[mike_hearn]

But the difference came about only due to relentless informed written criticism of scientists, many of whom happily described their critics as spreading misinformation (or similar words from their era).

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-0348-9008-3_...

"Even individual fanatic scientific advocates of the Einsteinian theory seem to have finally abandoned their tactic of cutting off any discussion about it with the threat that every criticism, even the most moderate and scrupulous ones, must be discredited as an obvious effluence of stupidity and malice"

People often present science as some sort of free-floating edifice that "self corrects" through mysterious mechanisms. It doesn't. Scientists with wrong ideas have to be explicitly corrected by other people, some of whom will be random Swiss patent clerks and other outsiders. Therefore you cannot have science without free speech, because otherwise there's no way for bad ideas to be corrected. It's as simple as that. And yet, academic "scientists" are often at the forefront of demanding it be shut down.