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Erudite Exulansis! - How does political bias affect scientific research?

The current debate surrounding science and education is marked by vocal opinions and growing public distrust in established institutions. This crisis of public trust in science, fueled by political polarization and the spread of misinformation, has potentially disastrous consequences for scientific progress and public understanding. By no means has the pace of education slowed; if anything, there is a larger contribution of developing nations to the educated world nowadays. However, it is imperative to note the rise of a vocal opinion against the current educational establishments, especially in the OECD countries, regarding these institutions being aligned with the political left. To frame it better, right-wing parties worldwide, who have found a new series of acceptance in countries, have repeatedly attacked colleges with relatively young populations to be guided by a political motive under the mask of intellectualism. The internet is divided between a public outburst of so-called Karens and protesting woke students at rightwing seminars. The larger question is whether it contributes to a rising distrust of the educational establishment, leaving millions questioning the scientific literature they published. If so, in light of such mistrust, how do we ensure these developmental metrics are kept from the bin.

The association of education or science as a whole with progress started with Galileo and Copernicus, who challenged the then-establishment of religious education with scientific methods. These methods became famous for their exceptional commitment to rationality and truth-seeking. These experiments were repeatable and helped people grasp otherwise unintuitive concepts, leading to the so-called scientific method, which today is emulated even by humanities. Although the sciences were an intellectual exercise, the industrial revolution ushered in an engineering era, which brought many applied domains to the sciences. Today there are over a hundred branches of engineering, and even the brightest minds in sciences can only claim expertise in domains up to three. This has led to a reversal of the scientific revolution, not due to the way of imparting knowledge but due to its sheer scale. For the general public today, access to labs and instruments is so scarce that they are only left to read research papers and take their word for it. There is so much to go against the religious way of learning.

Unsurprisingly, one of the first sectors to be the target of intellectual-right was healthcare and medical science. This domain relies a lot on the experience of doctors and operates on complex empirical knowledge. The domain is so sensitive that experimentation and research can't be allowed to the public at discretion. This incertitude has propagated to further domains, including social sciences, economies, and theoretical fields operating on multi-variate complex real-world scenarios. Also, the nature and indeterminability of these sciences make it impossible to have an objective answer. But one thing that needs to be improved is young people in the streets calling for a pull-down of existing social laws. This scares the population and antagonises them from the scientific literature, which is losing objectivity. The same goes for loud-mouth Karens.

Today's battle is fascinating, with its actors being loud and opinionative, their institutions incredulous, and their impact disastrous. 


Understanding the graph: The USA is one of the few countries where the younger generation does not show an increase in graduate-level literacy, signalling a stalling in an otherwise increasing trend in the world



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