From P. Jerome:
This is a really interesting article, far more positive (coming from MIT) about skeptical data analyses than one might expect. This portion caught my attention:
Data literacy, for antimaskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites [53]. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control [39, 52, 97]. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia.
The authors also cite how the work of Thomas Kuhn has become critically important to “anti-maskers,” which is itself a positive statement given Kuhn’s pivotal role in the concept of paradigm shifts in science. A recent Corbett Report on Kuhn was a great introduction to this line of thinking, for those who are unfamiliar:
https://www.corbettreport.com/sciencesays/