This is, rather unfortunately, a pretty pervasive issue which isn't limited to science. I've noticed this trend whereby it is somehow ok to make completely emot

This is, rather unfortunately, a pretty pervasive issue which isn't limited to science. I've noticed this trend whereby it is somehow ok to make completely emotional (as opposed to rational) arguments as long as the point they defend is itself politically correct. As an example (of which there are many), I recently ended up being caught up in a conversation about a man who alledgedly committed rape. Even though the evidence is still being reviewed and no verdict has been served, the man in question is already being carried through the mud and the people in the conversation were quick to bash on him (including people who were hearing about it for the first time). I pointed out that while I do believe that rape itself is a horrible crime, accusing somebody of it without proper knowledge of the facts is unfair ("guilty until proven innocent"), and should all legal and social matters be handled this way, we'd be back to something akin to the Salem trials. The unanimous response was "but this is rape we're talking about, why are you defending him?". At that point, I decided the best course of action was to drop out of the conversation. This sort of behaviour leads to self-censorship: scientists won't even touch certain subjects for fear of retaliation and people in general will actively opt out of conversations they fear will lead to non-PC arguments or perspectives. This self-censorship therefore ends up reinforcing the "social justice warriors", some of whom would go to any lengths to support their points (including, as the article points out, lie and slander), which in any other context would be considered bullying, or at the very least, intimidation. This is obviously not helping anybody, including the people who are under the impression they are defending their cause, since no balanced conversation can be had, and some of the people who may have rallied the cause in question would now rather stay silent. To make matters worse, we have major media outlets behaving like tabloids on steroids, dramatizing and muddling issues to sometimes borderline criminal extents. And finally, perhaps more importantly, there seems to be a general lack of pragmatism when it comes to arguing about sensitive issues (or even in general one might argue). A lot of people seem to take points they don't agree with as signs of aggression and often retort in antagonizing ways, exacerbating ideological gaps and driving away people whose minds they might have been able to change otherwise.