章 709: Academic Battle Arena

"A word that's closely related to indoctrination is brainwashing."

The good thing about brainwashing was that it sounded so obviously nefarious that the people subjected to them knew to put on their guard. This was why brainwashing only worked these days when accompanied by force or sophisticated technology.

Indoctrination, which was brainwashing's marginally more acceptable cousin, worked more insidiously because few students were sober enough to put up their guard when it happened.

Teachers taught knowledge. Yet nobody said this knowledge consisted of pure, unbiased facts and widely-accepted beliefs.

Sometimes, even if the scientific community came to a consensus on those widely-accepted beliefs, a deviant thinker might have come up with an even better theory, but failed to gain acceptance due to existing inertia.

In fact, many researchers faced a lot of doubt and skepticism, especially when they came up with radically new or subversive beliefs!