Tag: science

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government transparency ideological culture

That Non-​Science Stink

Avi Loeb, science, space

Not long ago we were screamed at: “Trust the Science!”

So those of us paying attention came to distrust the scientists.

Especially “scientists” in positions of political power.

Sadly, tragically, more than one scientific discipline has been perverted in shockingly non-​scientific ways. A hidebound denialism about new data has crept in. Sure, it is about the money, but often we catch a whiff of ideology.

This is apparently the case regarding astronomy — about which Harvard astrophysicist Abraham “Avi” Loeb offered testimony on a recent podcast. 

In 2014, a meteorite (CNEOS 2014-​01-​08) splashed into the Pacific Ocean — too fast to be solar-​system native, says the U.S. Space Command. Without investigating, a published paper dismissed the evidence, discouraging further inquiry; Avi Loeb, on the other hand, led a team to the site, producing evidence from the ocean floor as well as an actual research paper.

Loeb’s first paper on the current obsession, the third officially recognized interstellar object, 3I/​ATLAS, was published only on the condition he took out his killer final sentence — about the possibility that the object might be technological in nature (as its anomalies suggested). 

Loeb appeased the editor …  and then wrote a whole new article on that unspeakable (alien tech) possibility — for another journal.

NASA’s also infected. After watching a recent press conference by NASA on 3I/​ATLAS, Loeb argued it would have been better to have actual scientists field questions rather than feature NASA bigwigs dutifully reciting the currently acceptable (safe?) determination that the object is “just a comet.”

“The intellectual climate, right now in Academia, is such that any new knowledge is resisted by experts,” Dr. Loeb explains. 

That’s the opposite of science. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

Protozoa

On September 17, 1683, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society describing “animalcules,” later known as protozoa.

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ideological culture

Royal Society in Disrepute?

Elon Musk, Mars, Royal Society

Elon Musk’s membership in the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge has been imperiled. 

“Thousands of scientists are now calling for Musk’s name to be blotted out from that charter’s fine vellum pages,” explains The Atlantic. “The effort kicked off last summer, when 74 fellows (out of roughly 1,600) sent a letter to the Royal Society’s leadership, reportedly out of concern that Musk’s X posts were fomenting racial violence in the United Kingdom and could therefore bring the institution into disrepute.” 

But it’s not just the racial issue. “In November, one of the signatories, the neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop, resigned from the Royal Society in protest of what she saw as inaction; her statement cited Musk’s derogatory posts about Anthony Fauci and the billionaire’s promotion of misinformation about vaccines.”

Of course the “scientists” are lockstep “for vaccines,” rather than express the least bit of caution about a new therapeutic (Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA injections) that was pushed out to the world with subsidy, legal immunity, and government threats — to treat a disease funded by Fauci himself.

Then another letter made the rounds, signed by more than 3,400 scientists. Elon must go!

But to what extent is it really about money? At the latest Royal Society meeting, worry was expressed that Elon’s DOGE efforts may be cutting off science funding in the United States.

Thankfully, at a recent meeting of the Society, fellows decided not to do anything too precipitous.

So the Royal Society’s members will have to eat their anger, continuing to be associated — for a while, at least — with the dread Elon Musk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Bill Nye, the Jail-​My-​Debating-​Opponent Guy

Bill Nye, science, climate, global warming, censorship, authoritarianism

The latest Joe Biden outrage is the handing out of Presidential Medals of Freedom to the blatantly undeserving.

Popularizers of science seem to have gone downhill these days. Or perhaps it’s just a few of the most visible ones who are so vile.

In their own day, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov espoused some lamentable left-​wing views and advanced some dubious propositions as they explained the universe to nonscientists. But you could listen to, read, and enjoy them.

Neither ever suggested, not even once, that persons who disagreed with him on a scientific question might reasonably be incarcerated therefore — inasmuch as the disagreement impaired his quality of life “as a public citizen.” (An argument any totalitarian might use to rationalize violating innocent persons’ rights.)

But Bill Nye, “the science guy,” has expressed the greatest possible sympathy with the proposition that it might be okay to imprison scientists who disagree with him about climate, human impact on climate, or the advisability of trying to centrally plan climate.

In 2016, when asked about a proposal to imprison “climate skeptics,” Nye said that “extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my qualify of life as a public citizen. That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good.”

