Much attention in the culture wars tends to focus on how wacky the far right can be when it comes to embracing wild conspiracy theories and internet misinformation. Think child-abuse kidnapping rings operating out of a Washington pizza parlor. Or the nutty idea that a gun massacre of kids at a Connecticut elementary school was a hoax.

But it turns out that the hard left is just as susceptible to internet manipulation, especially when it comes to canceling people who are deemed by the masses, without proof, to have offended progressives' predefined social norms. James Webb, who led NASA from its fledgling days in 1961 to 1968, has been victimized by a multi-year cancellation campaign because of homophobic attributes attached to him without a shred of evidence. Even after his critics' allegations have been disproven, they still want to punish him — to the point that they want his name erased from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The rumor mill started in 2015 when physicist Matthew Francis wrote a piece in Forbes, "The Problem with Naming Observatories for Bigots," that accused Webb, who died in 1992, of having launched "witch hunts" against homosexuals when he was a senior State Department official during the Truman administration — seven decades ago.

A 2021 opinion piece in Scientific American, a publication known for its academic rigor, called for Webb's name to be stripped from the telescope, asserting: "The records clearly show that Webb planned and participated in meetings during which he handed over homophobic material. There is no record of him choosing to stand up for the humanity of those being persecuted." The authors led a petition drive, collecting 1,200 signatures from scientists and space enthusiasts seeking to retroactively punish Webb.

Researcher Hakeem Oluseyi, president of the National Society of Black Physicists, conducted his own investigation and demonstrated conclusively that no such records exist, and that the campaign against Webb was based on unfounded assertions. Activists then went after Oluseyi.

Much of the campaign, Oluseyi found, was based on a homophobic quote falsely attributed to Webb. But Webb's accusers refused to back down, insisting that he didn't stand up for gays back when they were being harassed by the Justice Department in the 1950s and 1960s — as if anyone was publicly defending gays back then.

The internet age has created a myth-making machine that seems unstoppable. The advent of new artificial-intelligence sites like ChatGPT will make it possible not just to attach fake quotes to people but to alter video and audio to make it appear that the targeted person said and did things that never happened. It's bad enough when the Alex Joneses of the world deliberately try to profit off falsehoods, but when the scientific community self-righteously adds its voice to a similar campaign, the world will become a place where nothing and no one can be trusted anymore.

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