", and the scientific establishment"

This isn't a thing. There's no unified organization of science, therefore making generalizations about it ss wrong. It would be just as wrong as saying "Fast food restaurants need to..", "The media always ...", "Black people should stop...".

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This is what people mean when they say science is becoming a religion: not that the concept of what science is changing, but that certain parts of the scientific establishment are not doing science per se but that their conclusions are still regarded as scientific based on past reputation.

That's not the fault of science that's the fault of either the SPECIFIC establishments or the person. Reputation is based on past actions like truthfulness, admitting fault, etc. Not only the specific of what they did. If a company made pizza and had a reputation for quality then decided to sell bagels is it wrong of me to trust the quality? If Nature had a good reputation with scientific papers and started publishing theology papers, then why is it wrong to trust them?

* the new theology articles as "scientists have discovered that [...]".*

I don't even get this example. If a theology article starts with that sentence then that's kinda weird, I would have to read more but say the article is just fraudulent or uses "science" to justify something. That's the fault of Nature for publishing it and the author for writing it. It has nothing to do with "science" (a process) or other "scientific establishments" (since they aren't a single organization).

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A specific example would be someone like Michio Kaku. He is nominally a scientist, and is often interviewed as a scientist and many believe he is there to present what science says. But he is in fact just some public speaker/sci-fi author who last practiced science decades ago and now revels in speculation and exaggeration. He is essentially a priest of scientism.

According to Wikipedia he seems to have done a great deal of scientific work -

"Between 1970 and 2000, Kaku had papers published in physics journals covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics.[13] In 1974, Kaku and Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University co-authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form.[14]
Kaku is the author of several textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory. An explicit description of the second-quantization of the light-cone string was given by Kaku and Keiji Kikkawa.[15][16]"

Is there some expiration on calling yourself a scientist? It looks like this was his life's work. Like if stop researching physics for a month then spoke on a podcast where I was called a physicist is that deceptive? I could understand if someone never did any research and was being presented as a scientist but hasn't this person earned that title? Finally if someone is a scientist and a person trusts them explicitly because of that then that's wrong but that's the fault of the person.

now revels in speculation and exaggeration

I don't know anything about him, these are subjective assessments, but assuming they are true: If he speculates as part of a discussion and it's obvious or he makes it clear that it's speculation that's not a bad thing. If he exaggerates then he shouldn't, that's a personal flaw that doesn't reflect on "science" or "scientific establishments"

He's also not a priest. The definition of a priest:
"a person whose office it is to perform religious rites, and especially to make sacrificial offerings."

You are trying to take words related to religion, generalize them, then using that more general definition apply it to a scientist to claim that science is a religion. Yes, we all like to spice up our sentences : "I worship pizza" "He's the priest of this fraternity". Is the fraternity a religion now? Is Pizza my new God? (it is actually) Taylor Swift isn't a religion because her fans worship her and go to mass gatherings where she performs """rituals"""

Mostly I feel like you are trying to show that incorrect usage of terms, personal flaws, and companies that misuse titles and/or reputation make science a religion because there are people who explicitly trust science, like some do with religion. Let's address that:

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"Trust the science"

Let's say you need to answer a question or make a decision about something you can research. Unless you are an expert in that field and/or are willing to put massive amounts of time learning and doing your own research, you should just trust what the majority of the people in that field agree on (i.e. trust the science). Why? Because what's the alternative?

If you want to call this worship, fine, but don't claim it's like a religion. Religions don't test their truths/claims and they don't think you should test them. They want you to have faith AND faith is the only option.

So you might say something like "oh but you have faith those scientists had the right data, weren't lying etc etc"

You can do your own research, read their papers, run your own tests if you wanted to. Yes it's difficult and for many nearly impossible but the point it the information exists. The evidence to backup scientific claims exists. If someone makes a claims but lied about the evidence, that's not science. If they want you to believe their claim, have no evidence, and there's no way to test the claim, that's a religion.

Sorry this was so long