From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The Censoring of Science and the Road to Serfdom   
   LETTERS, Oct. 8, 2023, WSJ   
   Thanks are due to Allysia Finley for alerting the public to the censorship of   
   counternarrative science (“How ‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt   
   Science,” Life Science, Oct. 2). An account of censorship perpetrated by   
   Social Science Research Network    
   and medRxiv is provided in a new article in Econ Journal Watch by Jay   
   Bhattacharya and Steve Hanke.   
      
   In one chapter of “The Road to Serfdom” (1944), Friedrich Hayek writes of   
   the urge toward censorship in antiliberal regimes. “Public criticism or even   
   expressions of doubt must be suppressed,” he writes. Propaganda from the   
   government is not    
   sufficient: “The plan itself in every detail . . . must become sacrosanct   
   and exempt from criticism.”   
      
   Consider the following sentence of Hayek’s in light of the Covid experience,   
   along with the asides I insert: “The basis of unfavorable comparison [the   
   savaging of Sweden’s minimal lockdown policy], the knowledge of possible   
   alternatives to the    
   course actually taken [e.g., focused protection], information which might   
   suggest failure on the part of the government [the lockdown study by Prof.   
   Hanke and co-authors, information about vaccine safety and efficacy,   
   etc.]—all will be suppressed.”   
      
   Down the road to serfdom, in the sciences themselves, Hayek says, the   
   “search for truth cannot be allowed” and “vindication of the official   
   views becomes the sole object.” In scholarly disciplines, he continues,   
   “the pretense that they search    
   for truth is abandoned and . . . the authorities decide what doctrines ought   
   to be taught and published.”   
      
   Hayek sounded the alarm because he saw how things unfolded on the European   
   continent. The further we go down the antiliberal road, the more fragile and   
   vulnerable are official narratives to criticism. As a result, Hayek says,   
   “intolerance . . . is    
   openly extolled” by the mind-guards and minions of official narratives.   
      
   Hayek’s point was not what Yogi Berra had in mind when he said, “If you   
   don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” But the   
   point fits.   
      
   Prof. Daniel Klein, George Mason Univ., Chief Editor, Econ Journal Watch   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-science-censorship-hayek-fa5c568b   
      
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