https://aeon.co/ideas/opposition-to-gali...-religious
EXCERPT: [....] Galileo gave no clue that the ‘booklet’s’ author was complimentary to him, excited about new telescopic discoveries, encouraging further telescopic research, and wielding solid arguments against Earth’s motion. [Johann Georg] Locher was forgotten, while Galileo’s caricature [of his work] became accepted as history, and applied to the entire debate over Earth’s motion.
That is unfortunate for science, because today the opponents of science make use of that caricature. Those who insist that the Apollo missions were faked, that vaccines are harmful, or even that the world is flat – whose voices are now loud enough for the ‘War on Science’ to be a National Geographic cover story and for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to address even their most bizarre claims – do not reject the scientific process per se. Rather, they wrap themselves in the mantle of Galileo, standing (supposedly) against a (supposedly) corrupted science produced by the ‘Scientific Establishment’. Thus Locher matters. Science’s history matters...
EXCERPT: [....] Galileo gave no clue that the ‘booklet’s’ author was complimentary to him, excited about new telescopic discoveries, encouraging further telescopic research, and wielding solid arguments against Earth’s motion. [Johann Georg] Locher was forgotten, while Galileo’s caricature [of his work] became accepted as history, and applied to the entire debate over Earth’s motion.
That is unfortunate for science, because today the opponents of science make use of that caricature. Those who insist that the Apollo missions were faked, that vaccines are harmful, or even that the world is flat – whose voices are now loud enough for the ‘War on Science’ to be a National Geographic cover story and for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to address even their most bizarre claims – do not reject the scientific process per se. Rather, they wrap themselves in the mantle of Galileo, standing (supposedly) against a (supposedly) corrupted science produced by the ‘Scientific Establishment’. Thus Locher matters. Science’s history matters...