Reformation in the Church of Science — The New Atlantis:...

Reformation in the Church of Science — The New Atlantis:

Fake news is not a perversion of the information society but a logical outgrowth of it, a symptom of the decades-long devolution of the traditional authority for governing knowledge and communicating information. That authority has long been held by a small number of institutions. When that kind of monopoly is no longer possible, truth itself must become contested.

This is treacherous terrain. The urge to insist on the integrity of the old order is widespread: Truth is truth, lies are lies, and established authorities must see to it that nobody blurs the two. But we also know from history that what seemed to be stable regimes of truth may collapse, and be replaced. If that is what is happening now, then the challenge is to manage the transition, not to cling to the old order as it dissolves around us.

The authors don’t attempt to say how this transition should be managed, which is probably wise. Their point, and I fear that it’s quite correct, is that the transition is happening: What counts as scientific truth is now contested in many of the same ways that what counts as religious truth was contested in the Reformation period.