Science denial is a problem like that faced by blasphemy. Doubting God, doubting his threeness, even doubting his frenemy the devil .. all these were very disruptive in a Christendom .dependent on common acceptance of reality.
Einstein’s story is a more temperate one ,, at least if you remember Hitler’s offer to make Einstein an honorary Aryan. Once Einstein’s ideas of relativity were understood they became the new canon. The exception: Germany, where relativity was seen as an evil Jewish plot, much as the Republicans now see evolution or global warming s liberal plot.
A. Douglas Stone’s biography “Einstein and the Quantum.” writes “A fringe group of scientists and engineers, led by an obscure engineer named Paul Weyland, attacked relativity theory as fallacious and undermining the purity of German Science.” Einstein believed that truth would win his case. In August of 1920 Einstein attended a public meeting where he attacked his critics. Einstein thought this would work: “I feel like a man lying in a good bed, but plagued by bedbugs,” he observed. Still, he wanted to quell the naysayers.”
He failed. Germany lost a war it might have won if its blasphemy had been better chosen.