But just as Scientism has become a religion, so has anti-expertise (whether legitimate or not) become a countervailing, and as you say, equally as dangerous movement.
I have no idea what the solution is...
> Over the past year, a fearful public has acquiesced to an extraordinary extension of expert jurisdiction over every domain of life. A pattern of “government by emergency” has become prominent, in which resistance to such incursions are characterised as “anti-science”.
Enabling legislation is being rushed through parliaments in a lot of places to post hoc legitimate a form of rule by ministerial decree.
Meanwhile, in the real world, science and technology has, in little more than a year and mostly apolitically, developed several different vaccines against covid-sars-2, tested them, and we are in the process of vaccinating the world's population. People are getting vaccinated, not because they are being forced to, but because they want to. I strongly suspect that, over the next year, a preponderance of those who are currently hesitant will quietly, and individually, choose to be vaccinated. The biggest problems right now are in delivering doses to where they are most needed, and that is a geopolitical problem that has nothing to do with the allegedly corrupt and authoritarian nature of science.
If we are all going to hell in a handbasket, it is not because science has become corrupt.
The politicisation of science has also got markedly worse. Az got lambasted by sectoral interests, promoting pfizer and modena. Not that mRNA isn't amazing, but the sheer amount of crap decision making around Az is telling.
The fuckup around aerosol dispersion is one room of science and disease theory disrespecting the specialists in another room. The work on aerosols was compelling good science months before the WHO backtracked and accepted it (this is a QuT specialist research area so its a story I know from Australia where I live. Prof Lidia Morowska's and others work getting the reconsideration of aerosol risk took a lot of pushing.)
AGW antoscientism was weaponised by big oil. Anti nuke fever has added metric tonnes of cost to any rational discussions of nuclear power and green energy.
Meanwhile, antibiotic use is rampant. We know the science here. We know what's coming.