The slow descent of “Science!” As in “Trust the Science!”

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 25, 2021

Culture, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science}

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Here’s a generous helping of a Wall Street Journal interview with science writer Matt Ridley that probes some of the changes brought about by the massive COVID-19 failure:

“Conformity,” Mr. Ridley says, “is the enemy of scientific progress, which depends on disagreement and challenge. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts, as [the physicist Richard] Feynman put it.” Mr. Ridley reserves his bluntest criticism for “science as a profession,” which he says has become “rather off-puttingly arrogant and political, permeated by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.” Increasing numbers of scientists “seem to fall prey to groupthink, and the process of peer-reviewing and publishing allows dogmatic gate-keeping to get in the way of new ideas and open-minded challenge.”
The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020. “The Taiwanese said, ‘We’re picking up signs that this is a human-to-human transmission that threatens a major epidemic. Please, will you investigate?’ And the WHO basically said, ‘You’re from Taiwan. We’re not allowed to talk to you.’ ”
He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”
Tunku Varadarajan, “How Science Lost the Public’s Trust” at WSJ via Instapundit (July 23, 2021)

It has not gone unnoticed.

The “lab leak theory” is a well-evidenced event, but not popular with certain governments.

Real science will emerge from the ruins.

See also: Lab leak theory vindicated: What that means for fighting COVID-19. What was the U.S. government’s role in downplaying the lab leak theory?

Comments

TLH @ 30: "Lying to millions of students. It's how Atheist science works." This is absolutely true. And they have been force-feeding these lies to students for many decades. Is it too late to repair the cultural/societal damage caused by these systemic lies? That is the real question. Truth Will Set You Free

Bjørn Lomborg,,; born 6 January 1965) is a Danish author and President of the think tank, Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature.[1] In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, a project-based conference where prominent economists sought to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methods based on the theory of welfare economics. In 2009, Business Insider cited Lomborg as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics".[2] While Lomborg campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, he argued for adaptation to short-term temperature rises, and for spending money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions. His issue is not with the reality of climate change, but rather with the economic and political approaches being taken (or not taken) to meet the challenges of that climate change. He is an advocate for focusing attention and resources on what he perceives as far more pressing world problems, such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.[3][4] In his critique of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Lomborg stated: "Global warming is by no means our main environmental threat."[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørn_Lomborg bornagain77

why would we want to read teh opinions of an ex-tennis player anyway
Shows a distinct under-appreciation for a great back hand. jerry

I've no idea if Borg has written abything about climate change, and why would we want to read teh opinions of an ex-tennis player anyway? :-) Bob O'H

so a naïve analysis will be largely wrong.
Probably the history of most of those advocating changes to deal with warming. Everybody should read Bjorn Borg’s books on climate. Also Michael Shellenberger. jerry

Jerry @ 43 - yes, a lot of that is simply because there is, by the definition used in the paper, a lot more cold weather. Querius - Yes, tree planting will help. As for "slightly warmer temperatures", it's not that the only effect of climate change is a uniform increase in temperature. It varies across the globe, and this also changes weather patterns, so some areas receive less rainfall, some more and there will be more extreme events, like droughts which lead to more forest fires (and hence fewer trees...). The effects are not simple, so a naïve analysis will be largely wrong. Bob O'H

FWIW, In my opinion, CO2 is plant food, and all we need to do is replant the world's disappeared forests (the percent left is shocking). And slightly warmer temperatures are good for the plant growth and agriculture. As for any hypothetical "tipping point," consider what happened when ALL coal and oil was CO2 in the atmosphere. Was the world destroyed as a result? As for the death of the biosphere, we just need a slightly *lower* CO2 level. That's the greater danger. -Q Querius

he is using a study that thinks that death at 25C are due to cold in Thailand and heat in Stockholm.
The same study indicates at what temperature people died. Few died when temperatures were above 30 degrees while a fairly large percentage died when the temperature was below 10 degrees. (Roughly about 50-86 degrees or 18-20 degrees different from what is recommended room temperature in the US. So a lot more deaths take place in colder weather. jerry

Marfin - Where on the EM-DAT site is that information? I had a quick look but couldn't find it. Jerry - Lomborg, the "master of stats" is using the same source that I mention in comment 38. So he is using a study that thinks that death at 25C are due to cold in Thailand and heat in Stockholm. kf - yes, there are reasons for higher mortality at low temperatures, that's well established and is clear in the paper. Bob O'H

