Tag: settled science

Tom Bethell: Debunker of Progressive Orthodoxies, Defender of Tradition and Truth

Commentary With the death in February of Tom Bethell (1936–2021), the refuseniks of what Orwell called the “smelly little orthodoxies contending for our souls” have lost an eloquent and redoubtable champion. Over the course of Bethell’s five decades as a writer (of seven books and hundreds of essays), the malodorous certitudes of political correctness have…


Fauxtastrophes: The Ecology of Settled-Scientists

Commentary In the spring of 1990, I was a young professor, sitting in the annual convocation ceremony of a third-rate college in West Virginia. It’s a beautiful place, founded in the 1840s, classical architecture in leafy Appalachia, but it struggled to attract wealthy students, so its pursuit of prestige was never-ending. A typical device was…