People don’t do their best thinking with a gun pointed at them, Nye guy. That is not good.

Note: it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not the Presidential Medal of Craven Censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling media and media people

Erroneous About the Eclipse

Whoopie Goldberg, The View, science

The View is not something to audit on a regular basis. It may decrease IQ. Nevertheless, we may have to defend Sunny Hostin for her silly ramblings on eclipses, cicadas, earthquakes, TDS and The Rapture. 

I’m not sure. She sure seemed to be saying that the recent eclipse and climate change were integrally related.

But the banter of the women was so light-​hearted that maybe we shouldn’t hold her to high standards.

Besides, Whoopi was there to provide rational pedantry — no matter how inaccurate she was. (Contra Ms. Goldberg, there are thousands of cicada species, and you may respectably pronounce the word in a variety of ways). It could be that Sunny was merely trying to be funny about the Sun.

As the man said at the end of Chinatown, “Forget it, it’s The View.”

But how hopeless was Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s little lecture to the students at Booker T. Washington High School? She was instructing the students and taking credit for their “opportunity” to go outside and see the eclipse.

“A Full Moon is that complete, rounded circle which is made up mostly of gases,” she mis-explained, “and that’s why the question is why or how could we as humans live on the Moon? Are the gases such that we could do that?”

Well, no, the Moon is not mostly composed of gases. It possesses the scantest of atmospheres, but does have water — or so I last read.

Even eclipsing The View, sending embarrassing, ultra-​ignorant politicians to teach astronomy in the inner cities is — Lunacy!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment too much government

Stop Causing the Next Pandemic

Covid, virus, research

A lab in Wuhan, China was fiddling with the coronavirus that causes COVID-​19 when that virus was accidentally or intentionally released into the world.

I would like such a thing not to happen again. I adhere to the radical political doctrine that the world should not be repeatedly ravaged by avoidable pandemics. I especially don’t want to see a pandemic considerably worse than the COVID-​19 pandemic.

But politicians and scientists continue to make pandemics more likely by permitting, paying for (with our money), and even defending the gain-​of-​function research that weaponizes viruses. 

Why, oh why? I hear you ask. The reason, they say, is so they can learn how to better combat these more virulent forms.

And if somebody happens to unleash a lab-​enhanced virus capable of killing a third of the human race, will words like “sorry” and “oops” and “now we know how to stop it better the next time” undo the damage?

This danger is one theme of a talk given by U.S. Senator Rand Paul last November. As Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-​Up, puts it, “To think that we can prevent future pandemics even as we continue to seek, catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses is the height of hubris.… We must reform government and rein in out-​of-​control scientists and their enablers.”

Senator Paul echoes MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, who says “Please stop.” 

Let us have no more experiments “likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.”

Policymakers and investigators have no inalienable right to threaten the well-​being of us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement voluntary cooperation

Paralyzed Man Moves

brain, paralysis, medicine, science, magic

After falling on ice, a 46-​year-​old Swiss man became paralyzed, losing all mobility.

Now he is beginning to move again thanks to a brain implant that enables what the Dutch firm Onward, its inventor, calls “thought-​driven movement.”

The implant interprets neural impulses that are triggered when the patient intends to move. A second implant in his abdomen then stimulates parts of the body so that he can move them as he wishes.

Onward says that although its results are preliminary, “the technology works as expected and appears to successfully reanimate his paralyzed arms, hands, and fingers.”

This astonishing work is not without precedent. Over a decade ago, French neuroscientist Gregoire Courtine conceived of the possibility of a digital bridge between brain and body to help such patients.

It took a while to realize his dream. But this year, Courtine and Swiss neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch installed implants in a Dutch man, Gert-​Jan Oskam, to restore his ability to walk after he lost the use of his legs in a biking accident.

One unexpected benefit of their procedure is neural regeneration.

“What we discover,” says Courtine, “is that when using this system for a long period of time, through training, nerve fibers start growing again.… That was like the dream, regenerative medicine!”

Onward CEO Dave Marver says that the next step for its own implant technology is small trials, then a larger one, then “hopefully get FDA approval and make it available.”

What a wonderful world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly media and media people public opinion

Volcano Denialism

science, global warming, climate change, volcano, weather

Some weather we’ve been having, eh? Record-​setting heat in many locales. 

It must be global warming!

Well, it is hotter than usual. 

But this is summer.

