British newspaper Nature reports that one of the 9 authors of a paper purporting to show that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS is now being investigated for illegally dissenting from scientific consensus.
Now one of the whole purposes of University tenure, was to protect professors from the sort of the witch-hunts that political parties cannot resist engaging in. Unlike UK, UVa, PSU, and most American universities, will Galileo’s old University of Florence be able to resist the allure of political correctness? We will just have to see.
But that led to the question, what is it about some topics that seem to attract politicians like flies to honey? Why is it that AIDS research is such a political hot potato? Why does the defense of Darwinism bring out the most spittle-flecked invective seen on the internet? Why do people commit crimes in the defense of global warming? Where can one go to publish alternative theories to the Big Bang?