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1: Open-ended question
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[EOR]
[BOC]
I'd like to preface this by saying I have all the vaccines, including *four* covid vaccines.

Until just a few years ago, I was all-in on the *institutions.* You see, institutions have been synonymised with science and intellectualism. Fast forward to covid and we had our healthcare professionals lying to us. "Masks are ineffective." "Sorry I lied. You'll die if you don't wear masks in public." "Except if you're a BLM looter, then racism is a public health emergency." Our leaders were locking us in our homes, closing our bank accounts, banning us from social media, shutting down free speech, and effectively forcing us to take very minimally tested vaccines, repeatedly. They gaslit us about the origin of the virus. We learned that the people who were likely responsible for the lab leak were working in collusion with the Chief Medical Adviser/Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation.

Kind of alarming, right? Data suggests trust in institutions took a huge hit under covid. Not because of "misinformation," but because of dishonest and authoritarian actions by leaders.

Then we have science. Data shows that political partisanship is at an all time high in universities. Up to 20% of lecturers identify as communists. There is no equivalent on the right. In fact, the mix of liberal and conservative faculty members in universities in America is so lopsided now, it's as much as 10:1. We can all *pretend* like this hyper-partisanship doesn't lead to research and educational biases, but we can see that it does, in real time. For example, trans research. It would be hard to name a field receiving more funding today, nor a field less impartial. Many advocates and researchers argue vehemently that transitioning is necessary to save the lives of those with gender dysphoria. Yet there is not a single study, anywhere, which shows this. The closest researchers have come is arguing that "suicidal ideation" is a synonym for "suicide," and because self-reported ideation decreases in some studies, this means transition saves lives. Clearly this is incorrect, but such research is so widely used and misused that the President of the U.S. has endorsed it.
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Conversely, there are numerous reports of researchers being barred from testing hypotheses which question this premise, or outright removed from universities. [[1]](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-university-transgender-gender-reassignment-reversal-research) [[2]](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/academic-faces-sack-for-letter-to-sunday-times-that-criticised-trans-training-gnbr8gxgm) [[3]](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/top-canadian-sex-researcher-quits-scientific-group-after-being-blasted-for-views-on-transgender-issues) [[4]](https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/15/leftist-activists-try-to-ban-researchers-from-studying-transgender-people/) [[5]](https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/02/05/ucla-trans-medical-study-gender-dysphoria/)&nbsp; When researchers are prevented from studying all sides of an issue, all that's left is the narrative of those in power.

For me, the question isn't "will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?" Instead, it really should be, "what are institutions doing to mend the immense harm they have caused to trust?" I am amazed it hasn't happened sooner, and that the backlash isn't even larger.
[EOC]
