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Why We Can’t Trust Anything ‘The Science’ Says Any More
The Federalist ^ | 07/10/2020 | Joy Pullman

Posted on 07/10/2020 8:21:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Despite standing behind their data and method used to conclude there is “no evidence of anti-Black [sic] or anti-Hispanic disparities across [fatal police] shootings,” a study’s authors want to retract their work because it contradicts left-wing politics.

“Although our data and statistical approach were valid to estimate the question we actually tested (the race of civilians fatally shot by police), given continued misuse of the article (e.g., MacDonald, 2020) we felt the right decision was to retract the article,” Michigan State University’s Joseph Cesario and the University of Maryland at College Park’s David Johnson wrote in their retraction request, according to the blog Retraction Watch.

Cesario and Johnson link to work by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, who is often viciously protested for publicizing data indicating that racial disparities in policing and crime are typically due not to racism but to higher rates of criminal behavior among blacks and Hispanics as compared to whites and Asians.

Some research finds black Americans are more likely to be involved in physical altercations with police, although it is currently not established whether that is due to racism, behavior differences, or something else. Research also has found that black officers shoot black suspects at the same rate white officers do, and that police are if anything more reluctant to shoot nonwhites. The latter is the main conclusion of the study Cesario and Johnson want to retract due not to scientific error but to politics.

Their finding directly contradicts the left-wing narrative fomenting riots across the nation after George Floyd, a black man with illicit drugs in his blood, died after a nearly nine-minute chokehold from a Minneapolis police officer. Floyd, a multi-time convicted criminal who once held a gun to a pregnant black woman’s belly during a robbery, was used as a pretext to revive the narrative that all U.S. police officers are racist and so is the country and the rule of law they represent.

‘The Science’ Is a Mask for Arbitrary Power

These researchers are attempting to hide information that doesn’t support policies roving violent mobs are attempting to impose at the blunt ends of bricks, sticks, and guns. This bias and cowardice is only the tip of the iceberg of the scientific corruption we’ve been seeing increase since, perhaps, the scientific method became accepted as a valid way to perceive reality.

Another pervasive recent example is, of course, the use of “science” as a shield for politicians to make largely arbitrary, ill-informed, and oftentimes abusive decisions about how to handle COVID-19. In recent months, we’ve been told that “science says” so many contradictory and even flat-out false things, it’s hard to even keep track of them all.

Science says don’t wear a mask. Except that you absolutely should wear a mask. Even though it isn’t recommended by medical scientists using data from other respiratory disease outbreaks. But it’s still helpful. Or actually it’s not really, according to the Centers for Disease Control in 2017. Yet you should still wear a mask, or else. Who knows?

Science says gathering in groups will spread coronavirus. Except if those groups are thousands of anti-America protesters crowding together on hot streets. Oh, wait, yes, that actually does spread the disease. And so does attending church. But not going to the grocery store. While going to the beach is dangerous. Except being outside is actually about the safest place you can be.

Except that there are second waves of transmission in hot, summery places where lots of people outside. The science said summer would slow the virus. Except now it’s not, and you need to stay inside. Except when you’re going outside. But don’t you dare plant your garden when you’re out there, or go to your cabin. But other people from other states can go to their cabins in your state. Because science!

Plenty of public leaders are insisting “science says” kids shouldn’t go back to school, even though medical organizations point out that not going to school is more dangerous to kids than going, and so is the flu, over which we never close schools. The Centers for Disease Control also never recommended closing schools, yet still schools are closing and only partially reopening and acting like teachers should get special employment privileges that nurses and grocery store workers don’t.

Even when science lines up on one side of an issue like this, it’s discarded in favor of politics. It’s as obvious as the swaddled noses on our faces that science is now just a weapon to be used against people who disagree with the left, or simply want to be able to retain the classic American freedom to run their own lives and families as they see fit.

Replication Crisis Means What ‘Studies Say’ Is Often Junk

This runs much deeper and longer than coronavirus. Probably the most significant example of scientific corruption is the ongoing replication crisis. It’s summarized in Nature this way: “More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.”

