Driven Nutts by the debate on the sacking of the government’s drugs policy advisor, A. N. Wilson comes out with this gem on his way to an argument by Hitler:
The trouble with a ‘scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts.
Facts! As Richard Herring once said, “you can prove anything with facts”. No wonder A. N. Wilson is disdainful of them, of those scientists in their “university common rooms” and behind their “Hampstead dining tables“. They don’t have common sense, like A. N. Wilson has, the common sense that tells him scientists were wrong to trust the MRR vaccine, know global warming is real or believe in evolution. Scientists are arrogant and the new Catholic Inquisition because they beleive in research and facts and cannot bear to have anybody contradict them! Yeah!
Oh dear. And I quite enjoyed the Victorians and After the Victorians too. But what a great example of how crackpot ideas attract each other: global warming, MRR, evolution doubts — it’s like playing crackpot bingo.
UPDATE: I forgot that he also came out in favour of eugenics — sterilising the poor and feckless.