Fantastic article by Stephanie M. Lee:
Welcome to the vast universe of self-built social media empires devoted to spreading false, misleading, and polarizing science and health news – sometimes further and wider than the real information. Here, climate change is a government-sponsored hoax, fluoridated water is poisonous, cannabis can cure cancer, and airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air. Genetically modified food is destroying humanity and the planet. Vaccines are experimental, autism-causing injections forced on innocent babies. We can’t trust anything that we eat, drink, breathe, or medicate with, nor rely on physicians and public health agencies to act in our best interests. Between the organic recipes and menacing stock images of syringes and pills, a clear theme emerges: Everything is rigged – by doctors, Big Pharma, Monsanto, the FDA – and the mainstream media isn’t telling us. (Also, there’s usually a link to buy vitamins.) This messaging reflects a new, uniquely conspiratorial strain of libertarianism that hijacks deeply intimate issues – your body, your health, your children’s health. It shares magnificently.
Indeed, gone are the days when these types of stories would struggle for traction in a media landscape dominated by a few television networks, newspapers, and radio stations. Now anyone on Facebook can take their snake oil straight to the masses – and their message is reverberating in the highest levels of government. Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who says he’s in touch with Trump about a “vaccine safety commission” recently announced a $100,000 “challenge” to prove their safety. Andrew Wakefield, who helped start the anti-vaccine movement with a fraudulent 1998 study that linked vaccines to autism, showed up at an inaugural ball. The president has called climate change a “hoax” and appointed a skeptic to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pseudoscience is closer than ever to the mainstream.
Clearly, not vaccinating your children is child abuse and should be treated as such; not only does it endanger the lives of your own children, but also the lives of other children who may rely on herd immunity because they can’t take vaccinations for proper medical reasons. The fact that these child abusers are this close to the president of the United States and the US government should send chills down the spine of every responsible parent.
The war on science is in full swing, and they’ve already won the White House and US Congress. The amount of damage that can be – and is being – done is staggering.
This way of presenting these subjects as some coherent ideology is, for me, quite contrived.
Vaccines, global warming, GMO, big pharma, science, pesticides… are different subjects. Putting them together as some big conspiracy is also an anti-science behaviour. Various people with different political opinions and personal lives can have valid or bogus opinions about these subjects.
For example : Vaccines have saved billions of people, but big pharma has used questionable methods for commercialising some vaccines whose efficiency was not really proved, used doubtful additives to make them longer lasting and save money, the CIA made false vaccination campains … : This is a complex subject that cannot be summarised in a poll “Are you for or against vaccines”. Yet media reduce everything to for/against pie charts, whether its global warning, GMO or whether cavemen have hunted Tyrannosaurs (if someone is asking the question, it is because there is a debate, right ?)
Most people don’t really care about science (or history or many other “important” subjects), they never did, and maybe social media makes that ignorance more visible, but I don’t think that is really new. Politics are talking a lot of thing they dont understand, but it is not new either.
It is amazing to see so many people use more and more complex technological artefacts, but never try to understand how they work. It is in the realm of magic, so everything could be possible.
Or it is new as a general trend of some form of decadence, gloriously illustrated by the return of religious bigotry. The spread of ignorance is a consequence, not the root cause.
Edited 2017-03-09 00:31 UTC
A conspiracy doesn’t have to be organized to be a conspiracy – in this case it’s a step even further removed – it’s really the opposite of what we should agree is simply the right way to do things.
The thing opposition to all of those subjects have in common is a streak of anti-science – or maybe anti-empiricism – this idea that a nice story is more important than evidence. Indeed, this human preference for stories over data can a problem within science and within human scientific communities as well – but that’s a different issue isn’t it?
It’s that issue – the fact that these hierarchies are run by flawed humans, who sometimes undermine the central tenants of science by their human behavior, leave them open to attack. A dogmatic human cultural adherence to the purist pursuit of profit above all – including empiricism – this killing our ability to trust our institutions, both private (Monsanto, drug companies) and public (the EPA and congress). The specific subject matter is less important that the central idea that the ideology of science and reason are under attack by those who find them inconvenient to their profit seeking desires.
