What do California and Canada have in common, aside from bone-chilling temperatures?
Well, the fact that they’re trying to chill the discourse of doctors.
In California, a new law empowers medical boards to punish doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19. The misinformative nature of a stated view about the pandemic is allegedly proved by the mere fact that it contradicts a putative scientific “consensus.”
Such laws rely on misinformation for their very existence.
When coping with complex, incomplete, sometimes murky evidence, do scientists and others ever simply disagree, even fundamentally, on the road to scientific “consensus”? Can a consensus ever be wrong? Does anybody ever hew to an asserted consensus out of fearful desire to conform rather than honest intellectual agreement?
To ask these questions is to answer them. But let’s move on.
To Canada — and the case of Dr. Jordan Peterson, whose professional status in the country is being jeopardized because of medical and/or political views, like opinions criticizing “climate change models,” “surgery on gender dysphoric minors,” and Canadian officials who threatened “to apprehend the children of the Trucker Convoy protesters.”
Stated on social media, these opinions are apparently incendiary enough — i.e., candid enough — to vex Canada’s powerful medical censors.
According to Peterson, the Ontario College of Psychologists demands that he submit to “mandatory social-media communication retraining” because of his views. If he doesn’t comply, he may lose his license.
Such repressive impulses, he says, are “way more widespread than you might think.”
It’s cold outside.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with DALL-E2
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
