No Loss for Words

The New Heresy: When Questioning Becomes a Crime

There was a time when science was the language of curiosity. It invited questions, welcomed challenge, and saw debate as the oxygen of discovery. That was the old school — the one I grew up admiring. Today, something quieter and more troubling has crept in: a growing fear that questioning authority, even in the name of truth, marks you as dangerous.

We saw it during the pandemic. People who asked honest questions about origins, treatments, and policies were shamed or silenced. Doctors were censored. Journalists were de-platformed. Social media companies became referees of scientific opinion. Yet, years later, many of those “conspiracy theories” turned out to contain inconvenient pieces of truth. The problem wasn’t that the public lost faith in science. It’s that science allowed itself to be managed by politics.

This new orthodoxy extends far beyond medicine. In the climate debate, for example, legitimate questions about policy design are treated as moral sins. You can agree that the climate is changing and still ask whether the proposed solutions make sense. But too often, that nuance gets lost. The message from the self-anointed guardians of truth is clear: “You may question the details, but never the narrative.”

Real science doesn’t behave that way. It doesn’t blacklist dissent or exile those who see the data differently. Science at its best is a humble companion of reason — not a pulpit from which elites preach certainty to the rest of us. When debate becomes forbidden, science turns into dogma. And once dogma takes hold, truth becomes whatever those in power decide it is.

The deeper issue isn’t about data; it’s about power. When government officials, corporate sponsors, and political foundations all profit from the same set of “approved” truths, it’s no wonder skepticism feels subversive. The pandemic showed how fear can justify sweeping authority, and how economic winners always seem to emerge from moral crusades. Policies built on partial truths can still inflict very real harm — to livelihoods, education, mental health, and basic freedom. And when citizens ask for accountability, they’re told to “trust the science.”

But science doesn’t ask for trust; it earns it. It earns it by being transparent, by admitting uncertainty, and by treating every challenge as a chance to get closer to the truth. The moment we treat questioning as heresy, we turn science into a faith — one enforced not by evidence, but by power.

This isn’t about relitigating the past few years. It’s about remembering that free societies depend on doubt. We are supposed to test ideas, expose errors, and speak freely about the motives of those who govern. When the powers that be suppress questions, the people will start looking for answers elsewhere — and sometimes, that search leads them down darker roads. The cure for misinformation is not censorship; it’s open, honest debate.

So let’s bring back the spirit of old-school science — the kind that believes truth is strengthened, not weakened, by challenge. Let’s respect expertise, but not worship it. Let’s ask hard questions, not because we reject knowledge, but because we want it to mean something again. If that makes us heretics in the age of managed truth, then maybe heresy is exactly what democracy needs.

Because when questioning becomes a crime, truth becomes a casualty. And a nation that punishes doubt has already decided it prefers obedience to wisdom.