The entire history of denial of man-made climate change is lousy with the work of scientists who, in some tiny way, at some moment in time, might have concluded something that seemed right, but which later was shown to be obviously wrong.

I have a favorite word when it comes to describing conservative cogitation: “eisegesis.” It is the opposite of exegesis, which means taking a collection of data of any type and logically wrestling a conclusion from it. Eisegesis, conversely, looks at any pile of data in order to find confirmation in it of what they already “know” to be true. Which is to say: the opposite of science.

Once you start looking in any segment of the wingnutosphere, you can’t but notice eisegesis constantly.

— Rick Perlstein, Science Is Political, The American Prospect, 2024