Mark Hoofnagel of the Denialism Blog and Orac take a stand for using the term “denial” for purveyors of pseudoscience, Matt Nisbet gets huffy about name-calling.

There’s something basically weird about this debate: Nisbet is the great promoter of framing, but wasn’t one of the insights about framing supposed to be that part of winning debates is winning the fight over what to call something? That abortion opponents are doing well because they’ve labeled themselves “pro-life” opponents of “partial birth abortion”? I’ve disagreed with the apparent belief of the framing folks that this should be the focus, rather than substantiative arguments, but obviously that sort of thing is important.

On the other hand, I don’t understand Hoofnagel and Orac’s claim that this is just a matter of accurate labeling. Words are but arbitrary marks, we can use whatever label we want as long as it gets the point across. While the basic idea behind the Denialism Blog involves some information content, it’s also obviously about a hope of giving people an image of the “denier,” an easily dismissed kook akin to the conspiracy theorist. This is a worthy endeavor; it would be nice if global warming deniers and creationists had the same public image as conspiracy theorists. But it’s not purely a matter of giving information.

Final note: Orac is understandably confused by Nisbet’s behavior, and suggests he’s abandoned framing. But I think Nisbet has stuck to the framing model pretty well: use talking points and labels, don’t engage on substance. After all, what is “name calling” but another form of name calling?