And a volcano did blow in the ocean near Tonga, a year and a half ago, and scientists at the time did say that the water vapor it placed into the stratosphere could linger for years, affecting the climate.

Still, you won’t see recognition of this factor for warming on the major news sources. They keep pushing the AGW line: anthropogenic (human-​caused) global warming: “climate change.”

Matt Walsh, on his podcast, ran through the vulcanism story last week. Water vapor is a more effective, broad-​spectrum greenhouse gas than CO2, which all the journos cannot help but push (because it fits a statist agenda, and that’s their real business: propaganda). 

Walsh calls mainstream AGW crusaders “volcano denialists.”

Our planet’s ecosystem is ultra-​complicated. Cloud cover (which has something to do with water vapor, you might say) can also cool the planet by increasing high-​altitude albedo, a point touched upon in The Epoch Times, “Nobel Winner on Climate Agenda: ‘We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience,” which focuses on physicist John Clausner and his contrarian views on climate. 

“Contra the IPCC and other major institutions,” Clausner contends “that climate is primarily set by … the ‘cloud cover thermostat,’ a self-​regulating process whereby more clouds start to enshroud the Earth when the temperature is too high and vice-versa.”

He was slated to give a talk to the International Monetary Fund on July 25, but that was cancelled. These elites have directed trillions of global dollars to “research” global climate, and Clausner’s caution that they’ve made “a trillion-​dollar mistake” is not exactly welcome.

It’s not just vulcanism they deny. They deny water.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Infected by Politics

covid, science, scientist, politics, politicians

In 2020, circumstantial evidence suggested that the COVID-​19 virus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Let’s say that the available data, limited by Chinese uncooperativeness, couldn’t exclude the possibility of a natural origin. Nevertheless, the evidence certainly sufficed to prevent the escape-​from-​lab explanation from being reasonably deemed an implausible “conspiracy theory.”

Years later, U.S. officials who probably also knew better three years ago have acknowledged that, yes, escape from the lab is likely how the pandemic began.

We’re also learning from communications that have come to light that the authors of an influential 2020 paper published in Nature “proving” that “SARS-​CoV‑2 is not a laboratory construct” fudged their reasoning for fear of China.

Co-​author Andrew Rambaut, to co-​authors: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural process.”

Co-​author Kristian Andersen: “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science — but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

The paper itself asserted that the authors’ analyses “clearly show that SARS-​CoV‑2 is not a laboratory construct …” (emphases added). And: no “laboratory-​based scenario is plausible.”

This paper was then used to rationalize censorship of persons proposing the Wuhan lab as the site of origin. It was completely political; the scientists were acting as politicians and not scientists when they authored it. Better to blame bats than the dreaded Chinazis.

Funded by the U.S. Government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Imprudent Skeptics?

Covid origins

“For nearly three years, anyone asking whether COVID-​19 originated as a lab leak outbreak was silenced and branded as a conspiracy theorist,” stated Senator Josh Hawley (R‑Mo), on Monday. “Now these prudent skeptics stand vindicated.”

While I enthusiastically support the bill he and Mike Braun (R‑Ind.) introduced, the COVID-​19 Origin Act of 2023, may I be excused if I get caught up on that term “prudent skeptic”?

Apparently Hawley means “skeptics” such as himself. But who are the imprudent skeptics? 

What would Hawley say should they be vindicated?

The bill, unanimously passed the Senate, would require the Biden administration to “immediately declassify all intelligence reports pertaining to the origins of COVID-​19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Hawley insists that we, the people, “deserve to know the truth.”

But is it a mere curiosity that neither he, in his above-​quoted statement, nor The Epoch Times, in its article on the bill, finger any likely entity other than the Wuhan Institute for Virology and the Chinese government?

For, as noted here many times, the evidence of culpability for conducting dangerous gain-​of-​function bat coronavirus research in China does not point merely to the Chinese. 

It points to the U.S. Government, the offices of Dr. Anthony Fauci, specifically.

Hawley doesn’t mention that evidence, nor does The Epoch Times.

This is not to let China off the hook for the pandemic, a Debacle At Best. (I’m not known for being “soft on China.”) I bring this up because of the implication: we skeptics of the Zoonotic Origin Theory have not been pointing only to the Chinazis, but also to our own governmental conspirators.

Surely it’s not imprudent to be skeptical of our own government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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