In other, other words: What “studies say” aren’t generally reliable. You either have to read a study and evaluate it by the methods that make for a trustworthy one versus an untrustworthy one (the “gold standard” is a double-blind, randomized controlled trial, which is rarely done), or you have to wait until studies have consistently found the same result to be able to trust a certain conclusion.

Obviously, that is simply not possible for many coronavirus-related decisions, let alone any of the other things about which people have to make decisions every single day. How many randomized, controlled, generation-long trials have been done on, for example, every ingredient in all the foods we eat? What about all the medicines we take, or even vitamins? How about the effects of social media, and children having personal screens? Not enough, is the answer.

Open and Hidden Political Bias Corrupts Results

Even when studies have been done, other serious dangers to their integrity lurk. Open suppression and intimidation campaigns seem to be accelerating in number and depth. The current attempt to cancel Steven Pinker is another in an almost overwhelming series of these episodes.

Social “science” has long been a political manipulation tool due partly to lacking the ability to generate harder data due to its subject matter (you can’t randomly assign, say, thousands of children to divorced parents or a poorer neighborhood). Research on environmental and LGBT issues is, for example, notoriously biased and unreliable. Findings that contradict leftist ideology on these topics (and others) are also frequently suppressed.

For example, when Brown University researcher Lisa Littman found evidence that transgenderism was a “social contagion” driven by social media and peers, her academic journal and university threw her under the bus after a pressure campaign from activists who didn’t like these findings. The episode “raises serious concerns about the ability of all academics to conduct research on controversial topics,” wrote former Harvard University medical school dean Jeffrey Flier. You don’t say.

Another likely part of the reason for this problem is the overwhelming leftism of the academy. “[L]ack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike,” says a 2014 study.

Essentially every domain of research is overwhelmingly controlled by leftists. A “sample of 8,688 tenure track, Ph.D.–holding professors from fifty-one of the sixty-six top ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2017 report,” minus the two military academies, found that there are 13 self-identified Democrat professors for every single self-identified Republican, for example.

People within academia regularly and often anonymously report that it’s common for papers with notable findings to be buried if its conclusions support conservative policy. We’ll never have that information, further skewing our understanding of reality. This all means political corruption is rife in research, and that’s not going to change soon.

Subterranean Bias Can Kill People

Research suppression and corruption isn’t limited to hot social topics, either. It also occurs in hard sciences. Biologist Bret Weinstein recently recounted in a viral interview on the Joe Rogan podcast his experience as a young researcher.

He found that the mice being used to ground certain medical trials were giving false results, meaning some treatments could be dangerous instead of helpful. Nobody would even test his discovery, likely because millions of dollars were on the line for the therapies supported by bad research.

“I cannot explain it except to say that the culture of science has become so rotten that this sort of thing is maybe standard operating procedure,” Weinstein told Rogan. “…I look at my own medicine cabinet and even though I am aware of what likely happened…the only way to be protected by the downstream consequences of this error is to not take pharmaceuticals.”

Don’t Use Crap Science to Control Me, Bro

All the above undermines public confidence in universities and research itself, and rightly so, because it indicates today’s science is driven not by truth-seeking but by ideology. Further, it undermines public trust in the people who attempt to use this corrupted means to control our lives.

Science has been bastardized and taken out of its rightful place to run all sorts of scams on people. That’s because it has earned an authority from being trustworthy and replicable, for revealing useful truths about the world for centuries, contributing to the West’s many civilizational triumphs.

Mass manipulators seize this earned authority as a tool for controlling people. Decent people follow right along for a time, unaware of how science has been hijacked, and that’s how the mass manipulators win for a time.

But the more they use this trick, the more they erode the authority science developed for itself through honesty and patience. Citizens are increasingly aware that what “the science says” is a lie, even if they aren’t always aware of exactly what’s causing this. Instead of taking these legitimate concerns seriously, elites sneer at Americans for being ignorant rubes and “science deniers.”

