[trhway]

it is like any scientific knowledge - ultimately it can't be monopolized/stopped, yet a lot of people can be burned at the stake in the process. It isn't just about Middle Ages - just 60 years ago cybernetics and genetic biology were "false sciences" (with people lives destroyed in various ways [1]) in a nuclear superpower who sent the first satellite&human into space just few years later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism : "More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were sent to prison or fired or executed as a part of this campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents."

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov... : "Law of large numbers or the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov or Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research."