> They're being torched down.
I think this is the crux of your misunderstanding. I did not say the scientific institutions were self-immolating - I said you were self-immolating. You're not torching some independent other. You're burning the foundations on which the strength of our country lays.
It's also frightening how often I hear this same refrain of griping about instances of "the left" transgressing upon a certain value, as justification for discarding the entire value - did those values ever matter to you, or do they not? Because the way I see it, the entire point of values is something you stick to even when others trample on them, giving society at least a chance of converging around stability.
For example: I'm a libertarian. I did not like what happened to Eich and I certainly understand the oppressiveness of DEI run amok. I have spoken out about those, dissecting the nuances in those issues modulo my own values. But now that those issues are being used as anti-intellectual rallying cries to tear down our institutions rather than reform them? I'm done. I'll choose the tribe that believes we should at least try to have a society.