The Wuhan coverup is more typical than you think

There also seems to be a strong psychological resistance among scientists and medical practitioners to challenging the thinking of their colleagues, no matter how outdated. As the Dartmouth Medical School documented in a series of controversial reports in the late 1980s, the best predictor of how any physician or medical researcher approaches some serious illness is local custom. In other words, he or she simply goes along with whatever similar professionals in the neighborhood are doing, regardless of how well or poorly regional health outcomes compare with other parts of the country.

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And then there is the subtle but undeniable ideological pressure, which stems from the fact so much of modern scientific research is subsidized by left-leaning government bureaucrats and liberal foundations. This is not to suggest anything as blatantly corrupt as an explicit demand by funders that grant recipients reinforce certain political ideas. There is simply, as the late Irving Kristol first observed, a natural human tendency for public and private officials to support those academics whose findings confirm their own opinions, as well as a natural temptation for academics to tell their funders what they want to hear.

One result, well-documented for more than 25 years, is that any academic study that contradicts left-wing thinking has an especially difficult time getting the peer endorsements needed for publication. This is true even when the rejected paper is just as comprehensively researched as the more liberal papers commonly accepted by prestigious journals.

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