Lomborg writes frequently on global warming and is a master of stats. Here is an article from a few days ago https://financialpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-and-deaths-from-extreme-heat-and-cold
Climate change and deaths from extreme heat and cold For now, global warming reduces more deaths than it causes, saving possibly 100,000 lives each year What is almost entirely ignored by politicians and media, however, is that rising temperatures also have the effect of reducing cold waves and cold deaths. Cold restricts blood flow needed to keep our core warm, increasing blood pressure and killing through strokes, heart attacks, and respiratory diseases. But because they don’t fit the current climate narrative deaths from cold are rarely reported. If they were just a curiosity, the indifference might be justified, but they aren’t. Each year, more than 100,000 people die from cold in the U.S. and 13,000 in Canada — which is more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death. On a worldwide basis, cold deaths vastly outnumber heat deaths. This is not just true for cold countries like Canada but also warmer countries like the U.S., Spain and Brazil. Even in India, cold deaths outnumber heat deaths by seven to one. Globally, every year about 300,000 deaths are caused by heat, whereas almost 1.7 million people die of cold.
Another aspect is the effect of heat on crop yields. While warming may make some areas hotter for crops, it might increase the growing season in others. jerry

Bob- Bob I quoted you the source its EM-DAT , the international disaster data base. So Bob you are the guys claiming catastrophic deaths , you show us the source for the increase in deaths over the last 100 years of global warming. If you have no source I will assume you are making it up as you go along. Marfin

BO'H, it is reasonable that cold related phenomena will kill far more than warmth, for many reasons. Start with why cold seasons are flu seasons. KF kairosfocus

ET - thanks for pointing me in that direction. That statistic comes from this paper, which basically extrapolates the analysis in this paper. The problem is that they find a minimum that is in the upper range of temperatures, so most temperatures are colder than this and thus of course most deaths will be attributed to cold. They also do this on a city by city basis, so (for example) 25C is classified as extremely cold in Bangkok, but extremely hot in Stockholm. Whilst, yes, there is variation between countries, I doubt many Thais are freezing to death at 25C. Bob O'H

Marfin - if you don't have the source, just say so. I found something on "TexAgs", which refers to Lomborg, but the details aren't clear. Are the figures just for deaths that are classified as "Climatological" in the database? i.e. excluding disasters due to, for example Extreme Temperature, Storm, Flood, Landslide, or Wave action (all criteria that are affected by climate but are classified into other sections). Bob O'H

Bob o H - Bob the figures come from EM-DAT the International disaster data base, look it up. Dont trust predictions look at the real figures. Type into google climate related deaths fall by 97% see what you get , it might mean giving up your ideology but maybe that would be a good thing. Marfin

Sev, all because Ivermectin clearly works, per population level results . . . try Peru, Mexico, India and Slovakia for starters [and Indonesia as the reverse case] . . . but will not fit the agendas of those pushing experimental technologies that show disturbing signs of potential dangers. Anyone, in the hands of ruthless critics, can be made to sound a fool or worse. The Dr you despise, with Italian colleagues was one of the first on the job and helped develop a protocol for treatment, which happens to feature Ivermectin as one element. As for prayer, you show a failure to understand its nature: request, not magic, in the context of relationship. But then, given track record you imagine that the inherently good, utterly wise, necessary and maximally great world root being is not there. KF kairosfocus

5 million deaths a year caused by global climate related abnormal temps. 4,594,000 from the cold; 489,000 from the heat. ET

Never trust the WHO. By far more people die from cold than from heat. Only fools think that CO2 is the issue. And the WHO thinks that CO2 is the issue. CO2 only absorbs in 3 wavelengths regardless of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. And only ONE of those 3 wavelengths is in the thermally relevant IR spectra. Take a look at the following diagram and you can see how insignificant CO2 is as a GHG: Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere You have to be really desperate to say that CO2 is the issue. Glaciers melt even when the temps are below freezing because the glaciers are dirty. Dirty glaciers absorb and hold more of the heat from the Sun's radiations. ET

Marfin @ 27 - the problem with global warming is the extra number of people that will die or be displaced. Read the WHO page - 70k more deaths in Europe alone in 2003 due to the heat wave, and they are predicting 250k excess deaths every year between 2020 and 2030. You also claim "overall deaths due to weather related disasters has decreased by 97%", do you have a source for that? Bob O'H

@ 17 Lieutenant Commander Data And since you mentioned that notice he stopped posting AaronS1978

