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The Motivated Rejection of Science
Layzej writes "New research (PDF) to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found that those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences. The researchers, led by UWA School of Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, found that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science. It also predicted the rejection of the link between tobacco and lung cancer and between HIV and AIDS. Conspiratorial thinking was a lesser but still significant determinant of the rejection of all scientific propositions examined, from climate to lung cancer. Curiously, public response to the paper has provided a perfect real-life illustration of the very cognitive processes at the center of the research."
A lot of people simply want to set up a social environment where the strongest can exploit the weak. They do this either because they already have strength or because they believe they can reach for that rainbow.
It is said that we should not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But your captains of politics and corporate welfare aren't incompetent - they're smart as hell and I'm sure they know exactly what they're doing.