COVID-19 puts spotlight on science — but scientists often lie

Via The Washington Times

White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx listens as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Gov. John Bel Edwards, D-La., about the coronavirus response, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, April 29, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

We can beat COVID-19 — just trust the science, we’re told. Trust in the scientists, we’re told. And that’s not a paraphrase.

“From the Editors: We Can Beat COVID-19. Just Trust Science,” Wired wrote.

Well and good. Fine and dandy. But fact is, scientists often lie. Science isn’t always the beacon toward truth. It’s not just frequently flawed; it’s frequently deceptive. And purposely so.

So tossing citizens’ civil rights into the sea and allowing medical professionals and scientists to steer the COVID-19 boat may not be the best case scenario for a free America.

“Stanford researchers uncover patterns in how scientists lie about their data,” wrote Stanford News, back in late 2015.

The story went on to report how a couple of researchers “cracked the writing patterns of scientists who attempt to pass along falsified data,” a finding that gave the science world a tool to “identify falsified research before it is published.” The discovery of the pattern is one thing; the fact that the pattern had to be pursued in the first place is entirely another thing. It says, not so subtly, that falsified scientific data is so prevalent that a tool to identify — and slow the creep of — the false data was actually an in-demand item.

In fact, books have been written about the prevalence of falsified science.

“The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science,” is a 2004 expose about the true state of science, and science that’s been peer-reviewed — that is, self-checked, self-policed. It’s 480 pages long. And in a terse assessment of his findings, author Horace Freeland Judson wrote, “Their claims about science are unscientific.” He was speaking of the scientific greats — of Gregor Mendel, of Charles Darwin, of Louis Pasteur, of Sigmund Freud.

They all fudged data.

What’s more, it’s well-known they all fudged data.

“Freud was a lousy scientist,” The New Yorker wrote, in 2017. “He fudged data; he made unsubstantiated claims; he took credit for other people’s ideas. Sometimes he lied.”

Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, “may have falsified data,” The Great Courses Daily reported in 2016. It’s been a lingering shadow. From an August 2016 abstract, “Are Mendel’s Data Reliable? The Perspective of a Pea Geneticist,” published in the Journal of Heredity: “Based on a large number of statistical analyses as well as the review of several well-known geneticists, there can be little doubt that the data Mendel presented in 1866 corresponded much more closely to the predictions of his model than could be reasonably expected by chance.”

Moving on; Darwin.

“New Book Uncovers ‘the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin,’” Evolution News wrote in 2009.

And of especial note, given the ongoing COVID-19 debate and vaccinations, this 1993 headline from The Independent: “Pasteur ‘told lies about vaccines,’” — specifically, about the public trial of an anthrax vaccine, and by using a child as a test-case for a rabies vaccine that he had claimed to use on hundreds of dogs.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune — these are all papers of record that have reported over the years about Pasteur’s record of scientific deceptions.

Those are hardly the only bad apples.

Science magazine, in a 2018 piece entitled, “Tide of Lies,” wrote of bone researcher Yoshihiro Sato’s fabricated data — “fraud” that was called “one of the biggest in scientific history.”

The American Council on Science and Health, in a 2017 piece entitled, “Lying Politicians Is One Thing, Lying Scientists Is Another,” wrote of “the crappy science” of researchers Peter Eklov and Oona Lonnstedt who reported in a 2016 paper that “tiny particles of plastic in the ocean were harming fish,” and that “microscopic plastic must [therefore] be harmful to fish” — findings that led them to be slapped with the peer-based “misconduct in research” label; findings that the pair subsequently retracted.

QZ, in a 2016 piece entitled, “Nearly all of our medical research is wrong,” wrote: “Something is rotten in the state of biomedical research. Everyone who works in the field knows this on some level. We applaud presentations by colleagues … but we know in our hearts that the majority or even the vast majority of our research claims are false.”

Wow.

Look: Do the research. Google some headlines. There are more, so many more examples of scientists gone wrong, scientists gone rogue, science gone deceptive.

“This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data,” The Washington Post wrote in 2016.

“Researchers Behaving Badly: Known Frauds Are ‘the Tip of the Iceberg,’” Leapsmag wrote in 2018.

“Take That Back: The Top Scientific Retractions of 2019,” Live Science wrote in 2019.

