Various versions of science-fiction futuristic dystopia predict a helpless, enfeebled citizenry at the mercy of Those Who Know How to Run the Machines. That is the path we are embarking on. The technological sector of society continues to develop in complexity and understanding and in employing science all the time. But the rest are now being cut loose, encouraged to revert to habits of thinking describable as wishful, primitive and wrong. See illustration of Donald Trump.

This may be a historical turning point. Knowledge has up until now been understood as the driver of improvement in the human condition. There have been eras of backsliding of course, and those tend to pick up names such as the Dark Ages. We could be embarking on another. It started innocently enough. No, not innocently — cynically. Science got sidelined because it was in the way of some people’s profits. But the sidelining campaign developed its own dynamic. We are now teetering on the tipping point of science being treated as just another opinion in the marketplace of power. Sending a substantial fraction of the population down a path away from scientific thinking can be viewed only as a social and political disaster.