Misunderstood your comment; my criticism didn't make sense with the correct interpretation. Sorry I didn't get to the post before you did.
Now that I've got it right, though, it seems to me that the behavior you're talking about might indeed be made sense of in terms of treating scientific integrity as a less sacred value than whatever you're trying to defend. "Screw inconclusive evidence; people are hurting" is exactly what I'd expect to see from an activist who'd absorbed a meme somewhere about the scientific process being just another frame for looking at the world, and that's unfortunately not an uncommon one in activist circles. I don't think there are all that many activists who would explicitly endorse this way of looking at the problem, but you don't need explicit endorsement to decide some scientific body is untrustworthy for ideological reasons.
More charitably, in the context of social science and medicine, there's quite a lot of stuff that's still under dispute or has only weak evidence pointing one way or another (including the linked post) and choosing to favor the interpretation you find more convenient for political reasons doesn't quite seem to qualify as lying. Particularly since everyone's got their halo effects coloring everything. JulianMorrison's comment is the first time I've ever seen someone coming out and saying it in public, though.
Not the optimal move, certainly, but I wouldn't call it extremely stupid.
"Screw inconclusive evidence; people are hurting" is exactly what I'd expect to see from an activist who'd absorbed a meme somewhere about the scientific process being just another frame for looking at the world, and that's unfortunately not an uncommon one in activist circles.
Changing your frame of looking at the world is like changing clothing.
You don't go slopply dressed in an environment where everyone wears suits to convince them to follow your political ideology.
I don't follow hardcore feminism but if I would move in an environment where...
Paper by the Cultural Cognition Project: The culturally polarizing effect of the "anti-science trope" on vaccine risk perceptions
This is a great paper (indeed, I think many at LW would find the whole site enjoyable). I'll try to summarize it here.
Background: The pro/anti vaccine debate has been hot recently. Many pro-vaccine people often say, "The science is strong, the benefits are obvious, the risks are negligible; if you're anti-vaccine then you're anti-science".
Methods: They showed experimental subjects an article basically saying the above.
Results: When reading such an article, a large number of people did not trust vaccines more, but rather, trusted the American Academy of Pediatrics less.
My thoughts: I will strive to avoid labeling anybody as being "anti-science" or "simply or willfully ignorant of current research", etc., even when speaking of hypothetical 3rd parties on my facebook wall. This holds for evolution, global warming, vaccines, etc.
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Also included in the article: references to other research that shows that evolution and global warming debates have already polarized people into distrusting scientists, and evidence that people are not yet polarized over the vaccine issue.
If you intend to read the article yourself: I found it difficult to understand how the authors divided participants into the 4 quadrants (α, ß, etc.) I will quote my friend, who explained it for me:
I was helped by following the link to where they first introduce that model.
The people in the top left (α) worry about risks to public safety, such as global warming. The people in the bottom right (δ) worry about socially deviant behaviors, such as could be caused by the legalization of marijuana.
People in the top right (β) worry about both public safety risks and deviant behaviors, and people in the bottom left (γ) don't really worry about either.