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Letter: Scientific facts are not ‘scaremongering’

(Susan Montoya Bryan | The Associated Press) This Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017 file photo shows a model of a Tyrannosaurus rex on display in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, N.M. New research released on Friday, March 29, 2019 captures a fossilized snapshot of the day nearly 66 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth, fire rained from the sky and the ground shook far worse than any modern earthquake. It was the day that nearly all life on Earth went extinct, including the dinosaurs.

I read the recent Tribune article entitled, ”Utah parents say school science guidelines are ‘scaremongering’” with great dismay.

Established bedrock scientific principles of evolution and climate change (resulting from human-produce greenhouse gases) were dismissed and denigrated by some parents as “politically driven”?

These principles are scientific facts, not political manipulations, and have been validated by impartial scientific experts (biologists, geneticists, and climate scientists) to a degree comparable to any other established scientific principles.

Human psychology has often been driven by the idiom, “Believe what you want to believe.” But when “alternative truth” is weighted more by religious beliefs or political ideology than observable reality (i.e., science), we have a real problem.

It is true that science and ideology often create cognitive dissonance, but that confusion is not solved by attacking scientific truths. The scientist Copernicus was vindicated over time when savagely attacked by deniers of his time. (The Earth really does revolve around the sun!)

I am not attacking religion here. I also am a believer. I am standing up for objective science. For the sake of the future of our children, let’s keep our public school science curriculum, and our religion, “pure and undefiled.”

Gene Jones, Salt Lake City

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