Defending Authentic Science against its Imposters

The public theologian should rally to protect the integrity of science

Our friends wearing white lab coats find their laboratories under siege. This siege is called “the war on science.” To the traditional enemies list that formerly included pseudoscientists and cultists we now add the US White House, social media misinformation, disinformation, MAGA ideology, DEI ideology, cancel culture, and digital publication for profit. Theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss opens his edited book, War on Science, with a complaint against “postmodern gobbledygook” (Krauss 2025, 20).

“Universities and science institutions in the West are unfortunately no longer guaranteed to be places where the free and open exchange of ideas is encouraged, nor where scientific progress can be carried out unhindered by ideology…. Attacks on science, reason, and scholarship are occurring in at least four major areas: the sociology of science, the infrastructure of science, academic freedom and free speech, and finally, the scientific and scholarly enterprise itself” (Krauss 2025, 12,21).

Science in America is being whipsawed, attacked from the left by postmodern deconstructionists and from the right by MAGA pseudo-scientists. Lawrence Krauss fears he is under attack. He is. Who will defend authentic science?

In previous columns, I have argued that public theologians should join in the defense of science just because science–-authentic science at its best!—incarnates intellectual integrity (Peters, Allies in the Struggle Against the Post-Truth Swarm 2019). As our society disintegrates under the pressures of social media and neo-fascist politics, we need to strengthen and enhance intellectual integrity wherever we can. We cannot afford to lose the influence of authentic science on our global society! (Chung 2016). For the sake of the global common good, authentic science dare not lose this culture war.

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science

While a college student I cut my teeth on Martin Gardner’s still valuable book published already in 1952, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Gardner 1952, 1957). Oh, yes, he attacked fundamentalist Christians for believing in a six-day creation and for rejecting Darwinian evolution. Gardner wanted “science to free itself from religious control.” And this battle, he said then, “has been almost completely won” (Gardner 1952, 1957, 8).

The battle over teaching a biblical creation account in the public schools resurfaced in the 1970s when first creation science and then Intelligent Design were touted to rank among the sciences. This religious view lost decisively in the Kitzmiller v. Dover, Pennsylvania, case in 2005. Eugenie Scott, Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education in Berkeley, was principally responsible for this court victory (Scott 2009). Dr. Scott continues to champion quality science in public education. For this she deserves applause even from religious leaders.

Dr. Eugenie Scott NCSE

Let me add as an aside. Dr. Scott has just delivered a fine treatment of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial—“The Trial of the Century”--that will eventually be available on the NCSE website.

Crank Characteristics

Of particular value in Gardner’s earlier book, I still think, is his description of pseudo-scientists, whom he calls “cranks” (Gardner 1952, 1957). Cranks, says Gardner, work in almost total isolation from their colleagues—that is, they do not subject their work to competent peer review.

Cranks are given to “pig-headed orthodoxy.” So, they lecture to organizations they themselves have founded. Again, this conveniently avoids the kind of critical review necessary to move knowledge forward.

And, of course, cranks complain of being persecuted by establishment scientists for their alleged “genius.” The claim of persecution elicits sympathy for the victim within the larger public. In short, authentic science needs defense against crank science for the sake of the common good.

Caveat: Science vs Scientism

Dear reader, please do not mistake what I am saying here. I’m not taking the side of science against religion in a stupid culture war.

Former NIH director Francis Collins rightly distinguishes between authentic science and scientism. Science “aims to discover how nature works.” Scientism, in contrast, “is a worldview that insists there is nothing outside of science that is worth considering. Scientism categorically excludes faith and spirituality”(Collins, 130). Scientism is an ideology that risks contaminating authentic science.

Here is the problem. When materialists and reductionists declare war against religion, they march with an ideological army hoisting the flag of science. This is hypocritical. Science is not itself atheistic, even if scientism is. Science as science need not be anti-religious, just as it need not be anti-poetry or anti-democracy. Religion at its best and science at its best both revere truth. This makes them partners, not rivals.

Science? Yes. Scientism? No.

Anti-Vaxers put our health and even lives at risk

I am arguing here that the preeminent value of science is that it maintains the gold standard for sober assessment of evidence and sound reasoning (Peters, Do you trust science? 2024). But in the current controversy, defending authentic science is also a matter of life and death. Here is Stephen Hupp, heir apparent to become executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

“Science…saves lives. Yet science currently faces attack on multiple fronts by numerous players with dire consequences” (Hupp September/October 2025, 4).

Lives are now in danger because pseudo-science has invaded Washington DC. On June 9, 2025, US Secretary for Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired the entire advisory committee on immunization practices. This is the group that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about vaccines. Kennedy’s action accompanies the cancellation of a half billion dollars’ worth of medical research on mRNA vaccines at the National Institutes of Health.

