[geofft]

That's my point exactly. Do you think Galileo thought there was room for dissent about whether the earth moved? Did he famously say "Eppur si muove, forse"?

There's no room for dissent. There's room for argument, and by all means we should argue about it and not ban one side of the conversation. But only one of the sides can be right.

[hermitdev]

What do you think argument is, but dissent? Science doesn't progress if there isn't dissent. If there is no dissent from the status quo, there's no reason to do any research.

Galileo also thought the orbits of the planets were circular, but he was wrong about that. It doesn't matter what he thought or said at the time. Newton's laws of motions worked well... until they didn't and Einstein gave us something better. We also don't think Einstein is 100% correct, either, because relativity breaks down in some important corner cases. But it's the best explanation we have at the time.

Science is fundamentally built upon the principle of falsifiability. Without falsifiability all you have is belief and dogma. It's also why there's a fundamental difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law.

Your "argument" that we should all just shut up and walk the line is, ironically, the true anti-science position.