First Blog!!

I am very excited to write my first blog as it will be about something that I have always been interested in and wondered why it happens. In today's social media you often times come across "Breaking News" articles pertaining to some new medical finding and honestly most of them are either stretching the truth or just inaccurate. However, it seems that most people will believe whatever they see and hear on the internet the second they read something from a "credible" source. People will immediately share these posts without even really doing any of their own research to confirm that this article is in fact credible or true. I believe that when it comes to medical news reports people often immediately believe them because the news allegedly came from a doctor or someone in a lab coat. Its human nature to instantly believe someone who seems to have higher authority; however, what I have noticed as more controversial scientific topics have come up in the past few years is that people are more likely to not want to believe it out of either ignorance or fear. Instead they latch onto the nonsensical findings. That is why the same demographic that denies the existence of global warming is convinced that vaccinations cause autism.

After reading “Into the Maelstrom” by Eli Kintisch I was reminded again that scientific findings like human-caused climate change is largely questioned. "Into the Maelstrom" examines this issue repeatedly. It use to be that scientists could release new information as their studies came out and it was widely accepted. However, as Jennifer Francis quickly realized, releasing information that could implicate that humans are directly causing the destruction of their own environment, is an action that gets immediately attacked before the information is given time to be "scientifically" proven.

It will always boggle my mind that people are quick to attack some new information, frequently the stuff that needs to be addressed the most, and accept other information without question. Could this ignorant mentality be an issue for any reform efforts made in order to change the way humans are affecting our environment?