Guys, did you see this whopper? On an earlier post, I had noted the lies of Peer Reviewed Atheist Science included the Miller Urey Experiment, and one of our nice Atheist friends wrote this: "The Miller-Urey experiments were not lies." Yes, they were lies. Here's the lie: The Miller Urey experiment made amino acids, the building blocks of life" For almost 70 years, hundreds of millions of students have been taught this lie, in countless Peer Reviewed Science books.. It is true that Miller and Urey made amino acids, and it is true that amino acids are the building blocks of life. But not the ones Miller and Urey made. The ones they made cannot make living things. That is the lie. Here's why: Amino acids can be right and left handed, like gloves. Miller and Urey made amino acids that are mixed left and right (achiral) . The ones that form living organisms are only left handed (homochiral). Miller and Urey knew this, So did the other gurus 70 years ago, and since. So what they said was a lie then as it is to this day. Scientists have been trying to make single handed (homochiral) amino acids for almost 100 years now. And what progress have they had? Nothing zero zilch. Why did they lie? Because they have no good argument against Creationism, but they dont want to admit that to the public. So they lied. And the lies were by the entire Biology establishment. Check out the list of gurus ("Reviewers", "authors", "consultants", "experts" etc) at the front of any Biology text book. Lying to millions of students. Its how Atheist science works. Anyhow, regarding Origin of Life Theory, what is the Settled Science? It is a law first stated (in 1862) by Louis Pasteur. It's called "The Creationist Law of Biogenesis." Here it is: Absent Divine intervention, life comes only from life. It is 1) consistent with all credible empirical evidence, 2) is falsifiable in principle 3) but has never been falsified in practice, 4) in spite of diligent efforts to falsify it. Those efforts involved a huge international research program over 4 generations, by top gurus including Nobel prize winners. Us Creationists, we figure that's a hoot. What do you guys figure? TAMMIE LEE HAYNES

Real science is not going to emerge from the ruins, it will just go from catastrophy to catastrophy, without hindsight of fixing of errors. It is because you require some kind of emotional basis for doing science, so to say the spirit of science. And the materialists have thrown out the spirit, because of there not being any evidence for it. So then there is no emotional basis, and in that kind of environment with surpressed emotion, you are going to see a lot of extremisim, that will sabotage the sensible scientific discourse. mohammadnursyamsu

Bob o H - Bob you should read Bjorn Lomborg`s book , "How to spend 75 billion to improve the planet" , or Alex Epstein`s "the moral case for fossil fuels" , its always good to educate your self on the counter arguments. Neither of these guys even deny human caused climate change they just show how vested interested groups are pushing an anti human, anti capitalist, and anti anything conservative agenda. Marfin

Bob o H- We have been told by the climate scientists that in the last 150 years the average temp on earth has increased by 1.5 deg F . What they fail to mention is that in that same 150 year period is that infant mortality world wide has decreased considerably, life expectancy has increased considerably , we are richer, healthier, less hunger less poverty, and overall deaths due to weather related disasters has decreased by 97% , so once again, whats the big problem with global warming. Marfin

Per Bob at 24 listing a WHO webpage promoting Climate Change doom and gloom hysteria, here is a website with a bit more optimistic outlook. (And a lot better science) Watts Up With That? The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change https://wattsupwiththat.com I also note that WHO did themselves no favors in the COVID crisis as to proving they were a trustworthy, nonpartisan, organization. :The World Health Organization (WHO) is finally admitting that it lied about the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19). https://dreddymd.com/2021/07/23/who-admits-it-lied-about-covid-origins-fact-checkers-refuse-to-issue-apologies-or-retractions/ bornagain77

at 22: AnimatedDust: "BA the David Barton video shows as unavailable." Here is a corrected link: The Devastating Effects When Prayer Was Removed From School in America in 1962-63 - David Barton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1No--GpdqCY bornagain77

ET - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health Bob O'H

S: Have you noticed the wildfires out west, the widespread drought, reservoirs falling to dangerously low levels, hydro-electric power stations in danger of being shut down because there soon won’t be enough water to drive the turbines? Have you noticed this highly advanced science that is based upon that well established axiom: "It is a well established axiom that what is called a 'thing', when observed causing another, second 'thing', at the same time will cause a 'thing' which is the converse of the second 'thing'." Yes this highly advance science, "climate science" has established that its 'thing', "climate change" causes a second 'thing' (drought), and at the same time causes a 'thing' which is its converse (near monsoon in Houston Texas this year) with precipitation totals of 61.72 inches by 7-24. Expected (decades average) rainfall total for 7-24 in Houston: 56.5 inches. Hell of a 'thing' except when considering that old axiom. groovamos

BA the David Barton video shows as unavaiable. AnimatedDust

Sev, how confident are you that Neo-Darwinism is sufficient to explain the diversity of life we have today? zweston

Also interesting to note that Jeremiah and Ezekiel both prophesy about the coming new covenant which is fulfilled in Christ..pretty cool. Sounds divine. zweston

