Listen to the science

Malone is a worthless piece of shit conman, you know, like Trump.

Definitely looks like a conman.

which specific claims (regarding current vaccine policy) do you believe are false ?

I think that the problem that the OP is getting at is the one called 'Scientism'. If you look at the original great populizers of science - those who brought it to widespread public attention during the dawning of mass media - they were highly esteemed, revolutionary scientists like Einstein or Feynman. During this period, it was Feynman who said that 'science is the belief in the ignorance of experts'. He was referring to the fact that science was the antithesis of what you might call a magisterial understanding of truth - the idea that a group of people tell you what was true and untrue, and that they ought to be believed on account of their expertise. To Feynman, and other great scientists of his generation, science was a wrecking ball that tore down ossified bureaucracies and hardened assumptions about the way that the world worked. As time went on, however, a gap formed between this class of 'science communicators' and the actual creme de la creme of the scientific world. It dropped down a notch with Sagan and DeGrasse Tyson - adept scientists and intelligent men, but they never left a mark similar to that left by Feynman or Einstein.

This level of prestige took an enormous step down with Bill Nye and the slew of internet populizers that followed in his wake in later decades - many of these people don't even hold advanced degrees, yet are treated by society as authorities on physical reality. This slow and steady degradation was also accompanied by the growth of scientific bureaucracies - by the present day, these are inhabited by a mix of careerist political climbers and hopelessly corrupt scientists-for-hire, with an ever-dwindling population of principled holdouts. Fauci is emblematic of this - he is best known for completely bungling the AIDS crisis and has only failed upwards since then. If you look at the actual revolutionary scientists you can see how low of an opinion someone like him is held in - Kary Mullis is the most famous example of this, but if you know anyone in the scientific world you know that the gold standard isn't people at the top of the NIH or the FDA, it's people at Harvard, Oxford, MIT, or the Salk Institute.

So the million dollar question is who, precisely, distils down whatever serum is dripped into the public's ears and branded as 'science'? Increasingly, it's scientific popularizers, scientific journalists, and scientific bureaucrats. We all know that there are scientists who will sell their soul to the devil - the ones who are on the payroll of gas companies and present research which comes to the convenient conclusion that there's a 0% likelihood of fracking mishaps, or that burning oil is actually good for the planet, are the prime example. The idea that we should just accept whatever is fed to us in the name of science present a serious problem - because how would the general public be able to differentiate between a slew of populizers, science journalists, and ecological bureaucrats who were compromised by business interests like oil and gas companies, and one that wasn't, if we were all uncritical consumers of scientific 'truth'? The same applies to health outcomes. Over 65% of FDA funding for drug regulation comes from the very companies which the FDA is supposed to be regulating. The former FDA commissioner now sits on the board of Pfizer. Two highly regarded vaccine experts resigned from the FDA over their approval of Pfizer's booster schedule. At what point does what the FDA says about vaccines cease to treated like divine revelation?

The gold standard for science is the ability to make accurate predictions - that's what we use to test hypotheses, it's the core of the discipline. All throughout this pandemic, I have predicted one thing, the experts have predicted another, and I have been right. I said that there would be booster programs back in spring of 2021 and I had people calling me crazy - I was right. I said that a new Covid variant would come roaring back when it looked like things had died out in the summer of 2021 - I was right. I said that mask and lockdown policy would have little impact on covid numbers between US states and that temporally specific discrepancies were due to localized seasonal spikes - I was right. I predicted that Covid would never be eradicated - it has animal reservoirs and mutates way too fast - I was right. My predictions more accurate - am I more intelligent than all of these PhDs? No, I don't think so. But I don't have the same biases and don't exist in the same ecosystems of social pressures that they do, and so am unaffected by the things that introduce bias and distort their own predictions in a way which weakens their accuracy. Everyone should be at the bare minimum critical of the conflicts of interest that our self-anointed masters of reality are operating under, and shouldn't for a second take anything that they say as gospel truth. That's the polar opposite of what the greatest scientists in the world have understood science to be, and it's an incredibly ugly corruption of a beautiful tool.

Excellent post, Resurget.

I also submit this excellent article which discusses this same issue. I hope that those who disagree with me find more agreeable middle ground here:

I wasn't addressing your point directly.

Just responding to it.

exactly - this is the longest "two weeks" of my life

Your point is what then, exactly? Should I simply ignore you?

If you are unable to understand the meaning.

Then ignore for sure.

Simple.

What do you think about the Christian Science Monitor article I posted on this subject in post 35?

A balanced article.

The problem with "listen to the science" is that it doesn't add anything usefull to the conversation. Everyone agrees that we should base our actions on facts rather than fiction --- but people are generally bad at distinguishing credible science from bollocks. Listening to science is far too vague, it cannot prevent uneducated fools from trusting some random source because they don't know how to detect real science. "Listen to the science" may be misused as a justification to trust your own "research" into "the science". Put simply, people can listen to anything and believe it to be sciecne. A better way to communicate the consensus of science is to say:

"Be aware that ............ is a scientific fact you can't ignore".

This gets the relevant point across without relying on people's own ability to understand science. The average person won't read the peer-reviewed scientific literature just because some political figure asked them to --- if they are to hear sound scientific facts they must be told directly. When you are specific in your appeal to science you are simultaniously discrediting all the untrustworthy sources out there propagating bogous claims that contradict the evidence.

What I am saying is that "listen to the science" is ineffective because nobody knows how to tell science from bullshit. Politicians should cite specific facts instead.

That is the saddest part of people not just today but in general; they are taught from a young age, due to how education works, to just down what they're told and literally never learning to question it. If everything runs on hierarchy and they take in only their highest-ranked media as gospel, people are going to end up very incapable of proving it wrong or realising they're being duped if the authorities pull the wool over their eyes at some point.

