be solved by intelligent, rational debate rather than just hysteria and prejudice, by people actually tackling the problem head-on instead of just retreating into the comfortingly black-and-white worlds of religion and mysicism.

The Politicization of Science:
Actually, a better heading would be ‘the politicization of pseudoscience’, since actual science rarely gets a look in when it comes to government policy. The biggest example here would be the Bush administration’s incessant use of flimsy ‘studies’ to justify everything from oil drilling to their denial of global warming. That’s hardly the first such instance of the government co-opting bad science (see the Reagan administration’s endorsement of the loathsome Edward Teller), but it’s reached almost epidemic proportions recently, with studies on everything from the environment to stem cells, reproductive rights, missile defence, and ‘intelligent design’. So you can hardly blame people when they accuse science of being biased or whatever, and I think that it’s this sense of disillusionment and cynicism that’s causing people to move away from it in such great numbers.



Science and Media Representation:
This is Dr Bob. Dr Bob has just completed a study on the effects of a new pill, composed of 1% wheatgerm and 99% oxyroxyboxadrine, on heart disease. In the conclusion to his study, Dr Bob writes “At this point in time, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that this pill has a small chance of decreasing the risk of heart disease by .000001 percent.”
The headlines next day: “MIRACLE DRUG CURES HEART DISEASE! EXPERTS SAY SECRET INGREDIENT IS ‘WHEATGERM’!” Cut to people rioting in the streets, smashing in shop windows in their frantic search for wheatgerm, pouring opened packets of the stuff right down their throats while it sprays messily into the air, people scrabbling on hands and knees as they attempt to collect the leftover residue, a man with a wheatgerm-laden wheelbarrow being chased down by a howling mob, chaos, hysteria, shrieking children being crushed underfoot, etc, etc.
The next day, Dr Bob calls the paper to complain that they exaggerated his claims, and that overconsumption of wheatgerm could lead to minor constipation. Paper prints retraction: “SCIENTIST BLASTS WHEATGERM AS DANGEROUS! MILLIONS DOOMED!” Thousands of people throw down their papers in disgust, shake their fists at those damn scientists in their ivory towers, vow to never be fooled again.
So yeah, that’s the media representation of science in a nutshell. Some research group did an article on it that’s pretty interesting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4771154.stm .

Science and Imagination:
OK, so this one is harder to define than the others… It’s basically the idea that science and reason are the bane of imagination, that actually looking at why things work robs them of their magic. I think that this actually has a fairly large role in the reason people are taking refuge in religion and such, because they want to recapture that feeling of wonder at the world around them.
While I can’t speak for anyone else, and while this issue is entirely a personal, subjective one, I think that an understanding of science actually makes the world seem considerably more interesting… But I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind on this one.


REPLACEMENTS FOR SCIENCE:
Here are a few of the different belief groups and ideas that spring up to explain the way the world works when people start to disown rationalism… Specifically, ‘fundamentalism’, ‘alternative medicine’, and ‘New Age spirituality’. One thing I always find interesting is that these beliefs and such aren’t new, but are instead old ones that actually predate science and which have fairly recently sprung up again: fundamentalism obviously goes back centuries as a religion, while alternative medicine and ’New Age’ are basically just recycled bits of old folklore and superstition with a shiny pseudoscientific polish on them. Anyway…

Fundamentalism:
Fundamentalism is basically when someone decides that their holy book/leader/whatever is infallible and that it should always be obeyed, even if it goes against stuff like societal norms and human rights. The reason I’m singling out fundamentalist religion as opposed to the regular kind is because most ‘mainstream’ religions have become fairly tolerant and wishy-washy when it comes to science: they accept that the scientific method is valid, but they just think there’s something beyond it. Fundamentalism, however, is almost fundamentally (sorry) based on the idea that science is wrong and that religion is the only way to understand things. So while science and the Catholic church, say, can co-exist with a minimum of tension, science and the Southern Baptist church cannot.
The problem with fundamentalism is that, well, do I really need to talk about the problems in taking a violent, misogynistic, barbaric and occasionally nonsensical bronze-age scripture to be your guide through life? Fundamentalism is at heart a retreat into old ways of thinking, and that means a retreat into old hatreds and prejudices: against gays, against women, against other cultures, but worst of all against other ways of thinking.



