The (Un)scientific Method: Silencing Scientists - the (Un)Scientific Method - Medium
One longtime public health researcher said that scientists feel under siege from “industrial-scale doubt promulgators,” extreme social media harassment and personal attacks.
“If you discover something important that requires an industry or industries to rethink their practices and products, you are guaranteed to invite a deluge of unwanted attention, and you will not have the resources to defend yourself,” this university scientist told me. “It is hard to have optimism that any important discovery I might make and publish will have a positive influence on potential policy implications.”
Defending science should not be a partisan issue. The gathering of evidence and the pursuit of truth should be at the core of every decision we make, every policy that is formulated, every effort to protect the health of people and the planet. Science will not always provide sensible solutions to the problems plaguing our world. But at the very least, politicians and policymakers must understand the facts, the correlations, the relationships, the data, the laws of nature, before they act, rather than molding the facts to suit their personal convictions, ignoring the science if they disagree or even eliminating the pursuit of science.
More: The (Un)scientific method: Silencing scientists – The (Un)Scientific Method – Medium