agnotology
antiscience – Attitudes that reject science and the scientific method anti-intellectualism – Hostility to and mistrust of education, philosophy, art, literature, and science Cancer Wars – Documentary, a six-part documentary that aired on PBS in 1997, based on Robert N. Proctor's 1995 book, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What we Know and Don't Know About Cancer cognitive dissonance – Stress from contradictory beliefs, a social psychology theory that may explain the ease of maintaining ignorance (because people are driven to ignore conflicting evidence) and which also provides clues to how to bring about knowledge (perhaps by forcing the learner to reconcile reality with long-held, though inaccurate beliefs; see Socratic method) conspiracy of silence (expression) – unspoken group consensus to not mention, discuss, or acknowledge a given subject creationism – Belief that nature originated through supernatural acts, systematic denial of scientific biological realities by misrepresenting them in terms of various dogmatic tenets denialism – Person's choice to deny psychologically uncomfortable truth Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their skill level, and people with high ability at a task underestimate their skill level. intelligent design – Pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, a class of creationism that attempts to support assorted topics in biological denialism by misrepresenting them and related junk science as scientific research Japanese commercial whaling – Commercial hunting of whales by the Japanese fishing industry, an attempt at obfuscation of the culpability of commercial whaling by misrepresenting its junk-scientific rationale as scientific research. junk science – Scientific data considered to be spurious or fraudulent vaccine controversies – Reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated or have one's children vaccinated, based on assorted junk-scientific strategies to misrepresent life- and health-saving technologies as harmful rather than beneficial.