As Hard says. And in addition: really if parents are not allowed to make the decision if their children should be injected with whatever vaccines are in vogue right at the moment (you clearly imply every vaccine ever offered should be taken), what rights do they have?
Why oh why do we always have to resort to force and violence? Brown shirts tearing the children away from their parents to be vaccinated, policemen with guns to make sure the parents don’t intervene.
Surely we’re better of by informed parents making their own decisions.
So if informed parents decide to molest their children, or torture them – which is what not vaccinating them amounts to – endangering other children in the process, we should just let it happen?
Don’t be daft. If parents are unfit for parenting – and not vaccinating your children is a clear-cut sign of that – then children should be protected from their dangerous parents.
Mind you, when it comes to anti-vaxxers, it’s not just a right-wing religious thing – tons of left-wing hippies are anti-vaxxers too. These people present a clear and present danger to the wellbeing of their own children and those of others, and must be dealt with.
Edited 2017-03-09 01:07 UTC
It’s hard to take an argument seriously when someone puts not vaccinating on the same level as torture and molestation. Honestly, if one has to resort to that, they don’t have much of an argument.
Have you seen a child suffering and then dying of an embarrassingly curable disease?
But then who knows? You may actually be one of those parents who believe in faith healing and that the suffering and death of a child is not as bad as getting medicine because medicine is the devil’s work or someshit.
I bet you haven’t actually seen some child “dying of an embarrassingly curable disease”, either, have you?….What is it about rabid pro-vaxxers that makes them such Medical Fascists?
Their stories are easily searchable on the web, fucking moron.
Have you seen a child with polio? I have. Many.
Let me tell you something: thanks to those vaccines polios mostly been eradicated in poorer countries. People in poorer countries which did not have access to them were lining up their children so they too could get a future that is not attached to a bed. That is progress and something I wish every single person on earth could have access to.
Now this progress is threatened by some god damn lunatic that read on the internet something? How are we even discussing this is beyond the realm of reason.
It is easy to say “let the unvaccinated suffer the consequences then” but it will fall on the shoulders of the tax payers, for those countries which have public health care of course, and even more it is a moral obligation on our side to take care of all.
Sometimes I think it is a matter of schooling more than anything.
I’m sure he doesn’t have a “complete and utter lack of understanding”. Aren’t you exaggerating? That’s unscientific. Are you aware that the CDC holds over 40 vaccine patents? That there have been NO studies looking at long term health of vaccinated-v-unvaccinated persons? Do you know what “shedding” of viruses is? For you to equate an educated parent withholding vaccination to “molestation” and “torture”, is again a gross exaggeration, and it’s hysterical, as in the sense of “mentally unbalanced”. There’s a phrase which best describes your position. It’s MEDICAL FASCISM. Seig Heil, Thom….
I have sympathy for this position, I don’t think the state should usurp the role of parents. The real problem is that we have allowed the creation of bizarre pseudosciencentific ideologies, that make decision not vaccinate seem rational, rather than idiotic and abusive which it is.
We need to treat the cause which is bad ideas, not use force to treat the symptom. The question is how do we deal with bad ideas?
Edited 2017-03-09 01:21 UTC
You’re right. The state shouldn’t prevent parents from, say, beating their children with a wrench to teach them a lesson, or feeding them liquor to quiet them down.
The state shouldn’t require parents make sure their children have an education, nor should they take steps to make sure children aren’t being abused.
Neglecting your child, not feeding your child, because Jesus tells you to, is a perfectly valid activity of parents that shouldn’t be interfered with by the state.
The state often interferes with decisions parents make, because some parents are fucking stupid and are and are a danger to their children. Not vaccinating is the same thing, only not only does it endanger the child they aren’t vaccinating, but it also endangers other people their unvaccinated little crotch fruit come in contact with.
