This article is a little painful to read, because it neglects discussing some core methodologies of scientific inquiry, which could improve its arguments. Prob

This article is a little painful to read, because it neglects discussing some core methodologies of scientific inquiry, which could improve its arguments. Probably the most important issue is the need for painstaking care when it comes to experimental design and observational data collection, the absolute necessity for independent replication, and recognition of the ease with which scientists can fool themselves (or others) either accidentally or deliberately. In the modern world, the white robes of the religious authorities have been replaced in many areas by the white robes of the scientific authorities, and they can unfortunately be just as biased and unreliable as their previous cohort. Clearly there's a huge profit motive when it comes to scientific claims about drug efficacy; there's also bureaucratic motivations, i.e. retaining control of academic institutions and funding streams by whatever means necessary, and so on. If you want to see how science can go wrong, there are many examples, but one of the best and most accessible is the story of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union. Another, for ideological balance, is the rise of the Milton Friedman school of economic thought in the United States, whose practitioners were just as ideologically biased and free of careful analysis of data as the Lysenkoists were, while similarly proclaiming their field to be 'mathematically sound' and 'science-based'. If we want to be even more controversial, Anthony Fauci's dieheard support for reckless gain-of-function research could be placed in a similar category (well, it does work, but creating hundreds of new infectious diseases is a bad idea), and Fauci's bureaucratic career has some interesting parallels to Lysenko's. Then we could open the box labelled "the safety and efficacy of antibiotics and vaccines in the context of failures of public health in the era of the return of infectious disease threats"... (Holding this opinion is still fairly risky and likely to be flagged in many discussions as out-of-bounds). Science is really hard to do well, that's the bottom line - but it's still the only reliable method for resolving fundamental physical, chemical and biological issues. So don't let internal debates within the scientific community be used as fodder for anti-science lunatics, either.