People make sciences to cults, nature doesn’t care.
Discussion
this is precisely the definition of a cult: one or several people's ideals overruling reality for their followers, and the manipulation games to gain and keep said followers in the flock
i don't think it matters if the control techniques are NLP chitchat or mind control social media algos it's the same basic principle
Unfortunately, this happens in science too. Unfortunately, positive things produced by science are not emphasized enough or simply taken for granted. I don’t think that Tim Berners-Lee who was building the proto-internet at CERN wanted to create a cult or so. But many cults emerged because of his invention.