‘Hoaxes’ versus facts in American history

Our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing must be trying for the untold millions of Americans who believe it never happened.

To be fair, it is the sort of thing that is colloquially described as “unbelievable” — as is, for instance, the destructive power of a single nuclear device that could kill 10 million people in a minute. And, to my mind, the fact that so many deadly infectious diseases of yesteryear have gone away, in the developed world, because of dedicated scientists and rational healthcare practices.

For most of us, the fact that these feats are “unbelievable” doesn’t cause us to doubt them. The Moon landing was a triumph; some other NASA missions were not. We saw the disasters, too.

We know what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We know, if we care to, that previous generations were ravaged by polio, small pox and diseases we don’t have to worry about.

Or not. If we would rather deny (or remain ignorant of ) the doings and findings of science, that is absolutely a live option in America today. There are the millions who deny we ever made it to the Moon, and the millions who deny that vaccines are good for people and bad for disease.

If there aren’t millions of people who deny that there is any such thing as a thermonuclear explosion, what are they waiting for? There it is, just begging to be denied. Have you ever seen a thermonuclear explosion? Not on film, but with your own two eyes? No? Me neither. Well, there you go ...

Trump says global warming is a Chinese hoax. If you are the sort of person who, for whatever reason, finds it inconvenient to believe the things that science turns up, take heart!