patrick.net

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-blue-wall-wednesday-june-12-2024

Way back in 2009, Marcia Angell, the executive editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine for twenty years, dropped this truth bomb in an article she published in the New York Review of Books:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Ten years ago in 2015, Richard Horton, chief editor of top journal The Lancet, also raised the alarm, and he was even more pessimistic than Marcia:

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
A turn toward darkness! And just in time for the pandemic. It’s too bad nobody listened. That dose of scientific skepticism might have been very helpful back when the pandemic modelers swamped us with fake studies exaggerating the risks of covid mortality by orders of magnitude.

But the Journal, and all the downstream articles also wringing their hands about the loss of trust in Science, overlooked the more meaningful problem. During the pandemic, when fake studies based on “models” filled the journals hyping massive covid mortality — which were then used to justify the draconian pandemic mitigation laws — journal editors were systematically canceling any submitted studies with different conclusions.

You can argue about “study mills” and “pharma capture” all you want, but the truth is the journal editors failed. They earn their salaries as gatekeepers with the duty to ensure fair peer review. They are expected to actually read the studies to make sure they make sense. They failed. Worse, they reason they failed to do their job was on purpose, because the editors decided their job was not to ensure good science, but to enforce the official narrative.

But the narrative was wrong.

Given the stakes and the dollars involved, and how the system markets “peer review” as some kind of false scientific gold standard, of course pharma will try to get its fake studies published. Fake studies mint billions. But, if “peer review” is to be used as the gold standard, then editors like Wiley must ensure their products are not just a shiny artifice.

They are selling us fool’s gold. The good news is the whole rotten frame is falling down on them. And what started it tipping over was how far they overreached during covid. It’s another unexpected covid blessing.

https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1832323979639505211

Patrick says

But the narrative was wrong.

The narrative wasn't 'wrong', it was a planned mass murder. In that sense, it was right for the perpetrators because that is what they wanted.

The_Deplorable says

https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1832323979639505211

I used to put pushpins into the wall of my cube at Schwab at 4pm where the sun made an X from the window frame shadow. Was something like that shape.

A couple more quotes from Medical Journal editors:

“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analysis and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends….” Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical (and vaccine) industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”  – Arnold Seymour Relman, MD, Harvard Professor of Medicine and former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

https://x.com/RefugeOfSinner5/status/1849797940409418035

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-space-to-create-wealth

https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1853063328152653966

I think it's more along the lines "The bribes and the machinery of lobbying with bribes is settled" and "The results of science are bought and paid for by the corporate profit shells" href="/post/1208784?start=181#comment-2130465">Patrick says

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/dodo-birds-disco-and-democrats

None of the Democratic Senators who attacked Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. demonstrated any understanding of his character or of the intellectual journey he has been on for the last 25 years. Our understanding of nature has NEVER—not once in history—advanced by embracing orthodoxy.

Throughout history, heterodox thinkers have been compelled by their voracious curiosity to learn new things. Making new discoveries and gaining new insight is invariably a process of trial and error. Long ago, Mr. Kennedy recognized maladies in the environment and public health of the American homeland, and he set out to correct them. ...

At any given moment in history, the safest posture has always been to embrace the prevailing orthodoxy. Each era’s ruling class has little interest in insights that could threaten their established order.