How long before academics who spout anti-vaccine nonsense related to COVID-19 get a level of accountability academics who spouted anti-vaccine nonsense for 25 years prior to that never had? What about conspiracy theories regarding food, where academics like Walter Willett and Stephanie Seneff rampage against science, including libel, with no concern at all from their schools?
Writing at Genetic Literacy Project in 2022, Professor Kevin Folta, no stranger to being targeted by anti-science activists, makes the arbitrary nature of academic freedom look even more capricious, by noting that famed crank Seneff runs amok through facts and reason about one aspect of biology without concern while University of Auckland scholar Dr. Siouxsie Wiles was told to keep quiet about another.
Hate GMOs? MIT says it’s academic freedom. Defend vaccines? Get told to exit social media and go on forced paid leave.
Related on the SLP
MIT remains a puzzle for allowing Seneff to claim she is an “MIT Senior Research Scientist” bleating corporate conspiracy fables about agriculture and vaccines when she is only a programmer who works on ‘communication’ between humans and computers. She hasn’t gotten the memo that the anti-science left who have routinely feted her has pivoted to being pro-vaccine, at least publicly.