Sev @ 16... You, along with me and every other human being on the planet need forgiveness. We all have guilt. We all have a conscience. We all know we need to do better... and that's what God himself did. You presuppose that the God we worship is at our level of thinking. We are equivalent to the ant questioning the action of the human being...except infinitely worse. (think I saw that thought on the ant here before, so sorry about not attributing). Jesus paid for our shame and guilt and canceled our debt that we would be free to live in the way we were designed to live. zweston

Bob O'H:
And climate change is clearly impacting human health, so it’s within their remit.
Evidence please. Nonsensical liberal talking points don't count as evidence. ET

Seversky Seriously? You’re quoting Dr Peter McCullough?
:))Well , to believe anything an atheist have to say requires an amount of faith bigger than to believe in God .We both know that you are just a scared unhappy old child begging for attention and appreciation . I've read few of your comments and I didn't find any sign that you think for yourself(you look like a bot) but you can prove me wrong citing a comment in which you have an idea that is not previously found on atheists websites. Lieutenant Commander Data

Zweston/12
Our God doesn’t “pay” us…instead he paid our ransom so we can walk free.
Walk free from what? And He paid Himself the "ransom" according to the story. Sounds like a bit of a scam. Seversky

David Barton also has a video, graphs, and article, on the subject of prayer in schools.
The Devastating Effects When Prayer Was Removed From School in America in 1962-63 – David Barton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1No–GpdqCY Results of Supreme Court (1962) Prayer Ban Statistical graphs posted below, shockingly reveal the damaging impact on America’s morality as a direct result of the Supreme Court prayer ban in 1962. http://www.watchmanbiblestudy.com/News/2010/07/18%20America%20To%20Pray%20Or%20Not%20To%20Pray.htm What Happened When the Praying Stopped? April 6, 2008 Excerpt: How did the removal of voluntary prayer from the schools of the United States (in 1963) affect our nation as a whole?,,, Figure 1 shows how drastically the actual knowledge of high school students began to drop at an accelerating rate after 1962. Barton notes in his report that the upturn in SAT scores since 1981 is due to the increase in private Christian educational facilities which began to flourish at that time. Statistics have proven that students from private Christian schools showed higher academic achievement and higher test scores. Figure 2: This graph shows the increase in sexual activity in unmarried teen-age girls after the 1962 Supreme Court decision. It is evident from the figures provided that in the years previous to the removal of prayer the rates remained stable and relatively unchanged. In the post- prayer years the numbers immediately began to soar. The sudden increase on the graph appears as if a great restraining force had suddenly been removed. Figure 3: Unwed women 15-19 years of age showed a phenomenal increase in the rate of pregnancies after the School Prayer decision. Note that the figure jumps drastically after the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision which made abortion legal in the U.S. The United States now has the highest incidence of teen-age motherhood in any Western country. Figure 4: For the 15-19 and 20-24 age group, the rates of youth suicide remained relatively unchanged during the years from 1946 to the School Prayer decision in 1962. But in the years since, suicides among the same group have increased 253 percent, or an average of 10.5 percent per year. Figure 5: Stability in the family has also been affected since the 1962 decision. Divorce, single parent families, couples living together but not married, and adultery are areas of family breakdown which have experienced radical growth in recent years. In the graph above, the increase in single parent families (households with only a mother and children) are detailed. Note the dotted line at the bottom, which shows the rate of growth prior to the 1962 decision. Figure 6: Crime, productivity, and national morality had been on a fairly stable level prior to the 1962 decision, but that is no longer the case. It is obvious that such a quantity of students praying for their nation had a very positive effect on the course that this nation had taken. The rate of violent crime, as shown above, has risen over 330 percent. http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0124_When_America_stopped.html
And as David Barton pointed out. the SAT scores for private Christian schools have not changed since 1962, but have remained remarkably stable. And if you are thinking about pulling your child from the 'failing' public school system in America to enroll them in a 'passing' private Christian school, might I suggest a private Christian school that teaches “Classical, Christian Education”
Classical, Christian Education: Higher SAT Scores Than All Other School Types “Without Even Trying” – Tom Owens on Jan 17, 2020 One of the distinguishing features of classical education is we refuse to “teach to the test.” Instead, we immerse students in the great conversation of Western, Christian Civilization, exposing them early and often to the best minds humanity has ever produced. We seek the intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of our students above all, but when it comes to the standardized tests obsessed over in conventional schools, we are content to “let the chips fall where they may.” Yet, in following the wisdom of the ancients in our approach, the results speak for themselves. Member schools of the Association of Christian & Classical Schools (ACCS) produce students whose SAT scores are, on average, 325 points higher than public schools, 191 points higher than conventional religious schools, and 138 points higher than secular private high schools. How does this happen when most classical schools don’t formally prep for the SAT as part of the curriculum? Why does it seem like ACCS students easily handle the SAT “without even trying?” https://www.dominionschool.com/dominion-blog/classical-christian-education-higher-sat-scores-than-all-other-school-types-without-even-trying
