scienticide means destruction or debasement of scientific method, understanding, and/or infrastructure; a (figurative) killing of science. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
scienticide is pronounced /sɪˈɛntɪsaɪd/.
Why “scienticide” is a great word
SCIENTICIDE — [Noun] The systematic destruction or debasement of scientific method, understanding, or infrastructure. From the Latin *scientia* (“knowledge, science”) and the combining form *-cide* (“killing, slayer”). Unlike Luddism, which rails against the machine, or pseudoscience, which dons a lab coat to masquerade, scienticide is the deliberate, systemic assault on the very marrow of empirical truth. It is the quiet defunding of a long-term ecological study, the calculated amplification of a fabricated study to erode public trust, and the methodical strangulation of a research grant until the hypothesis withers. It is the murder not of facts, but of the faculty for finding them—a conscious choosing of a comfortable darkness over a difficult light.
noun
- Destruction or debasement of scientific method, understanding, and/or infrastructure; a (figurative) killing of science.“In the AVNOJ-Yugoslav period, a significant network of educational-scientific and scientific-research institutions was developed. In the period of the Chetnik, tiral-fascist aggression, Sarajevo has experienced an actual scienticide.”