The Dissidents – Tablet Magazine
In the face of censorship, undermining, and mockery driven by authoritarian bureaucrats and tech platforms that increasingly function as private arms of the state, a smaller group of scientists, many of whom are also medical doctors, have continually spoken up to question the scientific consensus on whatever platforms they could find. We re calling them The Dissidents, merely because they have spoken up against official policy. The term s connotation of rebellion or revolution has nothing to do with what these thinkers represent: In their Talmudic approach to the pandemic, posing questions of questions and questions of other questioners, they are instead voices that have sought to uphold the past 400 years of scientific tradition and practice, rather than overturn it.
Some of their questions have been prescient and vindicated; others might appear conspiratorial or extreme. But the main point is that they have asked and continue to ask questions, while a majority of their peers have done away with the scientific method or have been cowed into silence.