ABSTRACT
If mistakes can be identified, this provides an opportunity to correct them. The scientific community has been weak in defending scientific principles. The teaching and education communities have allowed indoctrination of false beliefs. School children should be encouraged to detach from the groupthink mentality inherent in social media and get information from reliable sources. The psychological community have not fulfilled their responsibility by explaining the dangers of personality traits such as those of psychopaths and allowed such people to cause destruction out of proportion to their numbers. Politicians have allowed pernicious dogma to infiltrate school education and have given excessive power to bureaucrats to curtail freedoms. Decisions having large effects on communities have been made by individual bureaucrats who have abused their power. Judicial processes have been distorted by public activism. The diversity of opinion that a media outlet needs to have has been squashed by allowing groupthink to flourish. Democracies are at a disadvantage to authoritarian states because they allow greater diversification of views but this can be a strength as it steers thinking towards truth. Some of the political movements that may offer hope in the future are mentioned.
