Posted on 03/13/2023 9:25:18 AM PDT by DeweyCA
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Science should not be trusted in general, but we need to be especially diligent in acknowledging science as suspect when the science of the matter concerns the possibility that scientists, health science funders, and managers overseeing science in labs in Wuhan, played a role in killing 18 million people. Such an investigation is ripe with conflicts of interest and reputational risks, as prior to a science-caused accident there will be many coteries of scientists who played some role in encouraging, conducting, funding, and/or overseeing the research that caused harm.
Yet, despite the massive body of evidence making a spillover-scientist like me believe SARS-CoV-2 did not spillover, the zoonotic origin proponents continue to use their media access to broadcast their papers without giving some time or fair consideration to objections to their papers. Rather than engage with the public, they block any scientist, let alone member of the public, who disagrees with them. They claim they, alone, are The Experts, and when someone raises an objection they simply talk louder to more media outlets and more followers. They greatly misrepresent the evidence of the matter in outlets as widely read as the Washington Post and the LA Times, corrupting the interface between science and society, misrepresenting both science as a collective process with multitudinous views, and repeatedly misrepresenting in a reliably biased way the facts of the matter during ongoing congressional investigations. The authors repeatedly claim to be summarizing “all the evidence,” yet nowhere do they discuss the severe, mathematically provable limitations of their work, the objections of other scientists they’ve blocked, or the many pieces of evidence suggesting a lab origin.
Nowhere in “all the evidence” do they mention DEFUSE or the many features of SARS-CoV-2 shockingly consistent with DEFUSE.
Yet, they want the public to trust them, to follow their science.
To me, these scientists’ promulgation of their flawed work and their willful (or oblivious? which is worse?) biased exclusion or misrepresentation of the evidence of a lab origin is one of the worst research ethics violations in human history that I am aware of, second only to creating the virus itself. There is the crime, and there is the coverup putting media-grabbing scientists who misrepresent the facts of the matter in league with the researchers who conducted the work on CoVs in Wuhan and refuse to share their lab notebooks or databases. These scientists are asserting themselves as authorities while brushing aside credible objections to their work irrespective of who raises them. In the middle of congressional investigations on SARS-CoV-2 origins, these scientists are writing op-eds that mislead the public and managers on the probable research-related cause of over 18 million deaths worldwide, using their expertise to obfuscate an historic truth and obstruct the investigations we need to make our world safe from dangerous research.
My scientific journey studying SARS-CoV-2 origins has led me believe that a small coterie of scientists are, in fact, responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. They, their funders, and many scientists connected with them and the funders, and many scientists who championed doing this risky research are all reliably abusing their status as experts to misrepresent facts of the matter. The researchers studying CoVs in Wuhan are refusing to share their research. Peter Dazsak refused to share his DEFUSE grant or admit conflicts of interest of working on CoVs with labs in Wuhan when writing letters to the Lancet calling lab-origin theories “conspiracy theories,” Funders at NIH, NIAID, and the Wellcome Trust prompted, edited, and pushed a paper claiming baselessly with overconfident language that lab-origin theories are “improbable” or “implausible.”
As recently as yesterday, and during our desperately needed congressional investigations on SARS-CoV-2 origins, this clique of scientists is still running media campaigns claiming “all of the evidence” suggests a natural origin without ever mentioning DEFUSE. The relationship between science and society is a delicate one, and it’s one we’re still figuring out, yet clearly something is wrong with this picture. It is beyond unprofessional and unethical for scientists to run mass-media campaigns that misrepresent the evidence of the matter during Congressional investigations into the possibility that the scientists they are connected with created a virus that killed three times more people than the Holocaust. Assertions that they are experts to be followed misrepresents science and its consultations (not leadership) of society, and their efforts to obstruct investigations into their own syndicate should be seen as comparable to oil companies muddying the science about climate change, or tobacco companies muddying the science about lung cancer. Scientists who staked their reputations to risky research that likely led to millions of deaths are today muddying science itself.
Science should not be trusted. I say this as a scientist. Science has always been a rebellious act, a foray into battle with narratives that be. Richard Feynman described science as “belief in the ignorance of experts.” Science is not about the answers, per se, it’s about questioning the answers and trying to disprove the theory du jour, it’s about the longer-arc of the social process by which we share evidence and evaluate competing ideas. In times of crisis, science is not to be followed – it is to be examined, discussed, questioned and, for managers, incorporated alongside myriad other factors such as anthropological variation in folks’ beliefs, capacities, and wills to act.
While we learn about science in school as an encyclopedia of facts, the reality is that science is an epistemological war zone with ground rules, and we’re continually updating those ground rules as we go. The ground rules need to be revisited in light of the probable lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the actions of many scientists misrepresenting the evidence of the matter during WHO and Congressional investigations of a potentially science-related catastrophe.
There is a high likelihood that scientists amidst us, who fought beside us in this epistemological war zone, in a frenzied rush to get funding and fame, created a virus that leaked from a lab in Wuhan and resulted in over 18 million people dead, over 60 million extra people facing acute hunger, over 100 million kids thrown into multidimensional poverty, and an endemic curse of outbreak cycles that will infect our kids, our grandkids, and every generation as long as contemporary science can foresee.
The gravity of the situation should make all of our hearts sink. It should lead us to have a moment of silence every day. Instead, we see scientists claiming “all the evidence” suggests a natural origin in mass media outlets. Indeed, all the evidence can say anything you want it to once you omit all the evidence suggesting otherwise. I worry these conflicts of interest, biased representations of evidence, and gross imbalances of media power can corrupt the social process of science.