Obviously you recognize that your response was a strawman attack. Nevertheless let me make my position clear. The concept of liberty is one of the drivers that has allowed, up to this point our societies to improve the living conditions of the masses. This progress has been patchy and subject to human fallibilities. One of the important aspects of liberty is that people have a certain autonomy. This autonomy is both in the public and private sphere particularly the private.
I believe that people should be allowed to behave reasnobly. Obviously starving your child isn’t reasnoble. However the question of what is reasnoble is a big not a small problem. Nevertheless I would rather have this big problem than have every action between people mediated by the state, which seems to be what you are suggesting.
I am also concerned about the contempt you have for ordinary people. Vanguard politics has not gone well in the past. Also remember the state is made up of actors who are not always the most enlightened
When/how did I display contempt for ordinary people?
Freedom =/= Liberty
I think you are confusing the terms.
And it is not liberty for example to pollute, that is a freedom that is granted, liberties and so called natural rights are something you are born with and can never be given, only taken away.
in my first post which you objected to I wrote
when you call parents f–king idiots, being a parent is difficult, we are human, we are fallible, we should be allowed to be stupid, as long as that is reasonably stupid. I believe that people don’t chose to be stupid, stupidity is often the product of bad ideas and bad ideas need to be challenged.
Edited 2017-03-09 05:06 UTC
They do all the time. People KNOW they shouldn’t drive when under the influence, yet they still do it, and some see it as something to brag about.
By your arguments, people should be allowed to drink and drive because their freedom is more important than other people’s freedom of not getting run over by an SUV.
Agreed as long as you understand the advice. What is your point?
Edited 2017-03-09 05:15 UTC
It’s the same as not vaccinating your child. By that action, you risk the life of the child and other people. If you think that’s reasonable, then yes, you may as well think driving drunk is reasonable.
Not a strawman. It’s the reductio ad absurdum of your view.
In fairness, I said some parents are stupid.
I don’t care if people are stupid, really, but when it endangers other people, such as your children, or immunocompromised people because you choose to believe what some former-model said over the advice of actual doctors… well….
In fairness I was being a bit of an ass and exaggerating your position. I’m not sure we disagree much, however, when the powerful and influential deny science, it is not hard to see why the lay person also does the same – and perhaps they are not being unreasonable.
What we need to do, in my opinion, is to hold bullshit ideas to scrutiny, so that the lay person can make the right decisions.
If you say it is unreasonable to not vaccinate, I agree, but we do need to be careful about intervening in peoples lives, what they can and cannot do with their bodies the decisions they make about there families.
“Obviously there has to be restrictions to our liberty, but these need to be reasonable and have benign purpose. Defining what is reasonable is not a simple issue. ”
No, it is not much difficult when you consider your own freedom as defined by the boundaries with the freedom of other people. Your freedom is absolute until to the point it clashes with the freedom of someone else, or in other words until to the point where your supposed freedom causes damages of any type to other people.
Applying such a concept to the case of the vaccines, a parent that is not willing to have their kids vaccinated is trying to abuse of their freedom and right of being responsible parents, making damage to both their kids and the kids of other people.
So, no, parents cannot have unlimited freedom in their decisions, no matter if it is about their own kids.
Some kind of regulation is in order.
And what other level of human organization other than a State (in the sense of Nation) can balance such a conflict between the freedom of its citizens?
The problem debated here, is not anyway about single parents… the problem is that it seems that the most powerful President on Earth is basing his opinions about vaccines on anti-scientific rumors.
And this can make a scary amount of damage to progress and health care effectiveness at the level of the whole planet.
You seem to live in a simpler world than mine, so perhaps I should give a few examples from my life. I worked for many years in Lesotho and I’d like to give a couple from there. As you probably know the effects of HIV AIDS are devastating the kingdom, if I remember in the urban areas 25% HIV infection rate was normal, this has led to untold misery AIDs orphans, child headed families and of course death life expectancy is now in the 40s. We know that much of the transmission of HIV is by promiscuous unprotected sex. Individuals having unprotected sex are seriously harming this nation – what do we do?