It is notions like "Listen to the science" that got people mislead. No, using your ears to get information is highly unreliable because there are so many conmen that use non-authentic evidence to fool people and we wouldn't notice it right hand.

No, no, look at the science. There, you will be able to distinguish between authentic and non-authentic work by just looking at it.

I'm not sure if authenticity is relevant.

Science could just as easily conclude in authentic nonsense,  as it could in authentic sense.

Whether or not we can distinguish between fact and fantasy is more important.

And unless we understand the science we have no way of deciding, other than the assurance of people who we choose to put our trust in.

What would you even call "scientific nonsense"? Scientists trying to experiment with quantum physics and end up with different things each time?

If it is scientific nonsense, it is nothing at all, unless it is a derivative, in which "It is impossible to find sense within xxx...".

I was primarily challenging your use of the word authentic.

A scientific conclusion may or may not be authentic.

Similarly though, a scientific conclusion may not be sensible, therefore literally non-sense.

Though that is not to denigrate genuine scientific research, whereby a non -sense conclusion might eventually lead to the establishment of factual data.

It appears that there was never much data backing up the efficacy and necessity of lockdowns and masking young children. Cases in point— such hasty and unscientific measures— in the name of “following the science”— reduce people’s trust in science and cause societal damage that will manifest for some time to come…

When the coronavirus arrived in Japan, people did what they normally do: They put on masks.
Face coverings are nothing new here. During flu and hay fever seasons, trains are crowded with commuters half-hidden behind white surgical masks. Employees with colds, worried about the stigma of missing work, throw one on and soldier into the office. Masks are even used by women who don’t want to bother putting on makeup. When I was in Japan in the 80's, everbody traveling wore masks.

One problem is that people confuse "listen to the science" with "listen to the scienTISTS"

They are completely different concepts.

Yes, but how does one “listen to the science” devoid of listening to what scientists say? Science is a method, a body of work at best. As I have already said, the phrase tends to get used as a substitute for actual leadership— “follow me because…  I listen to the science!” (To the scientists, in other words, yes)

Like I said in another thread. Use your high school lab knowledge to read the results of experiments (evidence) instead of asking someone else to read the results for you. If the results of an experiment can't be read or repeated by anyone else but one man on the planet, then it isn't science (by definition).

Yes, but that still has opportunity for error and flawed conclusions. The methodology can be flawed, for example. One must then study what makes for a truly rigorous study and read counter studies and so on, and it quickly becomes very time consuming. In the case of a novel virus, almost everything about it is… novel and therefor unknown. One of the issues I have is with the very idea that there even were experts on a novel virus.

I actually read the results of about 5 studies on comorbidities, since MSM wouldn't tell us who was really at-risk (fat shaming is a no-no)

Since they all came to the same conclusions, that seemed like very strong evidence. I didn't have to wait for an "expert" to break the code of silence about the taboo of "fat-shaming"

If the evidence is important enough, I will take my time to read the evidence. (it really didn't take all that long, an hour tops)

Ah, nice. In that sense, you are listening to the scientists who compiled a given report, and when reading multiple reports, you are listening to a sort of consensus of scientists. So, one of the issues might be listening to scientists who are biased towards political correctness because of the size of their audience?

Here’s a question implying my issue with “listen to the science”: what did the science say about the effects of lockdowns on the development and education of children?

Not exactly the "consensus of science" but the repeatability of the results. It's not a matter of agreeing by "consensus." Either the results are repeatable or they are not. In this case, the results I looked at, while not exactly identical (the scientists didn't mirror each other), were similar enough to see that a causality was observable.

We only found out many years later when comparing countries with different policies to see there was actually a negative mortality effect with lockdowns as it caused physical stress which compromised natural immunity. While it did slow the spread, after 5 years about 99% were eventually exposed to some variant of Covid. As far as education went, all testing scores went down as educators were not able to communicate through virtual cameras and masks.

From my understanding, repeatability/similarity of results is what establishes a consensus among scientists. What do you believe “consensus” to be?

Exactly. While we were busy “listening to the science,” very few public people were bringing up all the salient questions that science didn’t have an answer to at the time. Meanwhile, the MSM took every opportunity to lambaste Florida’s and Sweden’s COVID policies under the presumed banner of “listening to the science.”

I believe there’s a critical distinction between the consensus of results and the consensus of people in scientific discussions. Vivek always talks about "data driven truths." When we talk about the consensus of results, we mean to say multiple independent studies, often using different methodologies, consistently produce similar findings. This repeatability reinforces the reliability and validity of the results, as it demonstrates that the observed phenomenon isn't dependent on any single study's specific conditions or potential biases. In which case, one study is independent of "consensus" of other studies.

Science: the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained:

1} General science is the opposite of everything that the  cult of Trumpet { anti-science } ergo MADA/MAFA { make america fat again } espouse ex  anti-science

2} Political science led to cult of Trumpet MADA/MAFA trifecta and,

.....2a} Putin's taking territory from Ukraine ---via Russian soldier families sons--- threats of nuclear weapons.

3} Tech science  has given rising exponential hardware gains in complement with software coding gains since 50's ergo   AI { human level machine intelligence } > General AI > more or less suffering for most of humanities existence:

.....3a} no one knows what future will unfold. Those not trapped in cult of anti-science, observe the truths of a increasing human population all wanting the lifestyle standards of living common to USA peoples

2000..........................76.9

USA.."Aggregate mortality fell by one-third from 1950 to 1990, with nearly all of that decline attributable to cardiovascular diseases and more than half to heart disease alone."..