[beaconstudios]

Well, if somebody who has been pushed outside the realm of scientific acceptability has a point to make, can't they conduct a study to prove the hypothesis they're trying to forward? Sure, the US is becoming more divided, but even in calmer seas I would expect scientists to criticise anybody trying to drive policy based on shaky science, because that is inherently an antiscientific and irrational approach to policymaking. If you genuinely want to explore whether some given protocol (say, HCQ for covid) is effective, just do good science. We should all be skeptical of "scientists" skirting around the scientific process.

[spupe]

I get what you mean, but do you see how the politics around otherwise sterile scientific decisions influence how scientists will decide what to test, and what gets ultimately funded and reported? For example, HCQ is and has always been a shot in the dark, based on some wonky theory about transmission rates in Africa. That it became a major talking point in some parts of the world before any tests were conducted meant that a) a lot of funding would inevitably go towards testing it, which is likely suboptimal and b) scientists who do not support the politicians who talked about HCQ in the first place may be inclined to review the evidence in a more negative way (and vice versa). Another level of distortion is added by media, as different organizations may report only results that confirm the biases of their clientele. "Just do good science" is an aspirational goal, not the reality we see.