If you look at the feat that Julian Assange pulled by understanding the political system and playing it, power isn't as centralized as it was in the past.
On the other hand Julian Assange did lose his ability to move freely so, it's not like the state lost all it's power. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2014/02/update-on-one-man-vs-the-world.html is a nice blog that covers how the size of superempowered individuals that do have power in a decentralised way that wasn't there in the past.
If your science gets censored in France because of France latest idea that censorship is the way to go you are free to move to a different country and there are plenty to choose where you are relatively free to express science.
Paper by the Cultural Cognition Project: The culturally polarizing effect of the "anti-science trope" on vaccine risk perceptions
This is a great paper (indeed, I think many at LW would find the whole site enjoyable). I'll try to summarize it here.
Background: The pro/anti vaccine debate has been hot recently. Many pro-vaccine people often say, "The science is strong, the benefits are obvious, the risks are negligible; if you're anti-vaccine then you're anti-science".
Methods: They showed experimental subjects an article basically saying the above.
Results: When reading such an article, a large number of people did not trust vaccines more, but rather, trusted the American Academy of Pediatrics less.
My thoughts: I will strive to avoid labeling anybody as being "anti-science" or "simply or willfully ignorant of current research", etc., even when speaking of hypothetical 3rd parties on my facebook wall. This holds for evolution, global warming, vaccines, etc.
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Also included in the article: references to other research that shows that evolution and global warming debates have already polarized people into distrusting scientists, and evidence that people are not yet polarized over the vaccine issue.
If you intend to read the article yourself: I found it difficult to understand how the authors divided participants into the 4 quadrants (α, ß, etc.) I will quote my friend, who explained it for me:
I was helped by following the link to where they first introduce that model.
The people in the top left (α) worry about risks to public safety, such as global warming. The people in the bottom right (δ) worry about socially deviant behaviors, such as could be caused by the legalization of marijuana.
People in the top right (β) worry about both public safety risks and deviant behaviors, and people in the bottom left (γ) don't really worry about either.