Ioannidis is the only real example provided in the article, and his opinion piece (and the related Stanford study) was criticized, not because he's an iconoclast, but because it was bad science (and especially bad policy). Not only that, but then, instead of engaging with the scientific community, his "expertise" was co-opted by the conservative media and its agenda.
is this not exactly what the original article cautions against? if it's bad science (which should be debatable) it's value as policy follows directly and doesn't need to be stated or discussed seperately.
The problem is that if, as a scientist, I know that people are likely to convert my findings into policy, then I have an extra duty to be especially diligent and extra thorough so that my findings are valid.
Ioannidis knew exactly what he was doing when he put this pile of garbage out there. The fact that it was shoddy methodology means that he should get ESPECIALLY torched for it as an object lesson to other "scientists".
First, the original article is actually about the exact opposite. It says nothing about attacking an opinion based on its merit, it talks about attacking an opinion based on dogma. When I say it's bad science, I'm saying it's bad science because of glaring problems with its methodology; I thought that was obvious (the term "bad science" being fairly common).
Second, I'm talking about the social policy argued for in Ioannidis' opinion piece. Social policy absolutely does not just directly follow the science; they are very different things and absolutely should be discussed separately. I find it a bit absurd to think that science inherently dictates a certain social policy.