Science is arguably mankind's greatest achievement. Enlightenment, secularization, equality of all people, modern forms of society... all because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (a German saying) and always in the same way.
With all its objectivity, causality, reproducibility, falsification, mathematical reasoning and so on, science is committed to establishing the truth and it protects us from arbitrariness and idiocy. Sincere people identify with this most positive of all ideologies, the ideology of truthfulness. That’s the theory.
Unfortunately, practice often does not do justice to this idealized theory. Corruption and incompetence have carved deeply into the scientific scene. So it is not surprising that a scientist who is praised as "one of the most cited" ironically criticizes precisely this metric and describes its abuse potential actively used in "self-quotation farms". Elsewhere, people are classified as "dangerous" JUST BECAUSE they are so highly regarded and proven to be competent.
When the dangerous conspiracy theorist now doubts the scientific results on which others rely in their argument, then he is not only attacking the argument. He attacks the identity of his counterpart. If the conspiracy theorist is also a respected scientist himself, then fuses blow and demands are made that quality control should be established for scientific communication in order to forbid individuals to speak or to grant it only to certain individuals. If we do that, then the earth will indeed be flat. Got it?
The increasingly obvious fallibility of scientific practice reveals the arrogance of its radical followers. Science as an ideology of truthfulness is certainly not to be denounced as such, but anyone who wants to be a true scientist must first recognize that the subject of research is ultimately always people and their environment. Therefore, scientific methodology and rationality are not the top core competencies that make a true scientist. No. It's empathy. Because without it, science can become very dangerous.
