But science is (or should not be) a plebiscite wherein the public gets to choose which interpretation of data is the most accurate. (Yes, the audience gets to pick the winner of American Idol or the Presidential Election. But that’s not a scientific endeavor.)

Suppose (I’m being hypothetical of course) there’s a game show in which two contestants are shown an optical illusion, in which two lines of the same length seem to be different because of the way the arrows are positioned at the end of the lines (>— — —< < — — — >).

Authority 1 looks at the lines and comments “Clearly the second line is longer than the first line.”

Authority 2 takes a ruler and measures the lines: “They are the same length.”

The moderator turns to the audience: “Which Authority is correct?”

52% of the audience think that the second line is longer than the first because it seems to be. They decide that measuring lines with a ruler is not as accurate as eyballing them. “Fake rulers!”

The Catholic church decided that Galileo’s experiments were not true because they contradicted the preconceptions of the Catholic church.

Barry Loudermilk decided that the scientific evidence supporting the notion that climate change resulted from recent man-made activities was not true because it didn’t conform to his image of a God who creates the world to be the way it is.

If people want to believe in pseudo-science (whether it’s climate change denial or astrology), that’s their right. But they shouldn’t claim that their unsubstantiated conclusions are based on scientific inquiry, because they’re not.