The Scottish Crown Office subsequently wrote to us on March 5th demanding we remove the article. Guido decided to ignore it as it seemed unlikely to prejudice matters or reveal witnesses. The Spectator has taken the same approach to the same letter.
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Interviewer: It is striking how scientific studies, also in this corona crisis, reveal very diverse results. Based on these results, scientists can defend almost diametrically opposed theories as the only truth. How is this possible? Mattias Desmet: The research on corona is indeed brimming with contradictions. For example, regarding the effectiveness of face masks or hydroxychloroquine, the success of the Swedish approach, or the effectiveness of the PCR test. Even more curiously, the studies contain a huge number of improbable errors that a normally sane person would not be expected to make. This is still the case in terms of establishing the absolute number of infections, while a schoolchild knows that this means nothing as long as the number of infections detected is not compared with the number of tests taken. Obviously, the more tests you carry out, the more likely your infection rate will increase. Is this so difficult? In addition, it should be kept in mind that the PCR test can yield a large number of false positives, because the technique is widely misused for diagnosis. Together, this means that the inaccuracy of the figures distributed daily by the media is so great that some people understandably suspect a conspiracy, albeit apocryphally, in my opinion. Again, this phenomenon is better placed in an historical perspective, because the problematic quality of scientific research is not a new issue. In 2005 the so-called “replication crisis” erupted in the sciences. Several committees set up to investigate scientific fraud cases found that scientific research is teeming with errors. Often the stated conclusions are of very dubious value. In the wake of the crisis, several papers appeared with titles that leave little to the imagination. In 2005, John Ioannidis, Professor of Medical Statistics at Stanford, published Why most published research findings are false. In 2016, a different research group wrote about the same topic, in Reproducibility: a Tragedy of Errors published in the medical journal Nature. These are just two examples of the very extensive literature describing this problem. I myself am well aware of the shaky scientific foundation of many research results. In addition to my master’s degree in clinical psychology, I earned a master’s in statistics. My doctorate dealt with measurement problems in the field of psychology. – Patrick Dewals: The Emerging Totalitarian Dystopia: An Interview With Professor Mattias Desmet Original text here. March 5th, 2021 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Lord Sumption: Our status as a free society doesn’t actually depend on our laws or our constitution, it depends on convention. It depends on a collective instinct as to the right way to behave. There are many things governments can do which it is generally accepted they should not do. And one of them, until last March, was to lock up healthy people in their homes. Interviewer: So, do you think we have taken an irreversible step towards being more Chinese, more dirigiste? Lord Sumption: I very much fear that we have – From an Unherd interview titled: Lord Sumption: mass civil disobedience has begun I do not agree with Sumption on every point by any means but this interview is well worth your time. March 4th, 2021 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you need a bit of a giggle, not to mention some informative bricks to throw at certain people, occasionally take a peek at the Extinction Clock. Blog it, Gab it, Fakebook it, Twatter it, email it to green-inclined folk you know. This is absolutely perfect for dinner party discussions and family gatherings as well, as you do not need to explain it, just get them to read it and stand back with a smug expression saying nothing 😁 March 3rd, 2021 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have a research background in the social sciences and dozens of peer-reviewed publications to my name. There’s a lot that sets off my crap detector in Ferguson’s comments – mostly to do with overestimating the validity of his own data, and using this to in effect depoliticise political questions and naturalise a kind of technocratic despotism under the guise of neutral science. I don’t think this is a deliberate conspiracy; I think it’s a predictable result of a particular way of seeing. The political assumption is that ‘we’ as a society make decisions for the whole society (i.e., society is not an aggregate of individuals), that within this range of decisions, anything goes (the only criteria are quantitative), and that the decisions should be made based on expert data. These are highly contentious beliefs: they are not apolitical or scientific […] In other words, it’s a strategy based on damage reduction, permitting or increasing human suffering so as to preserve state/Government stability (again