Wait. If atheist neurologist blogger Steven Novella is right, the science presenters in media must be speaking a different language from the rest of us. The impression that he says they don’t convey (“insight into the ultimate nature of reality”), they in fact do — by a variety of means. That’s okay, of course, until the whipped cream hits the fan.
Tag: COVID-19
When people claim that “the science” says this or that…
Discussing the recent essay by medical statistician John Ioannidis on the was politicization and shoddy research around COVID-19 are corrupting science, philosopher Edward Feser focuses on a couple of his points, including this one, “the deleterious role that social media have played.”
Statistician Ioannidis on how COVID wrecked science
Readers may remember John Ioannidis. His point here is that getting more people involved with science doesn’t always work: “A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication.”
Will the Tokyo Olympics be a “super-evolutionary” COVID-19 event?
That’s the question at Wired. If there is no “super-evolutionary event” as a result of the Tokyo Olympics, is there anything that we can reasonably conclude? Could we conclude, for example, that natural selection is not necessarily the terrifying creative force that some have claimed?
Lancet accused of sitting on important COVID-19 study, maybe costing lives
The reason COVID-19 matters in our discussion of issues at UD News is that it may be the first time many people begin to understand one of the things we have been trying to talk about here for years: The way “science” can just become a club of people who front (and maybe even believe) certain things and suppress others irrespective of evidence, misusing their authority.
The slow descent of “Science!” As in “Trust the Science!”
Varadarajan: 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.
From Eric Holloway: COVID-19’s Origins: Uses and Misuses of the Explanatory Filter
Holloway: … “I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” the expert added. “But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.”
Nature attempts to paper over a genuine and reasonable lack of trust in China over COVID-19
This matters to us because it bears on the fate of science in general, as China becomes a global superpower. Nature Editorial: “Such trends are likely to continue if geopolitical tensions with the United States worsen. That would be regrettable.” No, it wouldn’t be “regrettable.” Not so long as China cannot be trusted.
Why trust in “science” is becoming unwise
In case you wondered: “China is also spending lavishly around the world to win supremacy in science — which includes becoming the biggest national sponsor of open access journals published by both Springer Nature and Elsevier, owner of The Lancet.”
What will the long-term effect be of science journals playing useful idiots around COVID-19?
Some of us have been reflecting on the effect of the COVID-19 panic on the public estimation of science. Here’s an article on the “useful idiot” problem among science journals.
Can you believe it? The COVID crazy is destroying trust in science experts
Among more thoughtful people, the term “science” has taken one heck of a beating. When this is all over, we hope it still means something other than “whatever bureaucrats enforce .
At Mind Matters News: More on the COVID-19 lab leak theory
It’s off topic for ID as such. But it is important for helping people work through a general principle that concerns all issues that pertain to science: “Trust the science” is not a good approach when the science is so clearly not bound by any standards of grappling with the facts. (Darwinism anyone?)
How Big Tech manufactured a science “consensus” against a lab leak of COVID-19
It’s one thing to trust Darwinblither, just to take an example, when nothing immediate is at stake. But if we agree that COVID-19 is a problem, let’s evaluate more carefully what we have been told on the Authority of Science. And take in the fact that Big Tech backed up the Authority of Science when it was obviously way off base.
The COVID-19 saga is getting people talking about bogus scientific consensus
For some months there has been a bogus consensus that the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan was a crackpot conspiracy theory. Then the dam broke. People may understand the concept better now.
Ann Coulter: I will NOT be scienced!
What’s going to be interesting to see is whether Science, as a concept, takes a beating after the COVID crazy — in the sense that “Trust the Science!” descends from mantra to double entendre to joke.