Of further note, Atheists claim that the supposed doctrine of ‘separation of church and state’ is the reason that prayer was removed from public schools. But leaving aside the fact that the doctrine of ‘separation of church and state’ is a work of fiction by the racist Supreme Court justice Hugo Black (i.e. former KKK),,,
Hugo Black and the real history of “the wall of separation between church and state” – 2011 Excerpt: So how does this invocation of “wall of separation between church and state” become Supreme Court doctrine, extending from a casual phrase by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to an obscure comment in an 1878 Supreme Court ruling on bigamy to a pervasive doctrine of anti-religious censorship in the public square in the 21st century? http://egnorance.blogspot.com/2011/10/hugo-black-and-real-history-of-wall-of.html
,,, leaving aside the fact that the term separation of church and state' is not even in the constitution, it is interesting to note that Darwinian evolution is itself dependent on (faulty) theological presuppositions, (and not on any compelling scientific evidence), and thus the teaching of only Darwinian evolution in public schools amounts to the United States government endorsing a specific religion, (i.e. Atheism), over other religions, which is, ironically, a direct violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution.
The role of theology in current evolutionary reasoning – Paul A. Nelson – Biology and Philosophy, 1996, Volume 11, Number 4, Pages 493-517 Excerpt: Evolutionists have long contended that the organic world falls short of what one might expect from an omnipotent and benevolent creator. Yet many of the same scientists who argue theologically for evolution are committed to the philosophical doctrine of methodological naturalism, which maintains that theology has no place in science. Furthermore, the arguments themselves are problematical, employing concepts that cannot perform the work required of them, or resting on unsupported conjectures about suboptimality. Evolutionary theorists should reconsider both the arguments and the influence of Darwinian theological metaphysics on their understanding of evolution. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00138329 Damned if You Do and Damned if You Don’t – Steve Dilley- 2019-06-02 The Problem of God-talk in Biology Textbooks Abstract: We argue that a number of biology (and evolution) textbooks face a crippling dilemma. On the one hand, significant difficulties arise if textbooks include theological claims in their case for evolution. (Such claims include, for example, ‘God would never design a suboptimal panda’s thumb, but an imperfect structure is just what we’d expect on natural selection.’) On the other hand, significant difficulties arise if textbooks exclude theological claims in their case for evolution. So, whether textbooks include or exclude theological claims, they face debilitating problems. We attempt to establish this thesis by examining 32 biology (and evolution) textbooks, including the Big 12—that is, the top four in each of the key undergraduate categories (biology majors, non-majors, and evolution courses). In Section 2 of our article, we analyze three specific types of theology these texts use to justify evolutionary theory. We argue that all face significant difficulties. In Section 3, we step back from concrete cases and, instead, explore broader problems created by having theology in general in biology textbooks. We argue that the presence of theology—of whatever kind—comes at a significant cost, one that some textbook authors are likely unwilling to pay. In Section 4, we consider the alternative: Why not simply get rid of theology? Why not just ignore it? In reply, we marshal a range of arguments why avoiding God-talk raises troubles of its own. Finally, in Section 5, we bring together the collective arguments in Sections 2-4 to argue that biology textbooks face an intractable dilemma. We underscore this difficulty by examining a common approach that some textbooks use to solve this predicament. We argue that this approach turns out to be incoherent and self-serving. The poor performance of textbooks on this point highlights just how deep the difficulty is. In the end, the overall dilemma remains. https://journals.blythinstitute.org/ojs/index.php/cbi/article/view/44
In short, since Darwinian evolution is, in reality, based not on any compelling scientific evidence but is instead based primarily on bad theology, and it is, (ironically), therefore a direct violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution to only teach only Darwinian evolution in schools.
Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Of humorous note on the effects of prayer:
What happened when a semi-famous atheist dared God to show Himself? Sci-fi author John C. Wright shares his testimony of converting from Atheism to Christianity. – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfO0raZlMCQ
As the old joke goes, 'be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.' :) bornagain77