If I use your vaccination argument your solution is to restrict the liberty of the Basotho by taking away their freedom to have promiscuous sex. How? would you like to see the poor prostitutes jailed? Stoned? Fined? What would you like to happen to the men? Castrated? jailed? Fined? Do you think this would improve things? Or could I be right in advocating education and knowledge and persuading people to make sensible choices?
I was once invited to a select committee of the Basotho parliament on the education bill which advocated, to some international applause, that primary education would be free and compulsory. The compulsion being a fine beyond the means of the rural population or one year in jail for the guardian. At the time the rural population was sending about 40% of children to school. I asked the question was it the best way of dealing with child headed families, who were struggling to survive, to send the oldest child to jail for a year if the children didn’t attend primary school? Was the country planning to build internment camps for the rural population and what impact this would have on the country? Might it not be better to find out why attendance at primary schools was so poor?. address the issues and the persuade the rural population that sending your child to school was a good thing Might this be a better strategy?
Getting back to vaccination, I lived for short time in New Zealand and there was a measles epidemic. I was not worried as my children had all been vaccinated. However, when I discussed this, many people thought I was insane to have had my child vaccinated, that I had behaved recklessly with my children’s health. Do I think New Zealanders of evil or selfish? No I think if people had challenged bullshit pseudoscientific nonsense then New Zealand would not have had the problem. I think education would be a better strategy than compulsion.
Edited 2017-03-11 02:16 UTC
Yes, yes yes this is the problem. But the solution you are advocating to compete with right wing, populist autocracy is left wing autocracy. What do you want the opposition to Trumpist bullshit pseudoscience to be? Compulsion? What would this look like? Screaming mothers, having their babies ripped away at birth for their compulsory vaccinations, primary school surrounded by armed police officers to prevent disruption to the compulsory vaccination program. Is this really what you want?
The solution to Trumpist bullshit is the truth. Trump is an autocrat he wants to use force, to control language create his own narrative using “alternative” facts, the answer to this, is not to stifle debate and advocate more compulsion, the solution is to critique bad ideas with reality. The idea that ordinary people can manage their freedom, deserve a degree of autonomy and should have liberty is not a right wing idea it should be a left wing idea.
If they would choose not to vaccinate, they’re not fit to have children. Or freedom. Imprison them for life and place the children in the care of someone better.
Spoken like the true Medical Fascist you seem to be….
As an informed parent, you may have the right to let your children die by not vaccinating them, but you have no right to let them put *my* children at risk.
If YOUR children are vaccinated, doesn’t that make them SAFE from unvaccinated children, too? Your statement makes no logical sense. It sounds more like an emotional, hysterical over-reaction. Isn’t there a vaccine for that? BTW, just *HOW**MANY* vaccines are as yet un-invented? Or are you gonna tell me that vaccines are “discovered”? Vaccines are invented, not discovered.
No, because vaccines are not 100% effective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
It’s hard even to make a comment. We – humanity is facing existential threats, climate change, AI, environmental degradation and at the time where we need reason and critical thinking based on what we know about the world, the best tool we have – science is under attack. This attack comes from both the left and the right. I blame the post modernist left for intellectually opening the door, to reality not being knowable and science just being another narrative. However, it is the populist right that have really embraced the narrative, and that you can reconstruct reality by making statements, creating alternative facts.
It is a strange world where pseudoscience, creationism, denying climate change and vaccinations being safe and beneficial, chem trails etc masquerade as critical thinking. Where did this come from? I’m tempted to suggest, the attack on science from the left, such as the attack on Nuclear power and GM by the green left, legitimized the idea, that wealth and power have malicious intent. Much of the lefts attack was an appeal to fear and emotion. However, the populist right can also play this game, add a few alternative facts, religion and than this is where we are now.
The other problem is there is a grain of truth here and there. I don’t “trust†big pharma. I have little doubt that they abuse monopolistic positions, they attempt to abuse the political system to manipulate law governing IP etc. I have little doubt that these corporations are greedy, too powerful, and prioritize there own wealth over the general good. However, I don’t believe in conspiracies involving the illuminati or that these corporations have general malicious intent, I can see how these ideas develop.
