In “A Friendly Letter to the Heartland Institute and Other Advocates of Free Speech on Global Warming” (Evolution News & Views, February 28, 2012), Casey Luskin advises, re the recent “fake but accurate” scandal,
… keep in mind another main reason why the Big Science Lobby acts as it does: they use pressure tactics to intimidate people and bully them into capitulating. Nobody likes being called names, so when someone at a self-proclaimed “national center” is on stage calling global-warming-skeptics or Darwin-skeptics “anti-science,” some folks find it easier to just go with the flow. The NCSE’s strategy is straight out of the fourth grade: “Call your opponents nasty names, and people will be intimidated into joining your camp, or will at least withhold their criticisms.” In the scientific community, where reptutation is so important, this is part of how they intimidate many who might speak against the “consensus” into silence or conformity. The problem for the NCSE is that we’re not in the fourth grade anymore.
By the time people have graduated from high school, they have usually noted that the winners and losers are not necessarily who the consensus said.
Either that matters, or you are doomed.