($64,000 being “big money” ages ago, before anyone who wanted to be a millionaire had a chance to be able to become one via a game show)

The context of the quote is really not all that important, though if you read the article in which it appears, an opponent of the recent U.S. healthcare legislation admits he’s unfamiliar with all the details he’s opposing. He says, “I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.”

Then comes the money shot:

If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?

This applies to pretty much everyone who is in opposition to some scientific tenet, and especially to situations where the argument has gotten political. Anti-relativity cranks? They don’t understand relativity — invariably they will insist on a preferred reference frame or absolute simultaneity. Screw nature and what we actually observe. Quantum theory? Nah, God doesn’t play dice. Everything secretly really has a trajectory. My classical solution is just as good at solving this one problem. QM just can’t work that way, experimental evidence be damned. Evolution? Nope, the world is just 6000 years old. I’ve got a book that says so, Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs and besides, evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Global warming? Bzzzt. Inhofe built an igloo after it snowed in Washington DC. It hasn’t warmed since 1995. Besides, Al Gore is fat.

This is painfully common — some of the loudest, angriest critics of the Affordable Care Act are also some of the least informed, most confused, embarrassingly ignorant observers anywhere. In this case, Cassell has become a national joke because he’s repulsed by a health care reform plan that he fully admits he doesn’t understand.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic

This turns into a template

This is painfully common — some of the loudest, angriest critics of the [Area of Science] are also some of the least informed, most confused, embarrassingly ignorant observers anywhere. In this case, [Name] has become a national joke because he’s repulsed by a scientific theory that he fully admits he doesn’t understand.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic

And that’s so true. It is pathetic that people can oppose something they don’t understand. They just know it’s wrong, dammit; who cares if they’re tilting at windmills? That they’ve been lied to, and they uncritically accepted (and perpetuate) the lie, because they can’t be bothered to think and/or become informed. We’re tempted to laugh, but there’s that sickening thought that these people vote, and the people they vote for think they can reshape scientific truth by decree, in order to align it with some ideology they possess.

So try and reveal the real truth of the matter:

Ask them what the deal is, and if they can’t tell you exactly what the deal is, ask them why they are opposing it and fighting against it. I fear it will do little good with people who refuse to think or become informed, but it’s worth shot.