….AI? Really?
I don’t think he means Skynet and the like. More like AI rendering many jobs redundant in the near future and the social implications that come as a result.
Edited 2017-03-09 01:45 UTC
AI Yes I expect so.
in the short term we have the probability of millions of jobs being lost, drivers shortly and then professionals, doctors lawyers etc. I don’t think we have thought this through and the idea that new jobs will just happen is not guaranteed, globalisation has demonstrated that good jobs in car factories can be replaced by poor jobs at Sports Warehouse direct. The loss of horse drawn carts by motor vehicles, did not create vast numbers of new jobs for horses. I don’t think this is insoluble but wont happen unless we find ways of distributing wealth in an expectable manner. I think we forget that most of human history has been dominated by a wealthy few and a poor mass, we can do that again.
In the long term (in terms of human history) not biology. We are going to create machines with more intelligence than us and it is possible that we will lose control of that relationship. If the machines become fit, ie can develop a link between the environment and their replication. Then there is a real danger we become redundant or adopt a subordinate position. As an analogy similar to the mitochondria in one of your cells. This is likely, AI systems will be involved in design, production transport etc as they will be better at it than us. This does not mean that we will have lives of leisure and joy, it may mean there are far fewer of us and some people would see this as a good thing.
Sam Harris has some interesting stuff on this.
Edited 2017-03-09 01:59 UTC
People said much the same things about the cotton gin, or the combine harvester, etc etc.
There is always some new technology that makes obsolete some job that was once considered safe. It’s the way of things. It wasn’t an existential threat then, and it isn’t one now.
The thing about learning the lessons of history, is that people often learn the wrong ones. You are using an inductive argument this happened in the past therefore it will happen again. There is no cause and effect relationship here. As I preciously said most of human history is characterised by powerful elites and poor masses. We are living in unusual times, where working people are not desperately poor. We can go back to the historical norm.
Edited 2017-03-09 03:24 UTC
Found the link I was thinking of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg
I think this is worth listening to
Claims pawned off as science should never be questioned or investigated. Approved ‘experts’ with degrees are the modern holy men. Anyone questioning what they are told are waging outright war on humanity. Burn them. Burn them all.
Edited 2017-03-09 01:50 UTC
Scientific claims should and are investigated by science. The testing of falsifiable claims is what science is about. Scientific experts are experts because they have and understand the empirical evidence, they are not priests that rely on authority as you suggest, they are only experts if their claims can stand the critical gaze of other investigators. Ultimately the ideas of science are constantly confronted by reality. Yes if you denigrate the work of those trying to understand and describe reality you probably are an enemy of humanity.
That ludicrous idea was created by a philosopher (Karl Popper) who had no training or experience in science.
In the real world scientists are (mostly lowly paid) employees trying to earn a salary and get promoted. That usually means publishing as many poor quality papers (‘publish or perish’) as possible. They are far too busy trying to get their own papers published to bother falsifying anything.
Scientific claims should and are investigated by science. The testing of falsifiable claims is what science is about. Scientific experts are experts because they have and understand the empirical evidence, they are not priests that rely on authority as you suggest, they are only experts if their claims can stand the critical gaze of other investigators. Ultimately the ideas of science are constantly confronted by reality. Yes if you denigrate the work of those trying to understand and describe reality you probably are an enemy of humanity.
In practice they are considered experts because they have published a lot of papers on a very esoteric topic which is understood by a handful of other people. Their ideas are very rarely experimentally tested by others.
Edited 2017-03-10 09:36 UTC
This case study is on a 14-year-old patient diagnosed with a very aggressive form of ALL (positive for the Philadelphia chromosome mutation). A standard bone marrow transplant, aggressive chemotherapy and radiation therapy were revoked, with treatment being deemed a failure after 34 months. Without any other solutions provided by conventional approaches aside from palliation, the family administered cannabinoid extracts orally to the patient. Cannabinoid resin extract is used as an effective treatment for ALL with a positive Philadelphia chromosome mutation and indications of dose-dependent disease control. The clinical observation in this study revealed a rapid dose-dependent correlation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24474921
It seems to me that the anti-vaccination movement has strong foundations in wealthy regions around LA, silicon valley and Seattle.
