Adventurism:
improvisation or experimentation (as in politics or military or foreign affairs) in the absence or in defiance of accepted plans or principles [Merriam-Webster]
I would add that these actions are taken in prioritization of personal advantage, whether it be power or wealth. Noted in the Wikipedia article on Trofim Lysenko, the former head of Soviet science, who has become symbolic of the folly of placing ideology ahead of science:
In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:
He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.[30]
The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science.
And what brings this up?
Doctors asking the Alaska State Medical Board to crack down on colleagues spreading COVID-19 misinformation say they’re receiving holiday packages, some at their homes, from a group pushing for alternative treatments like ivermectin.
The delivery of the packages from the Alaska Covid Alliance came off as threatening and invasive, several doctors said. Each package — at least some of which arrived in holiday-themed gift bags — included chocolates, a letter acknowledging the recipients’ signatures on a recent letter to the medical board and a 28-page pamphlet advocating for mostly unproven COVID-19 treatments.
The “gift drops” idea came about as the result of brainstorming by Alaska Covid Alliance members on “how can we get a dialogue started,” said David Boyle, a member of the group and former executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative nonprofit that advocates for small government and less regulation. [Anchorage Daily News]
The members of this Alaska Covid Alliance strike me as adventurers, advocating for using therapies for which no positive evidence has emerged. They want the prestige of advocating for an “approved” medicine before it was approved, and the hell with the discovery that they are useless and even dangerous meds.
Their opportunity at gaining social position disappears if they acknowledge that, so let’s pretend that they don’t exist.
It’s really quite shameful.
