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I had thought science denial would hit a bottom — that once people began to experience the direct consequences of being wrong, of holding fast to beliefs that were demonstrably at odds with well-established science, they would drop those beliefs. It turns out I was wrong.

As a research scientist who’s also dedicated many years to science communication, coming to grips with this truth has been hard. It leaves us all facing difficult questions about how science and society can — or cannot — co-evolve when so many are opting out of science. How we address these questions may determine the fate of democratic societies in a world where excellence in science translates directly into both soft and hard power.

Science denial has little to do with science

My first experience with this kind of science opt-out (I’ll also call it “denial”) came in the late 2000s when I was writing a science blog for a major U.S. news outlet. Anytime I’d write a piece about climate change, the comments section would quickly fill up with the most aggressively ignorant opinions I’d ever encountered. People would claim the science was a hoax. They would claim scientists were only in it for the money. They would say things that even a freshman taking a planetary science class would know were glaringly wrong.

Being committed to the ideals of science communication, I did my best to engage with the commenters. I would explain what scientists knew about radiation transfer through an atmosphere (the basis of the greenhouse effect). I would lay out how hard-won evidence — from ice cores to tree rings — allowed us to unravel millennia of Earth’s response to changing atmospheric and ocean chemistry. Finally, I would detail how consensus works in science and how communities of researchers build a public understanding of their field.

None of it mattered.

One notable example of my encounter with science opt-out came when I tried engaging with a reader on a personal level. In response to a climate post, he had sent me an email telling me that I should be arrested for my climate lies. I replied and asked him about himself. What did he do for a living? He said he owned a dry-cleaning business. I asked some questions about the business. After a bit, I made a purposefully ridiculous claim about dry-cleaning chemicals. When he responded that I was clearly ignorant of the work he did every day, I said, “Yes, and that’s what your claims sound like to a climate scientist.”

The point was lost. Nothing would shake him from his beliefs. From this, and many other encounters, I learned that science denial is not about science — that reader and others I’ve engaged with expressed no curiosity about how planetary climates actually worked. Instead, it is about a kind of tribalism: If you identify as a member of certain groups — usually ones that have a particular political orientation — then you oppose certain kinds of science.

This opposition comes regardless of whether they know any of the deep (and often difficult) details required to make sweeping claims about that science. So, what might have been an interesting back-and-forth with a reader about what determines a planet’s temperature becomes a tiring slog through their fixations on Al Gore or long-refuted claims that 1970s climate science predicted “global cooling.”

Seeing was not believing

Despite these experiences, I still believed that once we all saw firsthand the reality that a field of science was predicting, denial would have to fall. Then came COVID-19. I was already watching the new resistance to vaccines rise with its all-too-predictable outcomes, like the 2017 measles outbreak at Disneyland . But with COVID-19, the willingness to ignore what was right before people’s eyes rose to a new level.

Before I go further, though, I want to be clear that the CDC and others in public health did make mistakes during this difficult period. It was, after all, a “novel” coronavirus and the first pandemic of the modern age. Also, I’m all in for discussions about whether and how some measures taken by public health officials went too far. If we don’t have these discussions, then how else can we learn what to do in the next pandemic? What we can’t argue over, however, is the reality of COVID-19 or the ability of the vaccines that scientists developed to save lives.

With COVID-19, just like with climate, lines were drawn, and tribalism kicked in. The famous cases of people dying of COVID-19 and still proudly proclaiming their resistance to a vaccine that might have saved them told the tale in no uncertain terms. They’d opted all the way out.

Now we live in a time when science denial inhabits the highest levels of power and receives broad acceptance. At the institutional level, climate science in the U.S. (along with many other types of science) is being decimated. The U.S. government lost 10,000 STEM PhDs in 2025 (compared to about 4,500 in 2024 ) in the wake of the present administration’s aggressive funding cuts to its own world-renowned scientific institutions. At the popular level, social media is awash with influencers routinely hosting guests claiming the Moon landings never happened.

As part of my work in science communication, I’ve appeared on podcasts associated with the “manosphere,” including The Joe Rogan Experience . Because of these appearances, I often have conversations with young men who have a clear interest in science, but who’ve also been led into strange vortices of science denial. “So, you really think we went to the Moon?” they ask. Or, “Scientists are always hiding the truth about stuff, right?”

I was not routinely fielding questions like these in 2010. There has been a shift in the cultural current. We now live in a kind of mirror-verse where opinions, if repeated often enough, can replace the decades of work needed to establish a scientific truth. Building off a narrative that falsely associates expertise with oppressive authority, influencers seeking clicks have driven viewers like the people I encounter into a haze of impossible claims presented as revealed truth.

So, where does it end? Surely there must be consequences for so many people opting out of science in a world that is, in fact, dominated by science.

The price of denial

Yes, there are consequences, but they aren’t occurring on an individual scale, as I expected them to a decade ago. Instead, they are playing out for society as a whole.

