Most people prepare for travels by reading about their destination; it always seemed an odd approach to me. I find it much easier and more pleasant to focus with the sights and smells of a place rattling around in my mind. Michael Specter Read Quote
Someone told me that they didn’t want to take a flu shot because they didn’t want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night? Michael Specter Read Quote
The most blatant forms of denialism are rarely malevolent; they combine decency, a fear of change, and the misguided desire to do good – for our health, our families, and the world. That is why so many physicians dismiss the idea that a patient’s race can, and often should, be used as a tool for better diagnoses and treatment. Michael Specter Read Quote
Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often don’t seem fake at all. Michael Specter Read Quote
Humanity has nearly suffocated the globe with carbon dioxide, yet nuclear power plants that produce no such emissions are so mired in objections and obstruction that, despite renewed interest on every continent, it is unlikely another will be built in the United States. Michael Specter Read Quote
If people want to believe that our ancestors were riding around on dinosaurs or that the protracted, increasing, and devastating warming of the Earth is just nature doing its thing – I guess I feel I have more useful battles to fight. Michael Specter Read Quote
Newspapers and magazines have been valuable to us precisely because they apply filters to information, otherwise known as editing, and often the Internet seems valuable for exactly the opposite reason: You can get your news without a filter. Michael Specter Read Quote
Just because you read a report in the ‘New York Times,’ the ‘Economist,’ or, yes, ‘The New Yorker’ doesn’t make it true. But we do know that a few people have evaluated that story with what strikes me as fairly objective standards of reason. Michael Specter Read Quote