All it will take is one profiteering lawyer to get an action up on behalf of several vaccinated children who have become ill from exposure to a well-to-dos un-vaccinated child. That will pull the legs out from under the anti-vaccination movement as the money will evaporate.
In America money talks!
Money has already talked. Vaccine manufacturers tend to have immunity from prosecution. In the US: any claims falls against the public sector.
This sounds like privatize the upside and let the tax payer swallow the downside. *sigh*
You may be partly going for irony, I’m not sure. We’d better hope that doesn’t happen though. Follow your statement to its logical conclusion: if a vaccinated child becomes ill because of one unvaccinated child, then the anti-vaccination movement would gain ground because the vaccines were “obviously” ineffective. That’s the point of a vaccine, after all: to make sure that you can’t get the disease against which you are vaccinated even when exposed to it.
Before Snowden, it was yet another conspiracy theory the governments are mass spying on us. We learned that one was true, is legit for people to question government good intentions in other areas too.
No it wasn’t. Echelon was not considered a conspiracy theory but was openly discussed everywhere including the European Parliament: http://cryptome.org/echelon-nh.htm
<warning, oversimplification!!!>
The general trend was that the public started to know more about mass-surveillance and that they started to push back. This trend was abruptly broken when 9-11 happened and everything got justified with “think about the terrorists”.
(a conspiracy theory would be to say that the government orchestrated 9-11 to make that happen)
Draw your own conclusions, but you ought not disparage people in the process … seriously!
climate change is a government-sponsored hoax:
Please take it up with Tony Heller
(no debate…)
fluoridated water is poisonous:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11430087/Fluor…
(no issue…)
cannabis can cure cancer:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charlottes-web-marijuana-a-hope-for-kid…
(no proof…)
airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air:
https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/gswg1_scenario_planni…
(no science…)
Genetically modified food is destroying humanity and the planet:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/who-clarifies-glyphosate-risks/1…
(no pressure…)
Vaccines are experimental, autism-causing injections forced on innocent babies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17654772
(no worries…)
Seriously, get off your pedestals.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. You put a statement, source and 3rd thing (your opinion?) for several topics but they don’t seem to be really related
Statement: cannabis can cure cancer
Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charlottes-web-marijuana-a-hope-for-kid…
3rd thing (your opinion?): (no proof…)
About that statement: I never heard of anyone that claimed cannabis can cure cancer, only that it can relieve pain and suffering.
About that source: How is that related? It is about Seizures, not cancer
About that 3rd thing: So your opinion is that there is no proof that cannabis can cure cancer because there is no proof that cannabis oil can cure seizures?
And how can you seriously write “Draw your own conclusions, but you ought not disparage people in the process … seriously!” and say “(no debate…)” just a few words below?
Another statement: airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air:
Another completely unrelated source: https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/gswg1_scenario_planni….
And another completely unclear 3rd thing that basically sums up your post: (no science…)
Your post seriously looks like a bot posted a random google result for a word in the previous statement.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?641736
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence besides this study too.
On the subject of the combined MMR vaccine causing autism, it’s been proven to be BS invented by a discredited “scientist” who had a financial interest in companies that made the separate vaccines.
Disclosure: I have seven children aged from 3 to 20 years old, all of whom have had all their childhood vaccinations including the combined MMR jab. Only one of them has autism, my 8yr old son.
My 71yr old mother-in-law is a crackpot tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist who believes all the BS about chemtrails, illuminati etc and that vaccines cause autism etc. Having raised an autistic child for almost 9yrs I can say without a shadow of a doubt she’s the most autistic person I’ve ever met. My son has more than likely inherited it from her and those that are like her screaming about vaccines causing autism in a child they are related to probably are the ones who have passed the condition on to the child too if you take my lay persons observations as anything.