These elites shouldn’t be surprised that their lack of concern for scientific integrity undermines not only one reliable way for learning truth, but also the legitimacy of their governance based on lies.


Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her newest ebooks are"Classic Books for Young Children" and "32 Classic Games You Can Play Anywhere." @JoyPullmann is also the author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: coronavirus; racism; redacted; science
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1 posted on 07/10/2020 8:21:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

I heard Fauci say a week or two ago that “Science is truth.”

I nearly fell out of my chair.

Science isn’t “Truth”. Science is the process of looking for the truth in a highly structured way using what is commonly known as “The Scientific Method”.

Every significant scientists, even giants like Newton, Einstein and Bohrs had their discoveries overturned by other scientists who found flaws and holes in them.

Science is NEVER, and has NEVER been “the truth”. It is the process to SEARCH for truth.

I don’t like Fauci. From the moment I laid eyes on him, he came across at a gut level like a weasel. Then, hearing him say that...well, he is more politician and administrator than he is scientist, in my opinion.


2 posted on 07/10/2020 8:33:05 AM PDT by rlmorel ("Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies"- George Orwell)
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To: SeekAndFind

If I say man-made global warming is a hoax, they call me a “science denier”.

If I say human life begins at conception, they call me a Nazi.

An awful lot of “science” these days is more Politics than it is Science.


3 posted on 07/10/2020 8:37:27 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: SeekAndFind

I have noticed this trend for a long time, as far back as the early days of Cable TV. Channels dubbed “HISTORY”, “SCIENCE”, “LEARNING”, “DISCOVERY” etc, had dozens of programs replete with the following phrases:

“Scientists say”
“Scientists think”
“Some Scientists think”
“Some Scientists say”
“Studies show”
“Some Studies Show”
and the ever popular:

“Could it POSSIBLY be?”

At no time is the Scientific Method employed, nor Replicated Double-Blind Experimentation, or even unverified Statistics.

Based on these musings, an entire generation has been raised to believe in such things as Global Warming, Systemic Racism, Ancient Aliens, Pyramid Power, Nostradamus Prophecies, Astrology, Lost Civilizations, Atlantis, Cryptozoology, Werewolves and Vampires, Chubracapras, Area 51, Government Conspiracies, Masonic Plots, Hitler’s Survival, and Big Foot.

While some of these things may have some validity, the cable Channels have made them a RELIGION to replace the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our culture.

No empirical studies needed.

This was brought home to me during the quarantine, when the cable company, in its largess, gave me the Smithsonian Channel for free.

I was watching a two-year old documentary about the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago. A ranking member of the CDC was interviewed. She used the term “Social Distancing” and bemoaned that our citizens were not practicing it, and that another plague would come and force us to do so.

As I said, that documentary was over two years old.

Hmmmmmmm.


4 posted on 07/10/2020 8:42:16 AM PDT by left that other site (If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. (Isaiah 7:9))
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To: SeekAndFind

This is 1984 in action. The truth is not allowed if it contradicts the politically correct narrative.


5 posted on 07/10/2020 8:43:34 AM PDT by Bayan
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To: SeekAndFind

Study the career of Stalin’s favorite scientist Lysenko. If a scientist in academia , employed by a non profit or government, his or her career,employment, funding, ability to publish and recognition depends on political correctness, adherence to the narrative and the “relevance” of their work. Lysenko is the model marxist scientist and when the marxists rule he is the model they follow.

Sadly if you reflect, the more marxist a university becomes, there is much less innovative research and real accomplishments. Innovation, rearch and the search for truth requires free, unrestricted thought and expression. Not common today at American universities.


6 posted on 07/10/2020 8:48:18 AM PDT by allendale
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To: SeekAndFind

Modern “science” is a secularist’s religion.


7 posted on 07/10/2020 8:49:14 AM PDT by dhs12345
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To: dhs12345

Bull shit!

Total balderdascious drivel that is the product of a n extremely narrow mind


8 posted on 07/10/2020 8:52:23 AM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: SeekAndFind

The politicization of science is another tactic of the left to control us. When you can sell a lie that has costs trillions to the West that the planet is warming without considering the impact of the sun (the real engine) you can use any “science” to implement control.


