Your comment about the political climate made me remember this. I cannot find the specific reference but in one of his lectures (on Youtube), Sapolsky talks about how some gay people felt offended in the 70's by research about the relation between brain structure and sexual orientation, since they felt it treated their sexual orientation as a pathology. Sapolsky contrasts it with the more recent enthusiasm about similar research, because people felt it would prove being gay was not a matter of choice or bad nurture. In political contexts, people blindly replace connotation for implication. Whereas implication is a concern of Logic (and hence, Science), connotation is a concern of intuition (or should I say, instinct) about constantly changing cultural ideals.