Our 20yr old had ALL at the age of 3 and thankfully has been in remission for the last 15 years. I would without any hesitation pump him full of cannabis oil alongside chemo if it ever came back.
Thanks for pointing me down the rabbit hole. I educated myself with the article that you linked to, many others as well, and discovered that CBD is a promising but unreliable and untested and unproven avenue in the cause to cure cancer. THC was mostly about pain relief, but also had some healing/preventing properties.
I had never heard about that before! I come from The Netherlands where you would expect the legal limitations to play less of a role so more research could take place. However, I could only find one clinical research which only involved 9 patients. The idea is that CBD (and THC) looks promising but the same approach as for discovering effective Chemo therapy is recommended which is a slow but proven way to get results
P.S. Don’t smoke a joint to get health benefits. It basically has the same negatives as smoking tabacco. For medical purposes an evaporator is needed.
P.S.2 For brievety I left out a whole bunch of details. Do your own research!
Look again at the original post – the assertions are cited from it; the corresponding links are articles which dispute the certainty (and flippancy) of the same. Finally, the pithy comments reflect the consensus/dismissive views that typify the skeptical rhetoric – for instance, the assertion AGW is settled science and the debate is over (no debate…).
If, for instance, you look at the link concerning airplanes spewing whatnot, you’ll see the paper discusses policies concerning stratospheric aerosol injection (aka chemtrails) – another “crackpot” theory.
My point is that the sarcasm and smugness is unwarranted, and it certainly is not helping to solve our problems. If you know you’re right, prove it; just don’t silence others with a hostile, verbal barrage.
Edited 2017-03-11 05:20 UTC
The author of this post, like so many people in the world today, are very near sighted when it comes to seeing the big picture and for what ever reason, are immune to the warning contained in such well known fictional works such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, or StanisÅ‚aw Lem’s Solaris. And this says nothing of their inability to familiarize them selves with the greatest unsung non-fiction authors of the last century such as Neil Postman (Building a Bridge to the 19th Century, Technopoly, Amusing Out Selves to Death), Jerry Mander (Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television), Edward Bernays (Propaganda, Crystalizing Public Opinion); or of the 19th Century such as Gustave Le Bon and his insightful work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.
Everything you think you know is a construct. Everything we knew and left behind was real.
Edited 2017-03-09 08:26 UTC
This, +1000. I’m just adding a thought here since it’s quite actual right now. Allowing people to opt out of vaccinations for their children can be a very dangerous issue, like the current measles outbreak in eastern Europe also shows [1]. Measles was really a non-issue in the region for decades now, since vaccination was so wide-spread that there was almost perfect immunity. Well, until you start allowing idiots to not use the vaccinations that is. Such idiotism such really be punishable.
[1] http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/press/news/_layouts/forms/News_DispForm.as…
Because people figured out the so called mainstream media was nothing but a mouthpiece for propaganda for those on the inside.
Just look at what we found out about was going on between the MSM,DNC, and HRC in the USA, we had so called independent “news organizations” running every story by a political candidate and even giving her the questions ahead of time so she would have it that much easier (as if having 3/4ths of the media spreading agitprop based around your talking points wasn’t easy enough) and tripping over themselves to ignore every bit of evidence of corruption that landed on their desk that didn’t follow the party line!
So honestly I cannot blame anybody who ends up listening to some way out alt media, at least in the USA as here our MSM is soo damned crooked I would want a second opinion if they said the day follows the night.
You can’t make pronouncements like that as they are just as uninformed as the naysayers and the conspirators. Real-life experience shows that the claims made by science are most often incorrect. Nuclear power was said to be totally safe, is one of them, but every decade we have had a major nuclear disaster. Autism may well be caused by genetic factors but I have experience that its onset was triggered by vaccination. We know such a child that was perfect in its development until a vaccination was given and from that point the child changed…
Keep your comments on technology, specifics and facts, keep away from things you don’t necessarily understand.
That’s rich, considering your comment.
