Daily Inspiration Quote by Serge Lang

Lang’s sentence lands like an alarm bell aimed not at the public, but at his own guild. The target is “Baltimore’s view” (a reference to Nobel laureate David Baltimore and the culture of deference that flared around high-profile scientific disputes in the late 20th century). Lang frames the issue as a test of scientific character: if the community accepts that refusing to “take the words of authorities” is abnormal, then science has quietly traded its core operating system - organized skepticism - for something closer to credentialed obedience.

The phrasing is doing strategic work. “Ordinary behavior” is a deliberately loaded standard: it implies that conformity, not inquiry, is becoming the norm. Lang isn’t mainly arguing about one controversy; he’s describing an institutional drift where reputation becomes evidence and status becomes a substitute for replication, transparency, and argument. By naming “authorities” explicitly, he signals that the danger isn’t just error, it’s hierarchy: a system where questioning the right people is treated as bad manners, or worse, as unprofessional.

The subtext is mathematician-sharp: in math, you don’t get to cite eminence; you prove the claim. Lang is importing that ethos into messy, human, lab-driven science, where results can be ambiguous and careers are entangled with grants, journals, and prestige. His “fundamental… serious… disturbing” escalation reads like a moral diagnosis: once a community starts disciplining dissent as deviance, it’s not protecting science. It’s protecting itself.