Mathanzua
JF-Expert Member
- Jan 4, 2017
- 17,251
- 22,929
The story at a glance
- As technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, they have brought with them their own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem
- The clearest problem with the admonition to “believe the science” is that bona fide experts are found on all sides of any given empirical question
- The scientific priesthood is intolerant to new ideas while, simultaneously, search engines and digitization of scientific literature have eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge
- The way things look right now, the gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood don’t seem to have any intention to open its doors to outsiders and independent thinkers. If anything, they’re trying to massively increase their control over the information we’re allowed to see and share, even to the point of proposing the creation of certifying boards to police physicians’ sharing of medical opinions
- The idea that a group of people can be the sole arbiters of “truth” is irrational. Individual biases always creep in, and the greater the influence of such a group, the more ingrained and dogmatic those biases will become, until the system is corrupted to the core. One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today.
Science has long been regarded as a stronghold of logic and reason. Scientists don’t draw conclusions based on emotions, feelings or sheer faith. It’s all about building a body of reproducible evidence. Well, that’s what it used to be, but as technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, it has brought with it its own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. Sheldon Richman with The Libertarian Institute writes:1
Technocracy News also added a comment2 to Richman’s article, noting that “Scientism is at the root of both technocracy and transhumanism, indicating that the revolution waged against the world is religious in nature.”
Whether the war against humanity is truly underpinned by religion or not is open for debate and interpretation. But what is clear is that something has shifted science away from its conventional foundation into something that very much resembles religious faith. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem.
Scientific Gatekeeping as a Priesthood
In “Against Scientific Gatekeeping,”3 published in the May 2022 issue of Reason magazine, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues that “science should be a profession, not a priesthood.” Indeed, yet that’s basically what it has become. Singer starts out by reviewing the early discovery of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against COVID-19, and the subsequent demonization of anyone who supported its off-label use.He then goes on to discuss the scientific priesthood’s intolerance to new ideas while, simultaneously, “search engines and the digitization of scientific literature have forever eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge.” He writes:4
The Need to Reassess Dogmatic Thinking
Singer reviews several other examples of bonafide experts who got thrown under the proverbial bus by the medical priesthood during the years of COVID, and highlights instances where we can now, rather conclusively, prove that public health officials made bad calls.Several studies have concluded that lockdowns had no beneficial impact on infection rates and COVID deaths, for example, while disproportionally harming the young and the poor. Yet no one has publicly admitted this strategy was an unwise one that should be permanently abandoned and never repeated.
Many studies have also demonstrated that natural immunity is better than the COVID jab, yet no changes have been made to the official recommendation to inject everyone, whether COVID recovered or not.
Effort to Muzzle Doctors Continues
The way things look right now, the gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood don’t seem to have any intention to open its doors to outsiders and independent thinkers.If anything, they’re trying to massively increase their control over the information we’re allowed to see and share, even to the point of proposing the creation of private medical certifying boards to police physicians’ sharing of medical opinions online and elsewhere. In a May 31, 2022, Substack article, independent medical journalist Paul Thacker writes:6
Thacker goes on to detail the history of Dr. Edward Michna, who has spent a large portion of his career promoting and defending the use of opioids for several different drug companies. He’s also conducted several pain trials involving opioids, and despite having received many tens of thousands of dollars from opioid makers, he didn’t disclose those competing interests.
Without Free Discourse, Science Dies
It seems the moral of all these stories is that without free discourse, science cannot flourish and falsehoods become harder to weed out. Free speech is a requirement for any well-functioning system, whether we’re talking about politics, medicine, science or anything else.One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today. Gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood have already allowed science to be corrupted to the point its barely recognizable. The answer, then, is not more of the same, but less.
The idea that a group of people, no matter how well-intended, can be the sole arbiters of “truth” is irrational on its face, because who among us can claim to know all there is to know? Individual biases always creep in, and the greater the influence of such a group, the more ingrained and dogmatic those biases will become, until the system is corrupted to the core.
One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today. Gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood have already allowed science to be corrupted to the point its barely recognizable. The answer, then, is not more of the same, but less. We need less censorship and more open-minded sharing of viewpoints, opinions and interpretations.
