The Science Is Settled. Selectively.

'Settled' turns out to mean 'settled when it agrees with me,' and the Babylon Bee needed exactly one headline to prove it.

The Bee's October 26 headline reads: "'The Science On Climate Change Is Settled,' Says Man Who Does Not Believe The Settled Science On Gender, Unborn Babies, Economics." The man in question pleads with his coworker to believe the science on climate change, while not believing the science on the number of genders, the fact that unborn babies are fully human, or that socialism has failed every time it has been tried.

The contradiction is the whole bit, and it is a precise one. Deference to science is demanded as a duty in the first clause and withdrawn as a courtesy in the second. Climate gets the lab coat; gender, the unborn, and economics get the hand-wave. The word 'settled' does not describe the state of the evidence in this headline — it describes the state of the speaker's preferences.

This is satire about a pattern, not a report about any real person, and no pundit's name or photo is attached to it. That restraint is the point: the pattern is recognizable without a face, because everyone has met the voice. It is the voice that says 'believe the scientists' with one breath and 'economics is a hoax' with the next, and means both completely.

So the science is settled. Selectively. The three exceptions are listed right there in the headline, in case anyone wondered which sciences had to wait outside.

Sources: The Babylon Bee (Oct. 26, 2026).