Reality Isn’t Optional, Exhibit No. …. (I’ve Lost Count)

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Crozet Gazette:

Editor:

J. Dirk Nies rightly decries attempts by top U.S. government scientists Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci to stifle debate over the Great Barrington Declaration and to viciously slander the Declaration’s three prominent co-authors, Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff (“Insights for Flourishing: Recent Assaults on Scientific Integrity,” Jan. 6).

Alas, such anti-scientific conduct grows ever more likely the more science – and the careers of scientists – become wedded to government. Politicians, after all, ultimately pursue votes and power, not truth and understanding. As George Will summarizes, “science usually is the subservient partner in a marriage between science and the modern state.”* Indeed so.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

* George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility (New York: Hachette Books, 2019), page 422.