Oxford Dictionaries is playing politics by picking ‘post-truth’ as its ‘word of the year’

The BBC was recently exposed for buying more copies of the Guardian than of any other paper. I imagine they must get through quote a pile of Guardians at Oxford Dictionaries, too. How else could they have come up with the idea of making ‘post-truth’ their word of the year?

The trouble with the concept of ‘post-truth’ is that it is itself untrue. It implies that there was a golden age of scientific reason which has now passed. There wasn’t. People have always been prone to superstition, prejudice and to making emotional judgements. They still are, but if anything, scientific evidence is treated with far more reverence than it ever has been. As Claire Fox observed in the Spectator last week, there has been a noticeable trend in public debate over the past decade towards people quoting statistics and studies to back up their arguments.

‘Post truth’ is what the left shouts at you when you refuse to accept any evidence dressed up as science.