Why? Because Kennedy—who founded the World Mercury Project and then in 2018 expanded it into the Children’s Health Defense (CHD)—“promotes conspiracies and unscientifically proven theories regarding other environmental causes of chronic illnesses” (Mann and Hotez September/October 2025, 35). The secretary is looking to replace professional researchers with persons sympathetic to his anti-vaccine rhetoric. Under pressure from CHD, the US Secretary just constituted the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to be directed by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an action that gives creepy crawlies to experienced virologists and immunologists.

Immunologist Andrea Love examines recent anti-vax rhetoric. It is said that if a vaccine doesn’t induce sterilizing immunity—that is, if it fails to block all infections—then the faction itself is a failure. Such rhetoric has gained traction since the COVID-19 pandemic and has moved from podcasts to Washington. “This notion is not just immunologically wrong,” Love trumpets. “It’s a deliberate tactic designed to erode trust in vaccines and harm public health. And it’s working” (Love September/October 2025, 29).

NOTE. Let me interpolate a partial historical explanation for the anti-vax movement. It began in 1998 with Andrew Wakefield’s article in The Lancet. He reported that, in a dozen cases, childhood MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine induced autism. This scientific paper understandably ignited an explosion of parental caution that is still burning today. In 2010 The Lancet had retracted the Wakefield paper, declaring it to be an “elaborate fraud.” Why a fraud? First, because Wakefield had been paid by lawyers suing MMR manufacturers. Second, Wakefield falsified his data by making diagnoses fit the conclusions. Third, Wakefield was then barred from practicing medicine. But by 2010 the snake had slithered into the imaginations of do-gooders who to this day spit out the venom of fake facts rather than confirmed science(Collins, 92-93). The initial error was corrected, but today’s anti-vaxers have not yet caught up.

So, our scientists feel under siege for good reason. The siege is not merely an occasional annoyance put up by random cranks. It’s a great deal more. A society that cowers to pseudo-science risks our health and well-being.

Science is under siege. Really? Yes.

Michael E. Mann at University of Pennsylvania and Peter J. Hotez at Baylor College of Medicine have just released a book, Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World (New York: Little Brown, 2025). One point these two make is that the anti-vax current within which Secretary Kennedy swims has a sinister undertow. It belongs to a lucrative profit-making industry called the Health-Freedom movement. “There is a persistent trend of antivaccine activism and COVID misinformation that is linked to the lucrative health-freedom, wellness, and nutritional-supplement industry” (Mann and Hotez September/October 2025, 36). In short, there is money to made by selling snake oil instead of genuine therapy.

What are the five disturbing forces that Mann and Hotez identify as enemies of authentic science? Like Gardner’s list of crank characteristics, Mann and Hotez identify five traits, each beginning with the letter, p: (1) plutocrats; (2) petrostates; (3) professionals; (4) propagandists; and (5) the press. We’ll let the labels speak for themselves.

A scandal haunts scientific publishing

Sound the alarm! Profit has prostituted the once trusted peer review process within sober scientific publishing! In his Wall Street Journal article, “Scientific Journals Can Not Keep Up with Flood of Fake Articles,” Nidhi Subbaraman sounds just this alarm.

“The source of the trouble is paper mills, businesses or individuals that charge fees to publish fake studies in legitimate journals under the names of desperate scientists whose careers depend on their publishing record. The rate of fake papers generated by these operators roughly doubled every 1.5 years between 2016 and 2020.”

Subbaraman reports that these pub mills look for weak links such as lax verification protocols in the otherwise rigorous publication machinery. Then they exploit those to place hundreds of fabricated studies on the pages of vulnerable journals or publishers. The authors—aspiring scientists—pay the paper mills. In some cases, according to the journal ScienceAdvisor, aspiring authors actually bribe editors up to $20,000 to publish their digital snake oil.

What I have dubbed ‘integrity’ in science has been policed largely through the journal peer review process. Note how The Lancet corrected Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent article, even though perhaps too delayed.

Today we seem to be losing this police protection. “The entire structure of science could collapse if this is left unaddressed,” says physicist Luís Amaral at Northwestern University. Right along with Amaral, theologian Gene Veith sounds the alarm because digital snake oil should concern the entire public.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Really?

Let me repeat my contention: the public theologian should support authentic science against attacks by pseudo-scientists, religious ideologies, political pressure, charlatans, and snake oil salesmen. Authentic science deserves public support for two reasons. First, science at its best defends intellectual integrity and inspires us to revere the truth. Second, scientific medicine saves lives (Peters, The Voice of Public Theology 2023).

Even so, the public theologian should not adulate scientists without critique (Peters, Public Theology, Discourse Clarification, and Worldview Construction 2021). When science is used to buttress vicious ideology, then we must distinguish between authentic science and its ideological perversion. Here is one case in point.