“Alternative” Medicine:
The reason that “alternative” is in quotes is because, as scientists are fond of saying, there is no alternative medicine: there’s medicine that works, and medicine that doesn’t. So, yeah, alternative medicine is medicine that doesn’t work, or to be more specific medicine that doesn’t hold up under scientific testing (double blind tests and the like). Most alternative medicines are merely useless, like homeopathy. Some, however, are actively dangerous: there are dozens of cases where the remedies prescribed in alternative treatments turn out to be actively poisonous or deadly. To whit:
- A 25-year-old PhD student named Ling Wang died of liver failure after she used a herbal remedy for a stomach upset. http://theharm.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/phd-student-died-liver-failure-cause-of-alternative-medicine/
- In 2007, a 75-year-old man decided to use an ‘alternative’ cancer remedy instead of a conventional one. He died of a Selenium overdose. http://healthfraudoz.blogspot.com/2006/10/man-dies-of-selenium-overdose.html
- A 55-year-old man with cancer died of kidney and liver failure after refusing conventional treatment and instead taking an alternative medicine known as hydrazine sulfate. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/321/7275/1491/b
- A ten-year-old girl named Candace Newmaker was wrapped in a blanket and sat on as part of a process called ‘rebirthing’ that was supposed to cure her of a non-existent illness. She died by suffocating on her own vomit and excrement. http://www.acahf.org.au/articles/candacenewmaker.htm(Warning, read at your own risk)
These cases occur because alternative medicine is nowhere near as rigidly disciplined as the conventional stuff is, so lethal practices can and do slip under the net. Of course, even the ineffective treatments can sometimes be deadly... I think this says it best:
“The other danger - of using alternative therapies instead of conventional medicine - was highlighted by a survey of Internet health practitioners.
The researchers sent a number of "cyberdocs" descriptions of a condition and asked for advice. The correct advice was that the patient should seek immediate medical attention or else they might die.
One cyberdoc recommended "two bowel movements" or "two apples a day", and "Red Clover and Dandelion", which they offered to sell the patient.
Another recommended homeopathic medicine and vitamin C and charged $25 for the advice.” - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/426003.stm .

New Age Spirituality:
‘New Age’ is basically just a really vague catchall for whatever random bits of spirituality and folklore people are into at the moment, from auras and ley-lines to magnet therapy to dolphins and rainbows to deliberate primitivism. The main problem with the New Age movement isn’t that they actively reject science, per se… They just take random aspects of science, filter them through mysticism and stupidity, and then use them as an excuse to hock cheap trinkets and CDs of whale noises. The word ‘quantum’ is generally involved, too.
So yeah, the whole New Age thing is more pathetic than threatening, really. It’s a cheap hoax that fleeces the gullible, but compared to the other stuff mentioned it seems actively benign. After all, promoting and feeding on the stupidity of others is hardly a crime… Right?



WHY IT'S A PROBLEM:
Well, I could mention the increasingly powerful influence that religious fundamentalism has over governments from Saudi Arabia to the US and the problems this causes, or I could mention the people who were killed or swindled by untested, unreliable alternative medicines, or I could mention the different cults and religions that prey on the gullible and unsure and fleece them of their money and possessions, or, well, you get the idea. But I think the most important and the most frightening thing is something much less tangible… Basically, as the 21st century continues, mankind can expect to deal with a shitload of problems: social ones, economic ones, environmental ones, ethical ones. And these problems can only be tackled by logical, rational thought, not by just retreating into wishful thinking and deliberate ignorance.



OK, that’s it. If you didn’t want to read a massive wall of text (and I can’t blame you), then the abridged version is “science is good, mysticism is bad, if people don’t start solving problems rationally then no progress will be made, and Edward Teller was a chode”. Discuss.