9 posted on 07/10/2020 8:53:13 AM PDT by volunbeer (Find the truth and accept it - anything else is delusional)
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To: rlmorel

Science is not science any more thanks in part to the Left. It used to be that a hypothesis was put forward and then as much data as possible was collected about that hypothesis, both pro and con, and a decision was then made based on that data that the hypothesis was either proved or disproved. Today, academia and the Left put forward a hypothesis (what they want to be true) and then set about collecting only data that supports that hypothesis while ignoring that data which dis-proves the hypothesis. That is todays “science”


10 posted on 07/10/2020 9:00:23 AM PDT by falcon99 (qu)
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To: dhs12345

This is a ling, but incredibly worthwhile argument. The perfect answer when leftists accuse conservatives of being “anti-science.”


11 posted on 07/10/2020 9:04:44 AM PDT by Bruce Campbells Chin
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To: SeekAndFind

Simon says...put on a face mask.

Simon says...”social distance”

Simon says...wash your hands

Bonemaker says...eat me


12 posted on 07/10/2020 9:04:56 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Bruce Campbells Chin

“long”


13 posted on 07/10/2020 9:05:05 AM PDT by Bruce Campbells Chin
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To: SeekAndFind
I show this video to my hs environmental science students while discussing the interests political groups have in controlling and using science to further economic interests and idealogy. IT is Neil De Grasse Tyson (movie trailer) It is scary how are youth are being brainwashed and worth the watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MqTOEospfo

14 posted on 07/10/2020 9:09:46 AM PDT by Archie Bunker on steroids (We have a crime problem not a police problem)
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To: SeekAndFind

I’d say science has shot itself in the foot but it’s more like it’s shot itself in the head.

Gotta protect that funding...at all costs.


15 posted on 07/10/2020 9:12:31 AM PDT by TalBlack
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To: Bruce Campbells Chin

Re: We Can’t Trust Anything ‘The Science’ Says Any More

The _experts_ mostly represent what their god, their religion, their ideology says. They see every science datum thru their god’s eyes.

There is no secular anymore; if their ever was. Men act based on their beliefs. Tell me what a man does, and I’ll tell you their religion.


16 posted on 07/10/2020 9:17:51 AM PDT by veracious (UN=OIC=Islam; USgov may be radically changed, just amend USConstitution)
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To: falcon99

Peer Review is an abominable joke these days too. I spit when I hear someone say “But it is peer reviewed!”


17 posted on 07/10/2020 9:21:26 AM PDT by rlmorel ("Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies"- George Orwell)
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To: SeekAndFind

Read any modern astronomy book. It is filled with excited what ifs?, Perhaps..., Maybe! Of course, it’s okay to speculate and hypothesize, but the incredible fact is, these speculations end up in other science books and TV shows and are repeated until they are presented as facts or very nearly facts. It’s preposterous. For example, as far I can see we have no direct evidence for the oort cloud, but scientists absolutely insist it’s there. The oort cloud (or something like it) should —no must— exist if the universe is in fact billions of years old, so that’s that. Same with dark energy and matter. They say, well things billions of light-years away are not behaving like they should, and since we know for certain the content and physics of incredibly massive objects that are billions of light-years away, let’s make up something to account for it. You can’t build science on unproven premises.


18 posted on 07/10/2020 9:21:50 AM PDT by An Appeal to Heaven
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To: rlmorel
I don’t like Fauci. From the moment I laid eyes on him, he came across at a gut level like a weasel. Then, hearing him say that...well, he is more politician and administrator than he is scientist, in my opinion.

For Atlas Shrugged readers, Fauci is the Dr. Floyd Ferris of medicine.

19 posted on 07/10/2020 9:23:09 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: SeekAndFind

Bump


20 posted on 07/10/2020 9:23:53 AM PDT by Incorrigible (If I lead, follow me; If I pause, push me; If I retreat, kill me.)
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