That's truly astounding to me about this affair is that so many people --- here, on the Quillette thread, and in other forums --- have plainly stated that there are some truths that need to be kept from the public for their own good, sequestered in "scientific guilds" until the public is "ready".

I really just have no words for how terrible this idea is and how angry it makes me. We could have had an industrial revolution thousands of years ago, massively increasing human welfare, but for a paranoid and secretive thinking that made it impossible to build a real scientific community, test ideas, and find the ones that worked.

These "scientific guild" ideas are the ones that condemned humanity to thousands of years of pointless alchemy while people died of cholera in filthy streets.

To want to return to this medieval mindset is inexcusable. It's ignorant. It's anti-humanism.

Look: any time you have to ask yourself "should we deliberately lie to the public about reality?", take a step back and consider whether you're actually the villain from the history books.

So many people have zero understanding of mathematical modelling but insist that they're in position to judge research in this area from moral standpoint.

It's The Holy Inquisition, crowdsource edition.