And when it comes to creating medical boards to police medical “misinformation” shared by doctors, we already know how that would work out. While Thacker doesn’t mention this, many doctors have been targeted by various professional boards, including state medical boards, for publicly opposing COVID measures such as mask and COVID shot mandates. This is discussed in “Medical Boards Hunting Down Doctors Over Mask Mandates.”
Transforming the Health Care System
In his book, “Curable: How an Unlikely Group of Radical Innovators Is Trying to Transform Our Health Care System,” Travis Christofferson addresses questions such as: “What has happened to health care?” and “What are the foundational disruptions or corruptions in the system?”His book, in some ways, is based on the theory promoted in Michael Lewis’ book and subsequent film, “Moneyball.” It describes how you can use statistics to massively improve a flawed system.
“Moneyball” showed how, within a simple game of baseball, you can have massive inefficiencies, and by taking away the human biases and just applying statistics to find what is undervalued, you can massively boost the performance of a team.
When Christofferson was interviewed about his book, he offered several examples of how statistics and removal of human biases can be used in the same way to improve inefficiencies within the medical system. For example, the diabetic drug Metformin has “massive repositories of data” suggesting it can be useful against a plethora of chronic diseases, including cancer, and it’s extremely affordable.
The reason it’s rarely prescribed for any of these other indications is because there’s a financial motivation to capitalize on more expensive treatments, even if they don’t work well. By focusing on undervalued treatments and low-cost prevention, health care costs could be driven way down, while simultaneously improving patient outcomes.
Another example comes from Geisinger Health in Pennsylvania. By introducing a Fresh Food Farmacy for Type 2 diabetics, Geisinger Health was able to reduce its per-year outlays and cost for Type 2 diabetics by a whopping 80%. Patients with prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes are given a prescription for fresh, whole foods, and allowed two free meals a day from the Farmacy, along with intensive care and educational support.
A third example is Intermountain Health. In addition to paying its doctors a fixed salary plus bonuses based on patients’ health outcomes, they also assess differences between treatments to see which works best.
For example, patients are always given antibiotics before surgery, but it’s never been established when the optimal time to administer the drugs is. Intermountain compared medical records, finding the optimal time was two hours before surgery, which cut their surgical infection rate by more than half.
Bias Corrupts and Corruption Is Inherently Destructive
These are all examples of how we can effectively and efficiently move medicine forward. By silencing debate and discussion, and by ignoring data and statistics, which has become the norm in this COVID era, the conventional health care system is headed for collapse.This seems particularly true when you consider hospitals have, over the past two years, completely shredded patients’ trust by mistreating and outright killing COVID-19 patients with the most dangerous treatments available. Rather than collaborating with peers, most doctors have blindly followed financially-driven and politically biased protocols handed down from the reigning “priesthood,” and the results have been nothing short of disastrous.
Speaking of disastrous, California has introduced a bill8 that will strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with, basically reducing medicine to a state-sanctioned one-size-fits-all endeavor. Absolutely nothing good can come of such a plan. This is discussed in “Bill Seeks to Muzzle Doctors Who Tell the Truth About COVID.”
This bill, AB-2098, was passed by House vote (53 to 20), May 26, 2022, and is currently in the Senate.9 If this law is passed in California, we will probably begin to see similar or identical bills introduced in other states and countries as well,because America is the best example.
If your trust in doctors has already waned, implementation of such a law is sure to carpet bomb whatever trust is left into oblivion, because all you’ll be able to get, no matter who you go to, is the state-sponsored opinion. What happens then? How do we care for our health if our doctors are legally prevented from giving us their best advice? This is such a radical departure from sanity and sound practice that it’s hard to even imagine what medicine will look like at that point.
The answer, I believe, will be for good, caring medical professionals to start building parallel health care systems, such as those detailed in Christofferson’s book, “Curable.” We may also have to take on greater responsibility for finding solutions to our own health problems. “Take control of your health” has been my motto, but it’s more important now than ever.
In years past, one of the greatest risks a patient faced was a doctor lacking nutritional know-how. In the future, the greatest risk could be doctors outright lying to you, even to the point of sending you to a more or less certain death, just to stay in practice. I hope it won’t come to that. But prevent it, we must resist and oppose these kinds of treacherous plots wherever and whenever they crop up.