Deceptions are part of the game.

Lies, skews, half-truths, selectively chosen data, biased conclusions, flawed interpretations, outright wildly inaccurate information — these are all part and parcel of scientists’ lives. And why? Because scientists are human, too.

Scientists have deadlines. They have pressures. They have funding goals. They have peer competition. They have personal agendas, political leanings, partisan purposes — spiritual blindnesses. In short: they are not perfect.

Scientists are not perfect; the science they present is not perfect.

And in this COVID-19 atmosphere, where scientists and researchers and medical professionals and scholars have taken over much of the control of U.S. politics and government and how American citizens are supposed to now behave and function — it’s more important than ever to remember this: Scientists can be wrong, very wrong.

Moreover, scientists can lie. And very often, as history shows, they do.

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8 Comments
anarchyst
anarchyst
May 12, 2020 9:29 am

Many of these “scientists” that were (and still are) caught falsifying their data and results were (and still are) JEWS. It is no secret that there is a “jews-only” cabal within much of the so-called “scientific community” whose only interest is to maximize their “program’s” funding. Lying and cheating are all “part of the game”.If you are an aspiring scientist who is not jewish, good luck getting picked for these experimental research programs.
All one has to do is look at the “climate change” fiasco in which “scientists” were “caught” falsifying their data in order to achieve their desired (false) result. Many times, pressure is put on scientists by those funding the “research” to keep the shekels (dollars) flowing. Whole university experimental research departments are guilty of this. When countries themselves provide funding for “research”, quite often, they expect a certain “result”, right or wrong.
Look at our present situation with the fake COVID-19 “pandemic”. Are we going to shut down the world business capacity for three months every flu season? It sure looks that way…
Follow the shekels (dollars).

Anonymous
Anonymous
  anarchyst
May 12, 2020 12:44 pm

follow the money indeed.
all the links in this article are .. okay… but try this on for size.
this conference took place just a month before the covid lockdowns hit our country.

Notice how all the scientists in the audience laugh along with the jokes, because they realize how dire things have become.

pay particular attention to the segments on “P-hacking”

the answer is indeed, not simple, and always comes back to “who is going to pay for this?”

overthecliff
overthecliff
May 12, 2020 10:02 am

Freud was a perverted flim flam man not a scientist. At best psychology is using educated guess to come to conclusions. Itis totally dependent upon the education of the “scientist”. You are better off to follow the money.

Montefrío
Montefrío
May 12, 2020 11:48 am

“Scientists”. As a spin-off to the “physiognamy” proposition (to which I ascribe), I suggest we look at “pantsing probability” as it applies to those who will become scientists. Long ago and far away (1959) I witnessed and encounter between two early teens: one was a large, menacing black and the other an elfin white, hair parted in the middle, white shirt/bow tie, looked like a kiddie version of Mr. Peepers (Wally Cox); look him up. The black said to the soon-to-be-ornithologist: “Gimme a nickel o’ Ah kick yo’ ass”. The response was unexpected: “Fu&& off, nigg&&”. Silence fell over the witnesses. Black stepped back, threw up his hands and said: “Whoa! Whoa! Okay! Ain’t nooo way Ah gon’ mess with the maaaad scientist!” This was an exception, however.

Those who go on to become “scientists” are often the dweebs who get pantsed back there in junior high or whenever. They don’t forget and they don’t forgive. They know that in the normal course of human events they are condemned to be beta males, but by possessing arcane (read “scientific”) knowledge, others will defer to their occult “wisdom”. Welcome to Revenge of the Nerds writ big time.

It’s pantsing time, gang! Ready to stand up and be counted?

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Administrator
May 12, 2020 1:01 pm

that’s a pretty flawed graph. they must be getting their data from WHO, not from Swedish Public Health.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

you will actually find that Swedish Public Health backloads their death numbers fairly heavily. take note of their Avlidna totals for the past week, then check them a week later and those same numbers will have risen substantially.

the Swedish data is quite odd to interpret. But you can at least say that the Intensivvardade is definitely not exponentially rising and that really,…. is the entire point of the stats. Their hospitals do not appear to be in danger of peaking out.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic
May 13, 2020 2:20 am

Great article. I totally agree.