If you were interested in the cutting edge of science in 1600, you would have traveled to Italy. That is where wealthy government patrons were supporting Galileo and other scientists’ efforts to push the frontiers of telescope design, mechanics, and other fields. But if you were interested in the cutting edge of science in 1700, you did not go to Italy anymore. The baton of scientific excellence had already been passed to England and France. Likewise, if you wanted to be where the most important scientific discoveries were being made in 1900, you went to Germany, but by 1960, you would be on a plane to the U.S. instead.

The reasons for this ever-shifting localization of the best science have everything to do with a nation’s broad commitment to science. History shows that once a nation begins to slip in those commitments, the frontier of scientific progress moves elsewhere. Just as important, history shows that the nations making this commitment are the ones that prosper from the latest scientific breakthroughs.

It’s already becoming clear how the infection of science denial — of opting out of a commitment to science — is affecting the U.S. Because the current administration has embraced climate denial, it also remains in denial about the world’s ongoing energy transition away from fossil fuels. In 2025, global electric vehicle sales increased by 20% , but in the US, the growth rate was less than 10%. Today, the largest producer of new EVs is China.

Science and science leadership don’t stand still. When a society becomes infected with science denial, when its populace thinks it’s OK to opt out of treating science as a source of public truths, it elects leaders who lead with that vision of the world. But the bill always comes due. When those leaders slash science budgets for political reasons and create chaos in their own world-renowned scientific institutions, it becomes impossible to plan on the decades-long timescales required to ensure the nation is still a scientific leader well into the future.

Worse, the rest of the world is always watching. The best and brightest students from across the globe — the ones who used to come to your universities to learn and then stick around to start businesses — go where they will be supported and not harassed.

In the long run, the price you pay for science denial is the denial of your own scientific capacities.

This article Who pays the cost when Americans opt out of science? is featured on Big Think .

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Rebecca Yarros, author of the widely popular fantasy romance book series Fourth Wing (The Empyrean series), announced the title of a new book called Threshing Day, which will be released on September 29, 2026.

Yarros originally revealed the hotly rumored book without a title, but with the ability to preorder back in April. Fans instantly speculated on what it was; Yarros had disclosed it was an "Untitled Empyrean" book, but that it was not book 4. Despite the lack of details, the preorders shot the book to #2 on Amazon .

It turns out the official title reveal was being held for Conscription Day, July 15, which is a day in the series where cadets need to prove themselves by surviving through a life-or-death challenge in order to become dragon riders.

Yarros shared the announcement and details in an Instagram post , stating the book will contain a collection of 13 stories from fan-favorite characters during their Threshing Day (the day they get their dragons).

The deluxe edition will have 16 original art pieces in full color by the artist Joe Requeza .

Yarros also confirmed Xaden's story – one of the main characters of the series, which has been a long-time POV request from readers – will be included in the book, as well as published on her website.

Yarros confirmed she is still in the process of writing book 4, and readers are waiting patiently for any release date news. Book 1 in The Empyrean series, Fourth Wing, was published on May 2, 2023. Book two, Iron Flame, came out on November 7, 2023, and book 3, Onyx Storm, released January 21, 2025.

Due to the bursting popularity of The Empyrean series and the fantasy romance genre in general, a Fourth Wing TV series is in the works at Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. It's unknown if any character details from Threshing Day will be included in the show.

For more on The Empyrean series, check out our Fourth Wing hub with everything from latest news to how to buy the books to cool board games to play with fellow dragon riders!

For those looking to get your gloved hands on Threshing Day, you can preorder the book right here , which will release in stores on September 29, 2026.

Jessie Wade is Associate Director of Editorial Programming at IGN. You can find her playing cozy games on her Switch or watching the latest rom-com and drama shows, as well as getting lost in way too many fantasy romance books. She would be a dragon rider at Basgiath War College (even though a Scribe also sounds cool).

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Mario Kart Wiicompiled is currently in development for PC, targeting an August beta release.

The effort reflects the first static recompilation of a Wii title for modern hardware.

The game will join a growing list of recomp projects, already targeting N64, Saturn, PlayStation 2, and additional platforms.

Emulators are very cool, making it easy to access vast libraries of our favorite games on modern hardware, like our favorite Android handheld consoles . But for as great as they can be, some very clever programmers have been doing one better, working to decompile and recompile classic games so that they run natively on today’s machines. We’ve already seen efforts to pull off this trick for games originally released on everything from the N64 to PlayStation 2 , and today we’re hearing about what’s supposedly the first such attempt for the Nintendo Wii.

Is there any game series more universally beloved than Mario Kart? Platformers may not be for everyone, but who doesn’t feel instantly at home behind the wheel of a shell-dodging go-kart? Already this month we’ve had the classic series on our mind thanks to a very creative playable YouTube version , as well as getting news of the end of the old Mario Kart Tour app . And now Retro Rewind developer patchzy is sharing the news on X about an upcoming static recompilation of Mario Kart Wii — and they’ve already got a video preview to show off: