patrick.net

In the name of fostering diversity, hiring at STEM departments is increasingly done on the basis of identity, it being far more important to showcase Women of Colour Doing Science than to actually do science. The result of course is that the junior faculties of most science departments are now filled with half-smart ideologues more skilled at telling the diversity committee what it wants to hear (and of course, very skilled at being themselves diverse) than they are at long division. But then, since most research is fake, it doesn’t matter very much how skilled the researchers are at faking it. ...

Some think that the universities can be saved. There are valiant efforts to do so: to force hiring committees to stop requiring ‘diversity statements’ in faculty job applications; to force universities to adopt codes guaranteeing academic freedom and respect for freedom of speech; to force the resignations of professors caught in the most egregious academic fraud; even to close the most obviously polluted departments, gender studies being an egregious example.

This is noble, but a bit like trying to defibrillate a man who has just been shot in the chest. It isn’t so much a medical intervention as one of the stages of grief.

For centuries, “truth” was delegated to the ruling institutions of the time, and hence truth was simply the narrative which conformed to their interests. Then, during the enlightenment period a new idea emerged—that truth could be determined empirically through experimentation and data.

This in turn gave birth to the scientific revolution, and while not perfect (as vested interests would still try to make their “narrative” be truth irrespective of what the scientific data showed), scientific inquiry began shaping the direction of Western Culture, and in a rocky fashion gradually moved society forward, giving us many of the benefits we take for granted today.

Sadly however, the tendency of ruling interests to want to monopolize the truth never went away and we’ve watched a curious phenomenon emerge where science, riding on the social credit earned by the success of its revolutionary discoveries, has gradually transformed into something not that different from a state religion. Given that science was originally meant to be a way to move beyond truth being monopolized by the dogmatic institutions which ran society, it is quite tragic that science has become one as well.

As a result, science has more and more become the practice of “trusting scientific experts” and not being allowed to question their interpretations of the data—or even see it. This is very different from what science was originally intended to be—the collective endeavor of scientists around the world to put forth ideas and have the ones that stand up to scrutiny become the generally accepted standard. ...

Epstein was a moron and was ultimately disposable. Whether or not he’s still alive, as some believe, he’s all done as an international man of mystery and security-state blackmail procurer. But we can reasonably wonder: was science co-opted by the security state in 2005 using grotesque blackmail schemes? Did the spooks shift their other tech assets toward bio-sciences? Like Bill Gates? Is Bill now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CIA and working on vaccines and genetically modified mosquitos for the intelligence community?

I heard Epstein was not very smart, and not terribly good with people.

... The antivirals series documented why we mistrust big journals and their articles, which, in some cases, are thinly veiled adverts for one or more products. ...

The better it sounds, the more likely it is to be too good to be true. Big journals are a specialised media business. We have abundant examples of that fact, but Tamiflu's rise is perhaps the best-documented example.

A modestly performing drug with central nervous system toxicity was pedalled through ghostwritten selected data via mega journals. Journal article “authors” had never seen the whole datasets, and few, if any, had participated in the analysis or editing of the articles. To this day, 60% of the randomised data have never been seen in public...

But, but, but - it’s a peer reviewed scientific journal! They would never write click bait! Well, they just did. And not “just”, they have been doing this for a long time, as long as this particular genre has been funded by the military-industrial Pandemic Preparedness Racket. And, just like the celebrity gossip magazines in the checkout aisles, they recycle the same fake stories over and over again, with different characters, locations, accessories and pets.

And you buy them every time.

Because THIS TIME, it has a pangolin and a brain infection in it.

There must be some seasonality to these informational campaigns, too, because LAST TIME the same brouhaha was all over media almost exactly a year ago. Do you remember the bombshell story from Project Veritas about Pfizer mutating viruses? And here is the Boston University 80% mouse killer story from The Fear Porn Magazine Winter 2023 Edition, debunked:

Boston University made an 80% mouse killer SarsCov mutant very recently. Besides provoking a number of great memes, it managed to not produce an apocalyptic lab leak and so did not wipe out Boston University itself (oh well, maybe next time). Why, you may ask? It was a 80% lethal strain! Of a novel mutated virus from the lab! It was even published in a peer reviewed journal, so it must be true! There were great takedowns of that BS from BU which I won’t republish now, but here is a short synopsis - PhDs played with soups of “viruses” that they thought might be more deadly because awesome computer models told them so. Nothing transmissible from animal to animal was made and 8/10 mice were euthanized because in the opinion of the investigators they were going to die anyway. Actually, the truth is simpler than this - the PhDs need to eat, they didn’t want to hunt for food or grow it, and so they submitted a grant application to the church of NIH using the prayerful keywords that the NIH likes (killer, zoonotic, viruses, pandemic preparedness), and the NIH gave them money for a couple of months. The PhDs bought food and paid rent. Some mice were sacrificed at the altar of the church of NIH. The end.

Anyone who has dared commit the mortal sin of research over the past few years, or even the venial sin of inquiry, has undoubtedly slammed into the sneering wall of derision erected by the phalanx of Indoctrinated pawns deployed in defense of their Party abusers.

”Do you have a degree? In this specific subject? From what university?”

”You haven’t gotten accreditation from a Party-approved source?”

”Are you employed in that field? Are you an expert?”

”Why won’t you just listen to the experts?”

The sneering wall of derision cries out in a million voices, legion, a tower of babbling incredulity and condescension, but for those who can hear the past the empty roar, a single, droning, insect cry emerges from behind the cacophony:

”Shut. Up.”

Over and over and over again.

”Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. Up.”

The message has no end, and no beginning, and vibrates into a mindless mantra, an insatiable gestalt plague of semantic satiation. It is as monotonous in its form as it is in its function: to assimilate.

THE COVID PANDEMIC BROKE ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS WHO PUT THEIR PERSONAL POLITICS AHEAD OF SCIENCE AND THE PUBLIC GOOD.

Sorry to shout, but it needs to be said: A life changing pandemic hit our planet and the learned class of people that we looked to for advice totally botched the job. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just on masks.

A recent New York Magazine investigation noted that the expert class also screwed the pooch when they clamored for lockdowns—a senseless, stupid experiment that devastated thousands of small businesses and working-class families. (“COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure. A Key Lesson of the Pandemic.”)

https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1764876916194959761

https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1764876916194959761

There's actually a lot of engineering put into driving surfaces and there's no way plastic could replace it.