If you’re interested, here is a more recent example of “politics vs science” and politics losing badly: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Abe-declares-e...

Here’s a fun quote from the article:

"We have managed to bring the outbreak under control within just one and a half months. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the Japan model,"

Meanwhile at the time of writing Japan is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases and Abe has resigned.

Abe resignation seems to be based on being sick though, there was some, well extreme people measuring how long it took him to walk a fixed distance over time and when he started to slow down significatively, they predicted he was sick. He resigned few days later, officially because of an illness:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-abe-goes-to-hospital-for...