All forms of scientific inquiry are (or should be) built on radical skepticism. Even scholarly traditions that believe in the possibility of approximating objective truth have long recognized that humans are never free from bias. Their cognitive limitations, even their crude self-interest, have a nasty habit of intruding on their belief systems. But these traditions also insist that the mechanisms of serious scholarly inquiry and public debate can help to combat such shortcomings. Insofar as academic debates are genuinely open to people of different beliefs as well as backgrounds, and
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