clearly a contentious view, and again with Hobbesian and behaviourist roots). Yet Ferguson embeds this view of politics in such a way as to make it seem obvious, apolitical. It isn’t. It is a choice in favour of technocratic governance. Ferguson’s desire not to ‘politicise’ science involves effectively making policy decisions based on the ‘expert’ conclusions arising from computer modelling. This kind of technocratic model is perfectly compatible with how countries like China are run. February 28th, 2021 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Perhaps the most stark form of differend lies in what philosophical logicians call ‘The Fallacy of Many Questions’. When, in the court dock for instance, a wily prosecutor asks a witness for the defence, “And do you still have a drink problem, sir?”, the witness had better be on his toes to avoid confirming the prosecutor’s implied allegation. If he answers “yes” – well, the game is over. If he answers “no”, then he implies, at least, that he has had a drink problem. One hopes that a good judge would overrule this question, on grounds of its leading the witness – that is to say, leading him without his knowing it to confirm some version of the drink-problem narrative, the framework of the question having excluded the option that there neither is nor ever was a problem with alcohol consumption. Owen Jones’s ‘Denier’ allegation commits a similar fallacy: either Sikora, Gupta et al. do not deny ‘Covid’; or they do deny ‘Covid,’ in which case they are cast in the role of refusing to accept that Britons have this year died in their thousands. The option of accepting that there have been deaths but rejecting that they have been extraordinarily due to a ‘Covid pandemic’ is taken out of play. – Sinéad Murphy discussing An Incredible Berk of Staggering Ignorance. The “differend” is not just a difference of opinion, it is a disconnect between fundamentally different world views. This is a discussion about what in these parts we refer to as “meta-context”, the unspoken & largely unexamined axioms that underpin how people understand everything. February 27th, 2021 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I read this zinger:
I thought it was perhaps the most succinct summation of why (1) the ‘Conservative’ Party should be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act (2) I will never vote for them again. It is bizarre to think we can thank Russia (an enemy state run by gangsters) and India for providing the voice of sanity. February 25th, 2021 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I saw this… February 20th, 2021 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is hard to overstate the importance of trying to use alternatives to oligopolistic companies seeking control what you can see or purchase. Sadly, Amazon is very hard to avoid these days but at least people can seek out competitors in specific areas, such as e-books. The chaps at Creative Destruction Media suggest Smashwords. Highlighting the existence of alternatives where they exist is important. February 20th, 2021 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I just got banned from Twitter, which I do find hilarious to be honest, given the things they tolerate. Have no intention of pressing that ‘remove’ button. Wotevah…
On Gab.com from now on, was moving away from Twitter anyway as more and more of the interesting people have been banned. I foresee a steady division process in which Twitter only tolerates what Kristian Niemietz describes as “high status opinions”, with platforms like Gab, Minds and Parler etc. becoming the home for contrary views. In short, social media will be more of an echo chamber, much like it was during the ‘golden age of blogging’ 2001-2009, when you knew exactly what to expect from a given site (such as this one for example). I always saw the whole point of platforms like Twitter as being where things get mixed up and people spar across the divide. But that will increasingly not be the case, so not sure what Twitter et al are really for. February 19th, 2021 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
And so it was written. Nothing is now unthinkable. The difference between China’s bureaucratic totalitarianism and our own is now a matter of degree, not kind. The future is a bleak vista. Scientists claim that lockdown cycles will continue for years, and regular reviews of personal freedom look set to become as quotidian as changes in interest rates. Even if Covid-19 does disappear, it will be a brave politician who, in a future NHS winter crisis caused by traditional common-or-garden influenza, refuses to impose restrictions that scientists promise will save thousands of lives. Civil liberties safeguarded during two world wars are now, as they are in China, gifts of the state. February 19th, 2021 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Facebook unfriends Australia: news sites go dark in content row – for once I actually like something Facebook has done! 🤣 February 18th, 2021 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
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