I think we need to stop treating the term “anti-science” like it’s some kind of ignorance bundle. Like, there’s overlap between antivaxxers and flat earthers, but I don’t think that innacurate dinosaurs are on the same level. And it’s not even a slippery slope.

Like, if we’re talking about creation museums, even, that has nothing to do with pop culture’s outdated perception of dinosaurs. Jurassic Park did not lead to creation museums. Saying that inaccurate dinosaur appearances are on par with dangerous anti-science ideas is dishonest.

“But Kristine, if people think that dinosaurs were featherless, that might lead to them denying actual science!”

Has this ever happened, tho? Has someone really said, “Dinosaurs didn’t have feathers, so I’m a flat-earther now.”

If it happened, it would be an isolated incident.

There is, however, a link between science denial and dinosaur appearance, but it’s not “featherless dinosaurs made me an antivaxxer.” Rather, people who are fundamentalists already believed inaccurate stuff, and they don’t really care what dinosaurs looked like anyway.

You can be upset that innacurate dinosaurs dominate pop culture, but please stop trying to validate your anger by claiming that this is a slippery slope to science denial. You can dislike something without turning it into a cataclysmic disaster.

I’m not saying that innacurate dinosaurs have no negative effects whatsoever, but come on. There is literally no point in sensationalizing the problem by comparing it to actual dangerous ideologies. And it’s kind of insulting, too.

Like, antivaxxers hurt people. Flat-earthers tend to be really bigoted. These are communities that actually harm people- real, living people- so it’s tasteless to lump in “people who don’t know about dinosaurs” because it’s nowhere near as deadly.

So instead of claiming that innacurate dinosaurs are just as bad as antivaxxers . . . Don’t do that. Do literally anything else.