A Paper Documenting COVID-19 Heresy Suppression Treats One Guilty Party With Kid Gloves

There is an extremely common narrative stated repeatedly by scientists, one that claims that scientists and clergymen are kind of polar opposites. What typically occurs is this:

(1) First, the narrative will start out by describing clergy in a stereotypical way, a way that makes the clergy sound like persons of blind faith who pay no attention to evidence, and who believe only according to tradition.

(2) Then the narrative will describe an idealized portrait of the fair and noble truth-seeking scientist. The scientist will be described as some impartial judge of truth, who calmly weighs matters purely according to the latest and greatest evidence. The scientist will be described as someone ever-ready to discard his previous beliefs when some new evidence appears contradicting such beliefs. The scientist will be described as someone ready to stand against authority, and the example of Galileo will often be used. 

This kind of narrative is quite misleading. The truth is that scientists and clergy have very much in common.  

Similar advice of scientific academia and organized religion

In this post I will look at just one of these similarities: the fact that both clergy and scientists engage very strongly in heresy shaming and heresy suppression. It is well known that in the history of the Catholic Church there was not merely heretic shaming but also violent persecution of Christians holding doctrines differing from the doctrines approved by the Catholic Church. What is not so well known is that scientist belief communities have often engaged in similar behavior, but without anyone being burned at the stake. Some of the attempts in the world of scientific academia to suppress inconvenient observations are documented in Etzel Cardena's paper "The Unbearable Fear of Psi: On Scientific Suppression in the 21st Century."At the link here, we read of the heresy shaming of a thinker who did not even challenge any of the core tenets of astronomers, but merely maintained that Venus had arisen after being ejected from Jupiter:

"When Worlds in Collision came out, its would-be publisher, Macmillan, was threatened with a boycott of all its books. The editor who bought the manuscript was fired...A concerted effort was made to suppress Velikovsky's ideas. His data was distorted, the presentation of his views blocked, his books boycotted or scurrilously reviewed, his supporters fired, his integrity impugned -- all because his ideas challenged an existing dogma." 

A recent paper ("Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics") in an academic journal described some more recent examples of heresy shaming and heretic persecution in which people with reasonable unpopular opinions on COVID-19 were defamed, mistreated and persecuted. The main such opinion was the lab leak hypothesis, the hypothesis that COVID-19 arose because of some lab accident occurring in Wuhan, China. The lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory, but a mere theory of human error, involving the idea that overeager and overconfident but probably well-meaning scientists were doing dangerous experimentation with disastrous results. People advancing this reasonable hypothesis have been wrongly smeared as "conspiracy theorists," a term nowadays used to dismiss someone as an irrational fantasist.  Another contrarian opinion on COVID-19 was one that rejected lockdowns (including the closing of schools) on the grounds that the harms supposedly exceeded the benefits.  

The paper (by Shir-Raz and others) does a good job of documenting the type of heresy suppression that went on. We read details such as this:

• The paper says, "Since early 2020, there has been an upsurge of complaints about censorship by individuals and groups presenting heterodox COVID-related viewpoints and information, with even more complaints in 2021 following COVID-19 vaccine rollouts," and that "many instances involve social media censorship, including the removal of accounts ('deplatforming') or blocking the visibility of a user’s content without informing them ('shadow banning') (Martin 2021)."
• The paper says, "Respondents reported that exclusion was only the first step: shortly after that they started being subjected to defamation by the media, and disparaged as 'anti-vaxxers,' 'Covid deniers,' 'dis/misinformation spreaders' and/or 'conspiracy theorists.'"
• The paper says, "Tactics of censorship and suppression described by our respondents include exclusion, derogatory labelling, hostile comments and threatening statements by the media, both mainstream and social; dismissal by the respondents’ employers; official inquiries; revocation of medical licenses; lawsuits; and retraction of scientific papers after publication."
• We read about social media platforms that made it harder for people to find out about a Great Barrington Declaration in which some experts criticized the use of lockdowns to fight COVID-19. 
• We read about how government officials colluded with social media companies to suppress minority opinions about COVID-19. 
• We read about how so-called "fact checkers" seemed to be sometimes groups given a mission to discredit, disparage or defame anyone deviating from whatever COVID-19 opinion was currently regarded as mainstream.
• We read, "Some of the respondents reported that they were subjected to defamation by their own institution, with the apparent intention to harm their reputation and careers." 
• The paper tells us, "In some cases, respondents reported that following a position or criticism they expressed, they were dismissed from their institution, or were notified that their contract would not be renewed."
• We read, "Respondents said they were summarily dismissed or disqualified from prestigious positions, such as serving on leading health or scientific committees, or editing medical journals, without due process or transparency."
• We read, "Some doctors reported on official inquiries launched against them, such as investigating or threatening to withdraw their medical license," and that "some researchers and doctors recounted how their research had been retracted by the journal after publication."
• We read, "Another theme that arose repeatedly during the interviews was that research critical of COVID-19 policies and orthodoxy were treated in ways the interviewees had never encountered before in their careers," and that "this included having papers rejected from journals (often multiple times) without peer review, the journal review and publication process taking many months longer than typical for the journal, and even having papers rejected from pre-print servers such as MedRXiv."

