Remember Colin Wright?:
Of course, it’s absolutely true that wealthy cancel-culture targets such as J. K. Rowling get enormous attention. But that’s not just because of their wealth and fame: It’s because their stories act as a stand-in for the many other, more obscure, figures who’ve been mobbed in the press, on campuses, on social-media forums, and in arts and literary subcultures. The vast majority of cancel culture’s victims are people you’ve never heard of, who don’t have the means to fight back, or who have learned to keep quiet so they don’t lose whatever reputation or job security they still have.
I know, because I was once one of them…
In 2008, I decided to pursue a career as an academic biologist. Science in general, and evolutionary biology in particular, had been a passion from a young age. Even as an undergraduate, I maintained a blog that I used to debunk pseudoscience, and critique creationism and Intelligent Design. I was outspoken, and sometimes launched headlong into debates with Christian conservatives. Creationists and IDers frequently told me I was wrong or stupid, but my critics never called me a bigot.
This changed, however, when I started graduate school in 2013. This was an environment where I didn’t have to worry about right-wing creationists. Rather, the pseudoscience I observed was coming from the other side of the political spectrum—especially in the form of “Blank Slate” proponents who argued (falsely) that sex differences in human personality, preferences, and behavior are entirely the result of socialization.
It was also during this time that I started to take an interest in what many now call “gender ideology.” This ideology not only invites compassionate treatment for trans individuals (which I support), but also promotes the scientifically inaccurate claims that biological sex exists on a continuous “spectrum,” that notions of male and female may be mere social constructs, and that one’s sex may be determined by self-declared “identity” instead of reproductive anatomy. When I pushed back against these claims, I was smeared as a transphobic bigot. Fearing professional harm, I stopped engaging, ceding the field to those who champion fashionable fictions.
Colin Wright, “Think Cancel Culture Doesn’t Exist? My Own ‘Lived Experience’ Says Otherwise” at Quillette
Then, seeing nonsense metastasize, he foolishly published an essay challenging it. Eventually, trolls forced him out of academia.
Meanwhile note this article at Wired:
The NIH research connecting anatomy and sex chromosomes could shed light on mental disorders. But the topic is sensitive, and such findings are easy to misuse…
“I got my fingers burned when I first started,” Raznahan says. As a PhD student, he published a study that examined structural differences between men’s and women’s brains and how they changed with age. “We observed a particular pattern, and we were very cautious about just describing it, as one should be, not jumping to functional interpretations,” he says. Despite his efforts, The Wall Street Journal soon published an article that cited his study in a defense of single-sex schooling, under the assumption that boys and girls must learn in distinct ways because their brain anatomy is slightly different. “That really threw me,” he says. “The experience has stayed with me.”
Nevertheless, Raznahan has continued to study sex differences, in the hope that they could help us better understand neurodevelopmental disorders.
Grace Huckins, “A Study Finds Sex Differences in the Brain. Does It Matter?” at Wired
If Raznahan is serious, no matter what his research turns up, he may be the next one who either recants or gets canceled.
Over time, science in many areas is likely to wither as it comes more and more under the domination of trolls with agendas. And the trolls have an incentive to expand the territories in science in which they are active.
Notice, by the way, how being a Darwinist is no longer a form of protection.
See also: Veteran Journalist Leaves Major Paper Before Anyone Cancels Her She talks about Debra Soh, another scientist forced out by the Woke trolls.