Of related note to Seversky asking "what’s the point of praying?" And to the general question of "Is prayer effective"? If Seversky atheistic worldview is true, then prayer would indeed be an entirely futile endeavor. Much like talking to a brick wall. Yet if the Christian worldview is true, then prayer would be expected to be a fruitful endeavor. Indeed, we are talking to the Creator of, well, the Creator of everything. Needless to say, that is not a minor connection to have on your prayer app. But have there been studies on the efficacy of prayer that can differentiate whether or not it is futile or fruitful to pray? Glad you asked. Yes there have been.
Study Of The Therapeutic Effects Of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (PIP) On Auditory and Visual Impairments In Rural Mozambique - 2010 CONCLUSIONS: Rural Mozambican subjects exhibited improved audition and/or visual acuity subsequent to PIP. The magnitude of measured effects exceeds that reported in previous suggestion and hypnosis studies. Future study seems warranted to assess whether PIP may be a useful adjunct to standard medical care for certain patients with auditory and/or visual impairments, especially in contexts where access to conventional treatment is limited. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20686441 Testing Prayer: Science and Miraculous Healing - Candy Gunther Brown at Boston College - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRfLooh3ZOk A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Prayer and Student Outcomes William Jeynes - January 6, 2020 Abstract: A meta-analysis, including 13 studies, was undertaken on the relationship between the exercise of student prayer and academic and behavioral outcomes in urban schools. Analyses both with and without sophisticated controls (e.g., socioeconomic status, race, and gender) were used. Additional analyses were done to determine whether the effects of prayer differed by the quality of the study. The results indicated that the exercise of prayer is associated with better levels of student outcomes. Moreover, the effects of prayer were greater for high-quality studies. The significance of these results is discussed. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013124519896841
Of related note to praying in schools: Since we are talking about millions and millions of young people praying in schools, I consider the removal of prayer from public schools in 1963, with private schools retaining prayer, (i.e. control group), to be an excellent, unmatched, case study on the efficacy of prayer. That education has declined fairly drastically in America’s public schools, despite a massive increase in spending on public schools, should not be a surprise for anyone. Just google “America’s Failing Public Schools” and several pages of articles will turn up lamenting the failure of America’s public schools. https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=America's%20Failing%20Public%20Schools Various reasons have been given for why America’s public schools are failing, yet, despite a massive uptick in spending, and despite the fact that various solutions have been tried, no solution to the problem of failing public schools has been found. I think the correct solution is sitting right under our noses. It might interest some people to know exactly when education in the public schools of America started to decline. As the following graph highlights, after staying stable for years, In 1963 the verbal and math SAT scores ‘mysteriously’ started to decline for 17 straight years after 1963 until 1980.
Historical average SAT scores of college bound seniors. – 1950 to the 2020 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Historical_Average_SAT_Scores_%28Vector%29.svg
And this, of course, prompts us to ask, exactly what happened in public schools in 1963 that could possibly explain this decline in SAT scores for 17 straight years? Well, 1962-1963 happens to be the year(s) that prayer was removed from public schools by the Supreme Court.
Education Expert: Removing Bible, Prayer from Public Schools Has Caused Decline By Penny Starr | August 15, 2014 Excerpt: Education expert William Jeynes said on Wednesday that there is a correlation between the decline of U.S. public schools and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 and 1963 decision that school-sponsored Bible reading was unconstitutional. “One can argue, and some have, that the decision by the Supreme Court – in a series of three decisions back in 1962 and 1963 – to remove Bible and prayer from our public schools, may be the most spiritually significant event in our nation’s history over the course of the last 55 years,” Jeynes said. On June 25, 1962, the United States Supreme Court decided in Engel v. Vitale that a prayer approved by the New York Board of Regents for use in schools violated the First Amendment because it represented establishment of religion. In 1963, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the court decided against Bible readings in public schools along the same lines. Since 1963, Jeynes said there have been five negative developments in the nation’s public schools: • Academic achievement has plummeted, including SAT scores. • Increased rate of out-of-wedlock births • Increase in illegal drug use • Increase in juvenile crime • Deterioration of school behavior “So we need to realize that these actions do have consequences,” said Jeynes, professor at California State College in Long Beach and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J., “When we remove that moral fiber — that moral emphasis – this is what can result.” https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/education-expert-removing-bible-prayer-public-schools-has-caused-decline
bornagain77