All in all, the new paper by Shir-Raz and others does a fine job of documenting the heresy suppression and the intimidation of heretics and contrarian thinkers that went on during the first three years of COVID-19. Their paper is a valuable work well worth a read. But the paper suffers from two great shortfalls:

(1) The persecuted and defamed thinkers are depicted entirely as scientists and doctors, even though such people were only a small fraction of the contrarian thinkers who were defamed, censored and suppressed. 

(2) There is basically no mention at all made of the very large role of scientists themselves in attempts to suppress, intimidate and defame people who expressed contrarian heretical opinions regarding COVID-19. 

In the new paper by Shir-Raz and others, certain groups are targeted for blame for the suppression of contrarian viewpoints about COVID-19, including these:

• Social media companies
• The medical establishment
• Academia administrators
• Government officials
• Science journal publishers and the staff at science journals
• Mainstream media editors and writers

Trying to act as if scientists are a group of different people from such figures is fallacious, largely because scientists often hold some of the jobs listed above. For example, whether to publish or retract a paper is a decision typically made by scientists themselves. To give another example, the administrators at universities and colleges are very often science professors themselves. And the government officials involved with COVID-19 were very often scientists themselves. 

A crucial early document in the attempt to suppress reasonable contrarian opinions about COVID-19 was the Lancet's March 2, 2020 declaration "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19," one that set the tone for the two years of scientist statements. The document unfairly attempted to smear anyone suggesting an accidental lab origin of COVID-19 as a conspiracy theorist, saying, "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." For the next 18+ months scientists treated this declaration almost as holy scripture.  Scientists acted like they had "got the official message": that anyone claiming an accidental lab leak origin of COVID-19 was to be shamed as some kooky unhinged conspiracy theorist. Who were the dozens of signers of this declaration? Mainly scientists. 

It is very easy to find abundant evidence of the very high complicity of scientists in the unfair treatment and defamation of those holding contrarian opinions on COVID-19. Just do Google searches like the ones below (changing "magazine" later to "journal" or "publication"):

• Scientific magazine on COVID-19 origins 
• Scientific magazine on COVID-19 lockdowns 

A typical example of the type of work we got from scientists during the period from 2020 and to mid-2022 was a March 2022 Scientific American  article with the absurd title "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth." The claim is not at all true.  The hypothesis that COVID-19 may have arisen from a lab accident has not done anything to make it harder for any scientist to seek the truth. The article was written by three scientists: a virologist, a psychologist, and a climate scientist. The article repeatedly tries to draw illegimate associations between those who favor the lab leak hypothesis and various unrelated parties who the authors regard as unsavory. Specifically:

(1) The article again and again unfairly tries to paint supporters of the lab leak hypothesis as conspiracy theorists.  You need not believe in any conspiracy theory to think that COVID-19 may have arisen from a lab leak when overconfident scientists were not as careful as they should have been. A theory of human error and overconfidence is not a conspiracy theory.  

(2) By having a photo showing people opposing vaccine mandates, the article tries to link people opposing vaccine mandates and those who think COVID-19 may have originated when some lab leak occurred. These are two different unrelated opinions. 

(3) Most ridiculously, the article tries to link those disbelieving in man-made global warming with those supporting the lab leak hypothesis. Those two opinions have no connection, and in one sense are rather the opposite. A global warming denialist is often saying "it's all just natural, not man-caused" about global warming, while a lab leak theorist may typically say "it's not all just natural, it was man-caused" about COVID-19.  

Such an article was typical of the work of scientists for more than two years.  In 2020, 2021 and 2022 we got endless tweets and articles from scientists and professors who tried to portray anyone deviating from the supposed mainstream position on COVID-19 as a kook, a crank, a conspiracy theorist or a public menace.  A typical tactic was the mindless current tactic of branding anyone who disagrees with your scientific opinion about something as being "anti-science." The tactic is as intellectually empty as someone in the US calling anyone who disagrees with his political opinions as being "anti-American." 

Why did scientists seem so eager to defame and discredit anyone advancing opinions about COVID-19 contrary to the storyline most of them were telling? We can only speculate about some of the possible reasons, including these:

(1) Scientists may have wanted people to dismiss any COVID-19 origins hypothesis in which clumsy scientists played a key causal role.

(2) Wishing to continue their often dangerous fiddling with genomes, scientists may have wanted people to dismiss any hypothesis that would have caused the public to demand much greater restrictions for gene-splicing scientists, and possibly reduced funding for such genetic experimentation.

(3) Having become vocal supporters of corporate GMO suppliers (suppliers of Genetically Modified Organisms), often because of payments scientists received directly or indirectly from such corporations, and having often called anyone concerned about GMOs  "anti-science," scientists may have wanted to exclude any hypothesis that might make such product enthusiasm look questionable. 

(4) Having assured us of the unlimited creative powers of blind evolution, and having disparaged and shamed anyone supporting design in a "design or blind evolution" debate, scientists may have become addicted to dogmatically attributing biological innovations to blind evolution, no matter how strongly the evidence may suggest purposeful intention was involved.  

Martin Kenney's 1986 book Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex documented how universities had started to become thoroughly entangled with corporate interests, and such a situation has become much worse since that time. Nowadays professors are often such vested interests with so many corporate entanglements and money-related industrial associations that they can no longer be regarded as impartial judges on any matter heavily related to contemporary pharmaceutical research, genetic engineering or  biotechnology research. The opinions of professors on such topics are often no more to be trusted than the opinion about some corporation held by someone who has invested large sums of money in such a corporation.