Part 7/14:
This mentality resembles religious hierarchies—where authority is derived from initiation and rank, not empirical validation. The “guild” becomes a gatekeeper, privileging those who conform to its standards and dismissing those who challenge its orthodoxy, regardless of the substance of their findings.
Implications for Controversial Fields
The paper explores how this guild mentality manifests in contentious areas like race, hereditarianism, and genetics. It notes that some researchers outside the mainstream—such as those who question the prevailing dogma that race is a social construct—are labeled as amateurs or pseudo-scientists, even when their data and peer-reviewed publications suggest otherwise.