If an intellectual embraces the pseudosciences or the magufería, he is not an intellectual (and less should he be a politician)

If an intellectual embraces the pseudosciences or the magufería, he is not an intellectual (and less should he be a politician)

Charles Percy Snow , in his famous lecture on "The Two Cultures", put it bluntly: "What do you mean by mass, or by acceleration? It is the scientific equivalent of Can you read?"

That we see in the media intellectuals who are as scientifically trained as they are in everything else may be, for the moment, an entelechy: the minimum we should demand is that intellectuals who embrace pseudosciences be portrayed as anti-intellectuals. Because they don’t base their opinions on the evidence, basically .

Politically accepted magufería

It is not about censoring ideas, or even avoiding exploring heterodox scientific ideas. The point is to consider deeply unscientific claims as uncultivated, as emphasized by physicist Alan Sokal in his book Beyond Intellectual Impostures :

It would be better to imagine a continuum where well-established science (for example, the idea that matter is made up of atoms) is at one extreme; Next would be cutting-edge science (neutrino oscillations, for example) and mainstream but speculative science (string theory); then, far beyond, poor-quality science (N-rays, cold fusion), and finally, after a long journey, pseudoscience.

Magufos

If you defend pseudosciences like homeopathy, if you attack vaccines, if you suggest that 5G causes harm and a long list of ideas widely spread in the media, you should automatically be classified as unread, uninformed, unlearned, or perhaps even fanatized by some sectarian movement .

Again, it must be emphasized that these ideas can be spilled with the same joy that Miguel Bosé publishes his nonsense about the coravirus on his networks. There is no need to censor. What you have to do is conveniently label, criticize, and, above all, question the media that give fuel to such characters and the institutions that elevate them to the category of intellectual, wise or even politicians.

Yes, because among politicians we can find a high percentage of functional illiterates (that is, magufos) who have even directed ministries related to science, such as Health. In the following video you can see some of the most scandalous cases. Cases that, perhaps when we consider science as an indistinguishable part of general culture, will not occur again: