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Comment by Psyladine | Hacker News Reader

Michael Crichton said as much and the community turned on him.

I tried to find more information and I'm struggling to find information that Michael Crichton said this exact thing and that turned the scientific community against him. I did find that he was a global warming skeptic and also believed in astral projection and auras and the like, both of which garnered scientific backlash. Could you help me clarify?

His talk 'Aliens Cause Global Warming' is about this phenomenon in all but name. Consensus science, marginalizing alternate theories and politicizing scientific inquiry. "your theories differ from mainstream" being a black mark rather than a point of inquiry.

Right, was the backlash against his global warming skepticism? I'm still confused.

Yes, his stance on global warming was controversial at the time and as he died only a few years later is more well known for that, but for reasons he himself laid out in the linked talk.

Most relevant is that he was against consensus science, which was highlighted in the submission. Even if you are 'wrong' and in the group consensus, all is forgiven. If you are 'right' but not in the group, you are blackballed, and if you are wrong and not in the group consensus, you are crucified.

The backlash against Crichton was well-founded. He used the grain of truth that it's sometimes hard to get new ideas in science funded to build a crazy denialist foundation on that made for exciting fiction, but terrible description of reality.

What do you mean?

Crichton called out the disturbing trend of politicizing science. His target was the elephant that is global warming but his reasoning was more general, it could (and would) have been anything that deviated from the pure scientific pursuit.

In academia it is tied to laurels and funding. The clue in the article was defender of the so-called cabal saying if it were true, it was because the NIH Alzheimers funding was too low, i.e. it was a fight for who would get what research grants. Go against the concensus and be blacklisted.

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