Contemporary scientific dogmas 
and the "excommunication" of heretics

Danilo Antón
At each historical moment there are conceptual and / or scientific models that are to a large extent the ideological support of prevailing power systems. States and their political, academic, and religious structures rely on such models.
These models change over time. New data are obtained, other conceptual approaches are developed, and finally, the model change occurs. Kuhn called it "paradigmatic change".
Generally, political, religious and academic authorities and powers resist this change, but in the end, the accumulation of information and the diffusion of new ideas impose the substitution of old visions for new ones more adapted to the state of society in that moment.
Although this process has been systematic throughout history, the elites of each period act as if their conceptions were immutable, sometimes true dogmas.
This also occurs in contemporary times.
Human societies organize their knowledge through the symbolic systems of their cultures.
In each epoch there are dominant models that relate to the social and political power structures in place. These models, which were for a long time of a religious character, often dogmatic, allowed the domination of the some groups at the political or sacerdotal level.
At the same time that the elites imposed a system of knowledge, they ensured their political control and the enjoyment of economic and social privileges.

Modern History of Dogmatism
The process of replacing European dogmatic religious systems began early in the so-called "Middle Ages" sheltered in the medieval "Universities" and urban centers "burgos" and growing
through the demographic and commercial expansion of the ecumenical regions.
People who disagreed with dogmas were declared "heretics." Some, such as Giordano Bruno and Tomás Moro, were executed for their ideas or behavior that contradicted the postulates and norms established by the political and religious castes. Others, such as Nicolas Copernico or Galileo Galilei, were bitterly criticized, persecuted for their ideas and finally forced to renounce to express their points of view.
The new ideological systems developed since the XVII century commenced to neglect the philosophical structures based on biblical, canonical and Greco-Roman influences.
From the triumph of the European industrialist revolution the new systems of knowledge were definitively imposed, leaving aside the geocentric religious and dogmatic approaches.
New economic and political structures engendered a system of knowledge generation based on a network of academic, corporate and governmental institutions.
It is within the framework of this "network" that "official" knowledge, valid and / or "fundable" research projects were defined, as well as the selection of "publishable" articles in so-called "refereed scientific journals".
According to Thomas S. Kuhn's work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1970 edition), "normal" (official) scientific research is concerned on looking for novelties within accepted conceptual frames, as well as to obtain data that "confirm" what is already known.
James Lovelock points out in his work "The Ages of Gaia" (1988) that academic scientists may think that they have freedom but in reality most of them "have changed freedom of thought for good working conditions, regular income and social prestige..
Scientists are also constrained by an army of bureaucratic forces, from funding agencies to health and safety organizations. Scientists are also limited by the tribal rules of the discipline to which they belong. A physicist would have difficulty doing chemistry research, and a biologist would find almost impossible to do physics. To complete the above, in recent years the "purity" of science is more closely guarded by a self-imposed inquisition called peer review. "
The current model or scientific system is called normal science or "paradigm". The paradigm of normal science in Kuhn's view is the set of theories, rules, procedures and knowledge that permeate a given society at a particular moment in its history. At present it refers to the scientific "model" adopted in a generalized way in contemporary globalized society.
In this "globalized" society the official scientific construction works through the accumulation of scientific data that allow (supposedly) to "advance" in the knowledge in particular to achieve greater detail in the concrete application of accepted scientific models.
There is no method in this official paradigm (nor in any other dominant paradigm, by the way) that allows to discard "the whole model" and begin to accept other theories and apply other rules or procedures that end up radically altering the recognized model.
To a great extent, the difficulty of changing the official paradigm is that the radical modification of the paradigm implies altering the relations of power.
At the political level, the holders of paradigmatic power are those who occupy the decision-making positions. At an economic level, it is they who benefit from their privileged position in the knowledge structure. At the academic level, they defend the prestige and economic security that the university and professional positions they occupy.
In short, the struggle for the preservation of the paradigm by its main proponents arises in terms of power.
D.Antón.
More info at daniloanton.blogspot.com