> 2. There's always what I'll call "pendulum effects". If science journalism took the "skeptic" POV to try to increase scientific literacy, by showing the many

> 2. There's always what I'll call "pendulum effects". If science journalism took the "skeptic" POV to try to increase scientific literacy, by showing the many cases where the scientific consensus was wrong historically (with the hopes of improving people's critical thinking), you'd just end up giving fodder to people to arbitrarily distrust any consensus they don't like (for political reasons). So it becomes "socially useful" for people to believe that consensus means truth. If you taught people all the ways in which science can get it wrong, even highly cited studies in top journals, they'd burn Harvard down. It's such a bizarre argument to simultaneously acknowledge that The Science is often wrong yet double down on manipulating the public with this idea that scientific consensus equals Truth. In my view, this practice adulterates science into a technical sophistry that serves as a fifth column for a political agenda. But the root cause here is that science itself is corrupted by the desire to effect change. That is the realm of politics and if scientists want to stop losing trust, they will get out of the business of "ought".