TAMMIE LEE HAYNES/8
Not surprising after the lies of the Miller Urey Experiment.
The Miller-Urey experiments were not lies.
And the total failure of Origin of Life Science.
It's a work-in-progress. It's way too early to write it off as a failure.
Plus the ies of Climate Science
Have you noticed the wildfires out west, the widespread drought, reservoirs falling to dangerously low levels, hydro-electric power stations in danger of being shut down because there soon won't be enough water to drive the turbines? When will AGW become plausible, when Florida sinks beneath the waves?
Here’s what: Creationism is in the catbird seat
Great, so all we have to do is pray hard enough and maybe do the odd rain dance and that will put everything right?
Over the last year and a half, our Science establishment killed 4 million people. But they still managed to give us a laugh. These self proclaimed experts got caught trying to cover it up. Tell me, isn’t that kind of a howl!
Human ignorance and stupidity are the real culprits. All those churches ignoring the COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines because the Lord will protect them - until the congregations become infected and the pastors die of it. That's a howl alright.
Say a prayer for them.
For all the good that'll do. Seversky

Our God doesn't "pay" us...instead he paid our ransom so we can walk free. zweston

Lieutenant Commander Data/7
? Why don’t we apply your logic to our chiefs ,managers. Write a letter to your manager with the title What’s the point of working?: “Dear manager you already know very well that I’m qualified and I’m a very good worker so why don’t you pay me without coming to work?
But your God doesn't "pay" us, even though we have already put in the work. See the story I linked to above. So why should we put in the work if we're not going to get paid? So, again, what's the point in praying? You're not really Lieutenant-Commander Data, are you? Seversky

Lieutenant Commander Data/3
https://vimeo.com/553518199
Seriously? You're quoting Dr Peter McCullough? This Dr Peter McCullough?
Dr. Peter McCullough: An MD/MPH who promotes quackery and doesn’t know how VAERS works I was curious about the claim in the article that Dr. McCullough is the “doctor with the most citations in the National Library of Medicine on these topics”. Which topics, I wondered upon first reading that, a question that was answered by the last paragraph regarding his allegedly having developed a “globally acclaimed and highly successful COVID treatment protocol”. A quick PubMed search revealed that he does indeed have 38 publications related to COVID-19 in the peer-reviewed literature. That jogged my memory a bit. It turns out that Dr. McCullough is a consultant cardiologist and Vice Chief of Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and Principal Faculty in internal medicine for the Texas A & M University Health Sciences Center. (More on him in a moment.) […] Let’s start with Dr. McCullough’s video. There are a number of red flags. First, it’s noted on the Rumble page for his video that the website he “mentions is AAPSOnline.org.” Regular readers will remember AAPS as, basically, the John Birch Society of “medical societies,” basically an astroturf right wing science denialist organization disguised as a legitimate academic medical society that has a long history of promoting antivaccine misinformation (including providing a platform for Andrew Wakefield) and, now, COVID-19 disinformation, that basically loves Dr. McCullough’s protocol, which, of course, involves hydroxychloroquine, the Black Knight of COVID-19 treatments that evidence just can’t seem to kill. Unsurprisingly, he is presented as a Brave Maverick Doctor speaking Truth to power. Similarly unsurprisingly, he cannot cite any randomized double blind clinical trials (RCTs) to support his protocol, instead relying on the excuse that all Brave Maveric Doctors (like Stanislaw Burzynski) use that they “can’t” do the RCTs. In his case, it was because the pandemic hit so fast. Oddly enough, there have now been quite a few RCTs of various COVID-19 treatments proposed early in the pandemic, and equally unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them have been negative. Similarly, he excuses those studies showing that single drugs don’t work, saying that you have to use “multiple drugs” as in HIV. Of course, what he neglects to mention is that in general multidrug cocktails contain drugs each of which does have some single agent activity. You can’t just throw together drugs that don’t work and expect that they will work, and, as Dr. Vincent Iannelli explains, they don’t work. Of course, what Dr. McCullough claims to have done is to “leverage” small clinical trials and observational studies; too bad he didn’t do the RCTs of his cocktail, which, given the rapidly fatal course of severe COVID-19, would, contrary to his claim, not take “years” to get results from. Finally like all Brave Mavericks, Dr. McCullough claims that the reason his protocol isn’t widely accepted and publicized isn’t because it doesn’t work, but rather because the press and government regulatory agencies are either ignoring or “suppressing” news of it, even as he cited a “home treatment guide” published by—you guessed it!—AAPS. Basically, his protocol includes one FDA-accepted drug, Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail that was issued an EUA, followed by vitamins (of course!), steroids (another drug that works) and—also of course!—hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, zinc, and azithromycin, none of which have been shown to work. Come to think of it, he’s very much like Stanislaw Burzynski, mixing the unproven with the weakly proven and claiming without evidence to have “saved thousands of lives” and claims he could have saved 50-85% of the lives lost to COVID-19. Again, there’s no solid evidence to support any of these claims. I will give him one point. He’s not entirely wrong that the US has decided to emphasize vaccination as the answer to the pandemic, but he also dismisses masking and social distancing as having been overemphasized. Next up, Dr. McCullough resurrects a common trope about the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials by pointing out the low percentage of patients who got COVID-19 in the trials, dismissing the trials because of that while ignoring that the studies had been powered with the expectation that a low percentage of participants would be diagnosed with COVID-19. Basically, in the video he’s rehashing the same dubious arguments made by Peter Doshi in January to claim that the actual efficacy of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines is much lower than the clinical trials found. And, as antivaxxers often do, Dr. McCullough misunderstands VAERS. […] Dr. McCullough is also shockingly ignorant of how VAERS works. He claims that only a health care worker can access the system and that a patient or a loved one has to contact a physician or health care worker to enter a report. That is completely wrong. Indeed, one of the complaints about VAERS is that anybody—and I do mean anybody—can enter a report. It is this openness that is simultaneously one of VAERSgreatest strengths and weaknesses. It’s a weakness in that this openness allows for gaming of the system, as lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers for autism as a “vaccine injury” did 15 years ago. Seriously, this is an error huge enough to make me wonder about everything else, in particular whether he got his MPH out of a cereal box. This guy has an MPH and doesn’t know (or didn’t bother to find out) how VAERS actually works and that there are other vaccine safety monitoring systems other than VAERS?
Seversky

