Richard Lindzen is a 80 year old MIT professor of atmospheric physics, one of the most prestigious scientists in America: he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which has only 2600 members.
he says himself how he had trouble getting papers published, how they got rejected or if they get published the editors got sacked the next day! he is implying that the science has been taken over by ideology.
he himself makes reference to the climategate email scandal in that context of ideological hijacking of climate science.
see, it is no more science if you remove the open debate, skepticism and criticism. a peer reviewed paper is out there to be criticised by other scientists. "peer reviewed" means "this is scholarly looking enough", and therefore worthy of presenting to the scientific community in general for them to take notice, either accept or reject its conclusion after scrutiny. "peer review" can only ensure there are no gross errors or sub-par scholarship. the rest is up to other scientists to scrutinize after it gets published
now, what if you take over the peer review mechanism, like moderators in discord, and you prevent critical papers from getting published, and only allow the narrative to evolve in a single direction?
if papers with mistakes in data assessment, or their interpretation, or fallacious inferences are allowed to remain because you stifle scrutiny, they will get references by other papers, and you will eventually have new studies built on top of those previous ones, and long chains of references that all go back to bad science. and things will look like there is an established narrative, but it is artificially manufactured by top down ideological guidance.
and after that point criticism of the narrative becomes impossible because you are now facing a "consensus", and they will dismiss you as a crank
is it impossible for certain pockets of science to get awry this way? with or without ideological motivations?
some accuse string theory of being one such, it has no ideological consequences yet some say the charisma of Ed Witten is guiding tens of thousands of PhD's to dedicate their careers to an ultimately fruitless endeavour...
or think of the Christ Myth theory in the biblical studies and historianship of New Testament. outcast scholars say the institutions and peer pressure among scholars ensure certain theories are to be excluded from the get go
we can probably find more examples in other fields. when it comes to climate science, you can actually predict that it will be hijacked by ideology because how politically and emotionally charged that subject can be if you think about in terms of human vs nature, pollution, exploitation, and etc.