I’m sorry to hear this but can you establish a cause and effect relationship? Do you have powerful statistical evidence to show correlation and a mechanism that can explain this relationship? I’m sorry but this is what a scientist would have to do.
Sorry double post Chinese internet can be a problem
Edited 2017-03-09 12:17 UTC
For some reasons I was expecting that here, on a technology website, “all” people were pro-science and anti-dumbness. But this is not the case.
Apparently you can still be fascinated about technology (Software, Processors) and science (Nasa and the exoplanets) and but still “questioning” or being openly “against” vaccinations.
I guess humanity is really doomed after all.
I don’t think it’s being ‘against’ vaccinations or actual science and fact.
I think it’s not trusting the chemicals-will-set-you-free mentality that has taken over (at least in the US).
We see drug ads on TV constantly. We are told to ask our doctor to give us pills. We are told to ask our doctor to diagnose us. If we actually go to the doctor we are usually charged thousands of dollars and our year (if not decade) is ruined financially.
So people are skeptical of the US health system. Much of it is for-profit, and people feel scammed. This leads to wanting to believe things outside of medicine.
If a certain root makes your stomach feel better, an american doctor will tell you it’s bad for you, stop eating it, and will try to prescribe you something far worse.
Well I would agree with you, but the people here, on this website are supposedly smart.
If they compare drug advertisements with the efficacy of vaccinations, I guess something went wrong in the reasoning flow.
PS
The fact that the US health system is inherently broken, is the reason #1 why I have never thought to live there.
The old adage ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ comes to mind…
This has happened before (at least twice, although not recently by most people’s standards), and it will continue to happen again. The best we can do is work to prevent actual loss of knowledge as occurred when it’s happened in the past.
First off, all of these examples you site are different. People can come to radically different outcomes in those.
I am completely pro-science and pro-logic yet I have been accused of (shouted at, actually) being a science denier because i don’t agree with the laymen’s version of bad science in a particular discipline.
In my case it’s hearing science, the science of music enjoyment, and the way we quantify our sense of vibration/sound. There’s bad/incomplete science all over that field. There’s ways of measurement that haven’t even been agreed upon yet. There’s properties of sound that haven’t even been agreed upon yet. It’s very, very far from ‘settled’ science.
Since I try to educate people about this state of things some accuse me of being a science denier and a complete moron. These are people that either believe Wikipedia holds all information in the world, or they believe that their 8th grade science teacher had the entire universe figured out. Either way, their ignorance of scientific method (what is known and unknown) and their inability to accept that we are still learning things as a society makes them the ignorant one.
Also, any topic that has to do with medicine is also full of politics, lies, and false threats in the US. For every Bob Marley there’s someone like my friend’s cousin, who went in for a sore stomach and was dead 14 days later. With all the corruption and profit in the US healthcare system, it’s hard to trust those people.
Anyone able to charge you $15k for 1 night in the hospital is really not trying to make you feel better.
The whole”anti-science” thing fails in the long run. All it does is force true scientists to flee your country. Eventually you’ll need their wisdom and knowledge, but it’ll be too late. The next Albert Einstein will already be working for your enemies.
The author has no training in science and no understanding of the scientific method.
The idea that science relies on falsification is complete nonsense. Many disciplines (eg geology) rely on observation and involve little or no experimentation. Some disciplines are entirely theoretical (eg string theory) and others are highly experimental (eg analytical chemistry).
The various sciences vary massively in terms of intellectual rigour and quality of research. Medicine is near the bottom.
And you have no clue about falsification. Falsification doesn’t have to involve experimentation at all. Just the possibility of a hypothesis to be contradicted by evidence. Nothing about experimentation is absolutely required.
For example, there’s the old quip about evolution being falsified if a rabbit fossil is found in pre-Cambrian rocks. What “experiment” is that?
Mmmm really! – let me provide a couple links http://www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/department-history/science-and-pseu… an old but great lecture by Imre Lakatos to the LSE and a You-tube link to a lecture by Susan Haack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Be6vheIMAA I think her book “Defending Science within Reason” is a great book on the subject.