In his pathbreaking (but pre-Internet) book After Virtue, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asks us to

[i]magine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters [is] blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally a Know-Nothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists.