Science has had a long and difficult path to its success, and to its well deserved respect over its main competitors: superstition and falsehood.  Arguably, in 1945, that respect reached its zenith, with the detonation of the nuclear weapons that are credited with ending World War 2.  Science-based technology literally exploded onto the public consciousness.  No one could argue with its awesome demonstration of power.  Nor could anyone doubt that the predictions of scientists, no matter how fantastic, must eventually come true.  Why, by 1966, we will all have flying cars!

Of course, we did not.  That is certainly forgivable, but scientific technology has fallen short of public expectations in more ways than just that.  Some years ago, an eminent physicist published a commentary lamenting the transformation of science from an evidence-based endeavor into a proposal-based activity — a guessing game.  Instead of observation, hypothesis, and experiment, physics seemed to have moved its laboratories to the blackboard.  We are all familiar with the confusing maze of cryptic, Greco-Arabic symbols that describe for us such unproved pronouncements as the existence of multiple universes, subatomic strings, and "dark" physics, for none of which there is direct physical evidence.  Yet these educated guesses enjoy a degree of acceptance rivaling that of confirmed experimental results, blurring the line between scientific fact and speculative conjecture.

The resulting destruction of society from corrupt scientists is appalling.  Billions of people are to be impoverished by futile attempts to adjust the climate to some unspecified parameters.  Untold numbers of children are being castrated and otherwise mutilated to serve the transgender gods.  Inadequately tested drugs are being sold, even mandated, to prevent self-limiting diseases, while effective therapies are being suppressed.  In the meantime, actual scientists who dare to report facts are being demonized and deprived of their livelihoods.  Yale medical students recently shouted down a speaker rather than question his data and conclusions.  Medical students!  As Elon Musk might say, let that sink in.  In the near future, how will we trust the medical advice of ideological M.D.s?

Matters have only gotten worse since 1945, a worsening compounded by ineptitude, fraud, and political/ideological partisan bias, not to mention money.

Ineptitude: According to a commentary in the Irish Times,

A catalogue of political mismanagement, poor communications, bureaucratic deception, dithering and scientific ineptitude is set out in the official report on the BSE crisis published yesterday by the British government. Consumers were kept in the dark about the lethal threat to human health involved.

Fraud: Quoting from Explorable dot com,

Unfortunately, there are a number of more sinister cases, where scientists deliberately fabricated results, usually for personal fame. With the advent of corporate and politically funded research grants, poor results are becoming more dictated by policy than by scientific infallibility.

Political bias and personal profit, as included in the quotes above, have also become major factors in the degree to which scientific pronouncements have become suspect.

The Medieval Dark Ages are, whether rightly or wrongly, infamous for medical procedures that caused harm, and sometimes great physical agony, to patients.  The era of world wars and communism is also infamous for practices and policies by governments resulting from purported science.  These included intentional genocide and unintended famine.

Clearly, as demonstrated at Yale's medical school, the primary-school education of American and Western students has resulted in a young population entering college that is not only uninformed regarding the scientific method, but misinformed.  That misinformation is the result of replacing education with indoctrination and replacing the free market of ideas with the slave market of ideology.

As we await what might become a spectacular scientific analysis by the government on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs), there is reasonable suspicion that only a cover-up will be released.  How can we place our trust in such official reporting, on this or any other topic?

Given the recent trends, it is becoming more and more likely that we will soon be entering a dark age of science.  Whether literally or figuratively, we might resume burning witches while, ironically, practicing what amounts to pseudoscientific witchcraft.

Image via Pixnio.