The celebrated yet obnoxious Cornell scientist, Carl Sagan, is remembered for saying, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Out of unwarranted snobbery and arrogance, this phrase is intended to denounce religious claims and pseudo-scientific claims as fanciful or even farcical. Even before any evidence is examined.

The problem is this: for a scientist, the adjective “extraordinary,” adds nothing. Evidence is evidence. All evidence must be evaluated according to other evidence and sound reasoning. Slogans such as this give science a bad name.

Mick West, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer, gets the point.

“It is perhaps unfortunate that the catch phrase of ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ caught on. The somewhat hyperbolic but poorly defined requirement for ‘extraordinary evidence’ opens us up to accusations of simple prejudice against these alternative science topics” (West September/October 2025, 26).

In order to avoid being opened up to accusations “of simple prejudice,” a scientist only needs to stick to the cannons of evidence evaluation in all relevant matters. This is what I mean by “authentic science.”

To acquire this book, click here.

Conclusion

Francis Collins mixes a highball that begins with science and then adds wisdom. At all costs, Collins wants to avoid unnecessary tension between science and religion when both confront a common enemy. “We are in serious trouble when some believe that their faith requires them to distrust science, or when others believe that political allegiances are a better source of wisdom than truth, faith, or science” (Collins 2024, 14). In short, religious folk should trust authentic science and defend it against its impostors.

To summarize, authentic science deserves the support of the public theologian for two reasons. First, science at its best defends intellectual integrity and inspires us to revere the truth. Second, scientific medicine, not snake oil, saves lives. For the sake of the global common good, authentic science dare not lose this culture war.

Substack SR 4004 Defending Authentic Science against its Imposters: The public theologian should rally to protect the integrity of science

Patheos SR 4000 What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part One

Patheos SR 4001 What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part Two

Patheos SR 4002 What is Truth?

Substack SR 4003 Open Science, UNESCO, and Public Theology

"Allies in the Struggle Against the Post-Truth Swarm" Theology and Science (November 2019)

▓

Meet Ted Peters. Ted Peters directs traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Ted is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, with Robert John Russell on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. He authored Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom? (Routledge, 2^nd ed., 2002) as well as Science, Theology, and Ethics (Ashgate 2003). Along with Martinez Hewlett, Joshua Moritz, and Robert John Russell, he co-edited, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2018). Along with Octavio Chon Torres, Joseph Seckbach, and Russell Gordon, he co-edited, Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Scrivener 2021). Along with Arvin Gouw and Brian Patrick Green, he co-edited Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (Lexington 2022). This year Ted edited The Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF 2025) and co-edited with Arvin Gouw The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2025).

His theme volume is The Voice of Public Theology, a collection of previous articles. See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

▓

References

Chung, Paul. 2016. Postcolonial Public Theology: Faith, Scientific Rationality, and Prophetic Dialogue. Eugene OR: Cascade Books.

Collins, Francis S. 2024. The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust. New York: Little Brown.

Foley, Jonathan. 5/2017. "The War on Facts Undermines Democracy." Scientific American 316:5 10.

Gardner, Martin. 1952, 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover.

Hupp, Stephen. September/October 2025. "Science Saves Lives, but Science is under Attack." Skeptical Inquirer 49:5 4.

Krauss, Lawrence. 2025. The War on Science. New York: Posthill.

Love, Andrea. September/October 2025. "Moving Vaccine Goalposts: Sterilizing Immunity Was Never the Standard." Skeptical Inquirer 49:5 29-31.

Mann, Michael, and Peter Hotez. September/October 2025. "Science under Siege: The Wellness and Health Freedom Empire." Skeptical Inquirer 49:5 35-38.

Peters, Ted. 2019. "Allies in the Struggle Against the Post-Truth Swarm." Theology and Science 17:4 427-430. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14746700.2019.1670927.

Peters, Ted. 2024. "Do you trust science?" Theology and Science 22:1 1-8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14746700.2023.2292920.

Peters, Ted. 2021. "Natural Science in Public Christian Philosophy and Public Systematic Theology." Forum Philosophicum 26:1 13-34. DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2021.2601.03.

Peters, Ted. 2021. "Public Theology, Discourse Clarification, and Worldview Construction." Theology and Science 19:1 1-4; DOI.org/10.1080/14746700.2020.1869672 .

Peters, Ted. 2018. "Public Theology: Its Pastoral, Apologetic, Scientific, Political, and Prophetic Tasks." International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2): 153-177.

Peters, Ted. 2023. The Voice of Public Theology. Adelaide: ATF.

Scott, Eugenie C. 2009. Evolution vs Creationism, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

West, Mick. September/October 2025. "Is Extraordinary Evidence Unreasonable?" Skieptical Inquirer 49:5 24-26.