In recent years there have been increasing calls for censorship, deplatforming, and more "content moderation" of journalistic and scholarly discourse, and public discourse more broadly speaking. Part of this trend has been the recent emergence of concepts like "settled science", and the claim that individuals should not be allowed to challenge, question, or disagree with the settled science under any circumstances, even if those individuals are themselves experts on these topics (Martin Kuldorff and Jay Bhattacharya are the best examples, but there are hundreds of others across numerous disciplines).

Of course, I understand the desire to promote rational discourse and to encourage evidence based public policy, but that being said, what objective logical, mathematical, and empirical criteria can be used to distinguish "settled science" from other scientific debates and discussions that have not been "settled", and how is the concept of "settled science" compatible with the scientific method and the concept of falsifiability? From what I have seen, nobody has ever provided any legitimate scientific criteria that could be used to distinguish "settled science" from other forms of science in a comprehensive and consistent manner, and the very concept of "settled science" appears to be logically inconsistent with the very concept of falsifiability itself. If a set of concepts or theories or models are declared to be "settled science", then you are, by definition, saying that these ideas cannot be questioned or challenged under any circumstances regardless of the empirical, mathematical, or logical justification for doing so. If this is the case, then the very concept of "settled science" is in fact incompatible with the scientific method, which is predicated on the concept of falsifiability.