We are living through an unprecedented crisis. Throughout history, science has battled over paradigms and slowly the long arc of science has bent towards Truth, but none of those paradigm shifts pertained to science itself, least of all to the possibility that preeminent scientists with unprecedented mass-media reach played a role in an unprecedented atrocity. Compared to what science is capable of, SARS-CoV-2 was a petite Pandora’s jewelry box in an Amazon warehouse of larger possibilities, and some scientists are abusing their authority and expert status to obstruct investigations that could inspire policies that stop scientists from opening other, bigger boxes in the Pandora’s Warehouse of modern biotechnology.
Please, do not “trust” science and do not blindly trust scientists, least of all those who exhibit a pattern of misrepresenting the entire facts of the matter on SARS-CoV-2 origins (the truth, the *whole* truth). Love science and scientists, even those with whom we disagree in glorious epistemological combat, but do not trust us.
Keep an open mind that even scientists like me can and will make mistakes. As someone members of the public view as “a scientist” I pledge to listen for good ideas no matter where they come from and do my best to update my thinking in light of new evidence. I will correct my mistakes and acknowledge whoever helped me see the light. Engage, question, discuss, and test science. Please, don’t stop there. For the love of future generations, please manage science, because we have failed to manage our own. Only by democratizing the skeptical essence of science and welcoming everyone to this epistemological battlefield with ground rules can we learn the mistakes of COVID-19 and collectively bend the long arc of science towards Truth.
Please, let’s improve the interface between science and society for the benefit of both.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Author
Alex Washburne is a mathematical biologist and the founder and chief scientist at Selva Analytics. He studies competition in ecological, epidemiological, and economic systems research, with research on covid epidemiology, the economic impacts of pandemic policy, and stock market response to epidemiological news.
I stopped trusting “science” when I went keto years ago and it worked. The final straw for me is this:
Many “scientists” claim men can get pregnant. And a woman can have a penis.
Modern science is ANTI-science, writing as someone who got his degree in Biology back when most scientists wanted to figure out what REALLY happens. Those days are LONG gone.
By the time COVID rolled around, I had contempt for modern science. That probably kept me healthy.
This started with Charles Lyell yearsago. It is, was and will continue to be extremely successful.
Fixed it.
It’s not the science that should be trusted or not trusted.
It’s the scientists that we should all be wary of. Politics have caused many of them to become great liars and activists which should have no place in science.
Don’t trust THEM, not it.
However, scientific knowledge IS based on trust that what has filtered down to us was something that was competently verified by specialists--except in the special case that we are one of the specialists doing that particular kind of research.
So it is on us, the general public, to figure out what claims that were ostensibly verified are trustworthy. When we see cases like Climate Change this decision is trivially easy. There is no way on Earth that any sane person can trust what we are told.
If you believed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin helped deal with this disease, and that an untested vaccine was dangerous, then you believed in THAT science.
Even the knowledge that a cloth mask not being effective on a small virus is science. If the space between the fibers of a mask is larger than the virus and airborne particles, then that is science also.
The three most deadly movements of the last 100 years were eugenics, nazism, and communism. All three had “science” as their centerpiece. The absolute propaganda centerpiece of all three was, “we are only following the science”.
It’s utter arrogance to claim “science” today has suddenly arrived at accuracy. Point me to a single time in human history when science was correct. Especially this modern “I Effing Love Science” crowd you see everywhere.
30 years ago when everyone knew ulcers were caused by worry and a high carb diet was good?
90 years ago when they were sure pellagra was caused by a germ?
150 years ago when they believed in phrenology? When they were certain a dead body recorded the image of the killer on their dead eyes?
Or back a little over 100 years ago when they thought our solar system was the entire universe? Tell me exactly when “science” was correct. And while you’re not arrogant as hell for thinking that this is the error on now we know everything?
The very essence of science if freedom to question and test every claim it makes.
Scientists were right, people died.
https://twitter.com/VaxFreeSperm/status/1635099631523864579?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1635099631523864579%7Ctwgr%5E4e977df703efb94c994b3d1f2ee2300cdf921941%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpatriots.win%2Fp%2F16aTVJzPg0%2Fcrisis-actor-takes-a-smoke%2Fc%2F
The covid debacle is a perfect recent example of a deliberately missed putt.
I can name many others if interested.
Place your trust in the God who made us all. He does not miss putts!
Bingo.
Yeah, typical blinkered article by someone who hasn’t the slightest bloody idea what the scientific method means. Idiot.
Humans are fallible. Anybody not aware of this is an idiot, too.
I generally accept science except when politics is involved.
It is usually OK to ‘trust’ science. What should ALWAYS be questioned is anything said by anyone who is paid by the government and media. This particularly includes those who have any sort of science degree.
I first dropped my faith in science when the Great Dr Watson was forced to retire from Cold Harbor laboratory over his hypotheses that intelligence is closely related to genetics. It’s not a Matter of him being correct or not, science is supposed to take all hypothesis of a serious nature then test them, gather the evidence and accept or reject. Instead he was personally attacked and his ideas rejected out of hand.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE IS DEAD.
I am a PhD scientist, with degrees from MIT and Harvard.
Science is self-correcting, over the long term. But science can be wrong in the short term. And sometime the “short-term” lasts for decades (e.g. “Piltdown man”). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
Current fads for injecting left-wing politics, feminist and LGBT activism etc. into science hurt science. So does dishonesty by government-related scientists.
Hopefully science’s self-correcting mechanisms will erase all this garbage—sooner rather than later!
What happened to Jim Watson was a gross injustice, even though he IS a racist!!
Without Jim Watson—NO Cold Spring Harbor lab! PERIOD!!!!
Also, what happened to David Sabatini was a gross injustice!! Hopefully, this is being turned around!
Some of the radical feminists who have attacked Dr. Sabatini used to be very nice women, but over the last few decades have gone sour. Why?
There is a reason I referred to “science” and “scientists” versus simply science.
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