That’s how Michael Crichton skewered skewering politically motivated science. One can reuse the idea, skewering the bad, politically motivated science around COVID-19:
Now, in the midst of the current COVID-19 crisis, another questionable study has been released, again by The Lancet. This study claimed that, not only was hydroxychloroquine not helpful in fighting COVID-19, it was actually dangerous. The World Health Organization (WHO) cancelled its trials of the drug due to this study.
The problem? The data is totally bogus. The now retracted study overstated COVID cases and deaths, sometimes by a factor of 80. Why the rush to publish a study with such bad data? Is it because an unpopular public figure was touting hydroxychloroquine, which made everyone look the other way when data that appeared to refute him didn’t match up?
What is even more disturbing is that influential groups are using such studies to form the basis for censorship—not just of controversialists—but even of world leaders. Facebook, for instance, possibly on the basis of this very study, removed the public statements of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro which claimed that hydroxychloroquine was working. Why? Because it breached their “misinformation guidelines.” That is, the post contained information which was at odds with established science—and the established science in this case is a now-retracted study.
Jonathan Bartlett, “Twenty years on, aliens still cause global warming ” at Mind Matters News
Some people may still think that “science” is whatever gets published in a journal. Not any more, that’s for sure.