The Slow Descent Of “Science!” As In “Trust The Science!”
If you think prayer works any better, you're welcome to try. Although I wouldn't recommend it Seversky

Let's have a laugh. Look at how Peer Reviewed Atheist Science has fallen Not surprising after the lies of the Miller Urey Experiment. And the total failure of Origin of Life Science. Plus the ies of Climate Science,, the silliness of Peak Oil, the BS of the multiverse. Best of all, the cover-ups by the gate keepers. The head honchos of academia, the National Academy of Sciences, the Science Journals, the leaders of the established media. So what happened to Science? Here's what: Creationism is in the catbird seat. Over the last year and a half, our Science establishment killed 4 million people. But they still managed to give us a laugh. These self proclaimed experts got caught trying to cover it up. Tell me, isn't that kind of a howl! Anyhow, these top Atheist Scientists. Lets not kick them when they're down. They could use a serious miracle. So lets help them out. Lets try the the only way that's got a chance with that crowd. Say a prayer for them. TAMMIE LEE HAYNES

Seversky Prayer seems to be illogical. If the God to whom you are praying is all-knowing – as Christians believe – then He already knows what you are asking of Him. In fact He would have been aware of the issue long before you were. So what’s the point of praying? And if He is all-powerful – again, a Christians believe – then surely He can do whatever is necessary to put it right without killing lots of people. Surely, He can just do a Jedi-like wave of the divine hand and tell them to go home and re-think their lives. There are certainly stories in the Bible where God intervenes to change the way people think and/or feel. So, again, what’s the point of praying
:) Why don't we apply your logic to our chiefs ,managers. Write a letter to your manager with the title What's the point of working?: "Dear manager you already know very well that I'm qualified and I'm a very good worker so why don't you pay me without coming to work? Lieutenant Commander Data

Prayer seems to be illogical. If the God to whom you are praying is all-knowing - as Christians believe - then He already knows what you are asking of Him. In fact He would have been aware of the issue long before you were. So what's the point of praying? And if He is all-powerful - again, a Christians believe - then surely He can do whatever is necessary to put it right without killing lots of people. Surely, He can just do a Jedi-like wave of the divine hand and tell them to go home and re-think their lives. There are certainly stories in the Bible where God intervenes to change the way people think and/or feel. So, again, what's the point of praying? Seversky

Polistra...I'm with you... Bill Gates leaks population control...his dad was Planned Parenthood staff too. Follow the trails! As a Christian, it is hard to not want to pray prayers that ask God to strike down the enemy. Lord, have mercy on them, but if you know they will not turn...wipe them out. zweston

And climate change is clearly impacting human health, so it’s within their remit.
Is climate change making health better? To be debated. jerry

https://vimeo.com/553518199 Lieutenant Commander Data

He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”
If their primary task was to forestall pandemics, then surely they would be called something like the World Pandemic Prevention Organisation. If you read their webpage, they don't even mention pandemics under What We do: it's under health emergencies. The WHO does much more than work on infectious diseases, they are looking at health generally. And climate change is clearly impacting human health, so it's within their remit. Bob O'H

It's not a failure, it's a planned and successful genocide. Governments are never clueless or failed. When a project LOOKS like a failure to us, it's because we mistakenly assume that governments are trying to solve problems. They aren't. Their sole purpose since 1946 is creating problems and killing everyone. Pure demonic evil. polistra

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