What it is vs how it's (ab)used

Am scientist (well, was, before career change), can confirm. Fuck dogmatic scientists, they're worse than regular dogmatists because they've been given many opportunities to know better.

I’m an anarchist who despises authoritairian tankies.

This is just critical theory, and meta science. Both of which are legitimate fields.

Even if you're a die-hard capitalist, you shouldn't use "tankie" as a broad label for anti-capitalists. Diluting it as a term just helps the actual tankies (authoritarian communists).

does tankie just mean "critiques capitalism" now?

This is tankie? It seems just communist.

Took like maybe 5 minutes of searching, but the artist is Bro Aniki

Capital has certain interests. If your research doesn't produce the results that capital is looking for, you're unlikely to get more funding. As such, it leaves a bias on what we have research for, which can already skew our perception of reality, and sometimes researchers will even fake their results or select certain data to reach a conclusion that's in the interest of the capital.

There are mechanisms in place to try to prevent that, namely peer reviews and reproduction of previous studies, so we'll hopefully get to the truth eventually, but the bias still has a big impact.