Are we witnessing the death of science?

To show how science has been undermined in medicine, archaeology, climatology, cosmology and physics, and to challenge the forces which have brought this about, is the declared aim of a new book from the UK: The Death of Science: The retreat from reason in the post-modern world (Clinical Press, November, 2023), conceived and written by medical professionals and other academics.

By coincidence, and as if in vindication, my review copy arrived just as I was finalising my article, ‘Why people are losing trust in scientists’ (published on January 14, 2024), in which I feared that loss of public faith in scientific discourse, most noticeable in matters of health and environment, was spreading beyond those fields.

Indeed, a key contributor to The Death of Science, Dr Clare Craig, writes: ‘The covid years have impacted dramatically on the public’s perception of science and contributed to an erosion of trust in experts and scientists.’

The book is an outburst of indignation at the imposition of increasingly Orwellian orthodoxy by the establishment — by the medical-political complex, in academia and the mainstream media — intended to restrict scientific debate within certain bounds, so reminiscent of the hobbling of science and the punishment of heresy by the Catholic Church in medieval times and subsequent centuries.