Chapter Fifteen - Banned Science

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Banned Science

YOU’D THINK TRUTH would be safe.
Evidence. Data. Proof.
But science doesn’t just explain the world.
It challenges the stories people tell about it.

And in some places, that’s enough to make it dangerous.

Start with evolution.

In Saudi Arabia, public schools don’t teach it.
Textbooks teach creationism and reject evolution entirely.
Humans were created by God, fully formed, with no mention of common ancestry.

In Turkey, the government removed evolution from the high school curriculum in 2017.
They said students weren’t “ready” for it.
What they meant was:
It’s politically inconvenient.

In parts of the United States, the fight is still going.
School boards ban evolution textbooks.
“Creation science” and “intelligent design” get slipped in instead.
Teachers get sued for saying the Earth is old.
Because even in the land of freedom, truth comes with conditions.

Now zoom out.
What else gets banned?

Climate change, for one.

In Brazil, under President Bolsonaro, scientists were censored for reporting deforestation data.
He called the numbers fake.
Then he attacked the agency’s director so aggressively that the man resigned.

In the U.S., large sections of federal websites had climate terminology stripped or rewritten.
“Global warming” disappeared.
“Sea-level rise” got rewritten.
Government scientists were muzzled and reports were buried.

When the facts are bad for business, they go missing.

In China, environmental science is tolerated until it blames the state.

Pollution studies, cancer villages, and poisoned rivers are all real and all quietly ignored.

Publishing them means risking your job.
Or your freedom.
Or both.

Then there’s reproductive science.

In El Salvador, doctors can face prosecution for providing or even being suspected of aiding abortion care.
In Poland, doctors risk jail time for assisting women whose pregnancies put them at risk.
In parts of Africa, HIV prevention is restricted or labeled immoral, especially when tied to LGBTQ issues.
Teaching sex ed is framed as corrupting children.

When science clashes with ideology, the ideology wins.

In Russia, LGBTQ psychology is taboo.
Conversion therapy is promoted by conservative groups and often tolerated.
Research into queer health is seen as propaganda.
In Iran, being gay is a mental illness.
Trans people can get surgery, but only after the state labels them disordered.

Science doesn’t just get ignored.
It gets rewritten.

COVID-19 showed the whole world how fast science can get banned.

In China, early whistleblowers were silenced.
In India, doctors were warned against making public statements about shortages.
In the U.S., pandemic policy turned into a culture war.

In North Korea, astronomy is filtered through state propaganda.
You learn that Kim Jong-il was born under a double rainbow and that comets herald the leader’s greatness.
It’s not science.
It’s myth, dressed in a lab coat.

Why does this happen?

Because science doesn’t ask for permission.
It tests.
It challenges.
It exposes.

It doesn’t care who’s in charge.
It just tells the truth.

And for a regime built on lies, that’s the biggest threat of all.