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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Showing posts with label Scientific integrity is an Oxymoron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scientific integrity is an Oxymoron. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Beware of “Experts”

By Jim Beers

Editor's Note:  I originally published this on September 14, 2015, and given what's going on by firing all these administrative state "experts", and the recent condemnation of science journals, I thought it worthwhile to republish this. RK

According to medical Dr. Carey Franklin:  
 
 “I don’t believe most of the studies published in the medical journals anymore....A review of more than 2,000 articles retracted by major journals revealed that more than two-thirds were retracted because of some type of fraud....Medical journal editors openly acknowledge that they cannot find article reviewers without any financial ties to private companies.....Medical researchers aim for articles that will attract the mainstream press......There is no quick fix for the erosion of trust in medical studies.....If the current trend continues, medical studies will become the ‘reality television’ of science – difficult for outside observers to tell what has been manipulated and what hasn’t.”

Dr. Franklin - If you think the medical “experts” are corrupt in the field of medical science where human lives, and cause and effect should make bastardized “science” evident and minimal: take a look at the ocean of “environmental” “scientific” “studies” and “research” burying western civilization about environmental “facts” that are little more than hidden agenda “preferences”. You may feel some consolation knowing that your concerns regarding the current state of medical research are but one area of a generally collapsing field of “scientific” research.

The recent rash of shark attacks that severely injured and maimed children playing in shallow Atlantic surf is but one recent example of this phenomenon of “experts” misleading and bamboozling the public.

The “experts” tell us such attacks are “rare”. Four children attacked along our coast in a month is four too many when the cause is dangerous sharks present where children are enjoying the beach and this is not acknowledged as amenable to shark control or management in such places by “experts”. Targeted shark population and area controls through various means where human use is significant are simply unspoken, marginalized or shouted down as inappropriate by “experts”; just like managing or eliminating wolves/grizzly bears/panthers where they seriously distress and impact human activities are forbidden by “experts” partnered with bureaucrats. 
 
This is somewhat similar to gun control “experts” and bureaucrats discouraging “the public” from buying guns or arming themselves while killers that escaped from a “maximum security” prison roam the rural countryside. Such behavior by government and their associated “experts” defies common sense and endangers human lives.

Shark “experts” tell us that last year only 200 or 300 shark attacks occurred worldwide. As if Madagascar or Indonesia or a thousand such remote places know or report such things, or that someone really knows how Abdul or Freddie “disappeared”. Or even that nearby resorts or towns where an attack occurs suppresses such reports like the town fathers in the movie “Jaws” worried about business.

The shark “experts” (like the wolf/grizzly bear/panther/native ecosystem/etc. “experts”) are nearly all either government bureaucrats whose careers depend on “saving” sharks; professors and researchers who have lifelong attachments to sharks and adult needs for making a living from grants and donations; or non-government organization staffs and members that manipulate the general public by creating faux environmental hobgoblins to bamboozle unaffected and mostly urban dwellers into donating money and voting for the steady increase in central government tyranny that rural Americans are increasingly aware of as I write.

Wolf advocates told us wolves are not mortal dangers to children and the elderly; that there have “never been recorded wolf attacks”; that they don’t spread disease; that they don’t destroy ranches and livestock operations; that they don’t destroy big game herds and the hunting that supports so much State conservation programs; that they don’t kill thousands of dogs; that their numbers are minimal; that they should not be managed or controlled; that local people should have no say or rights where wolves roam: these are all lies disguised as “scientific” emanations from the mouths of “experts”. “Experts” that by the way (like the medical/bear/panther/native ecosystem/ etc. “experts”) neither have nor acknowledge any responsibility or liability for the mayhem and destruction that they create for others.

It is the same for grizzly bear advocates that blame the increasing attacks, destruction and deaths as these animals spread into more and more settled landscapes (like the sharks on bathing beaches or wolves and panthers in the settled landscapes of the Lower 48 States) ON THE VICTIM’S behavior or simple human presence instead of the animal that does not belong there. The bear/wolf/panther “experts” are only distinguishable from shark “experts” in one regard: the shark “experts” disguise their advocacy regarding an omnipresent animal; while the wolf/grizzly bear/panther advocates lie and forcibly impose their dangerous and destructive animals in vast areas that were once purposely and at great expense cleansed of these animals from Europe to The Lower 48 States. These latter “experts” that justify and enable these re-introductions have much more to ultimately answer for despite their current celebrity status.

An “expert” should first and foremost be concerned with human welfare, human rights, Constitutional government and the economy that supports all of us. Instead, today’s “expert” is a no-holds-barred advocate for the critter in these instances I just mentioned as well as many others. They think the critter should be more abundant, never killed, never controlled or bothered in any way. They think WE need to be suppressed, prevented from supporting families or living as free men in order for the sharks to occupy the beach; and the wolf, grizzly bear and panthers to roam everywhere and reach densities our forefathers knew all too well bode disaster for men, families and their communities. Look no further than the absence of recommended lethal controls or even the ability of free men to protect themselves, their families, their communities and their livelihoods from these animals that we once hired these “experts” to tell us how to maintain WHILE WE WENT ABOUT OUR LIVES.

When anyone tells you to listen to the “experts”, remember the years of propaganda about the “native” ecosystem. You know the silliness about “they were here first”, “they belong here”, “the ‘native’ ecosystem is best and ‘belongs’ everywhere it can be established”. These are little more than romantic notions camouflaging a host of hidden agendas. Some brie-nibbler on the North Side of Chicago or some young woman (often the daughter of a big donor) transferring from a Congressman’s staff in Washington to a job at The Nature Conservancy or Defenders of Wildlife might think that doing whatever is necessary to forcibly allow wolves/sharks/grizzly bears/panthers galore is wonderful. However, that is NO DIFFERENT than me as a young man wanting more pheasants and ducks for hunting and being willing to manipulate the terrible force of government to force my notions upon others, no matter their cost in human suffering.

Eliminating or minimizing deadly animals where humans live in settled landscapes (be it Minnesota or Tanzania) is no more wrong or inappropriate than forcing everyone to support more game animals for my hunting desires, despite what “experts” say and think. A settled human-oriented landscape and Constitutional freedoms are what have become increasingly “endangered” not the animals that “experts” believe should be allowed to destroy human lives and the liberties that were once responsible for building the most prosperous nation on earth that not only freed and supported others but was a magnet for 200-plus years for people worldwide that hungered for the safety and freedoms that no other nation offered.

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.


Monday, January 27, 2025

Everything is To Be Questioned!

By Rich Kozlovich

De Omnibus Dubitandum, is supposed to be the motto of science. Everything is to be questioned, but while it sounds great...and it is....unfortunately in all of human history anyone who actually lived up to that was persecuted, ergo, it's never been lived up to. People will always be people so self interest, jealousy, envy, resentment, and hate all come into play.  

When Jonas Salk discovered his vaccine for polio the entire world of epidemiology condemned him because he created his vaccine from dead viruses, and all the world knew you could only create vaccines from live viruses.  Well, he was right, and they were wrong, but they never forgave him and when the Sabin vaccine was created that's what they pushed, in spite of the fact some became infected with polio with Sabin's live virus vaccine, and no one ever was infected by the Salk vaccine except when one batch was produced improperly. 

I'm 78 now and I got the Salk vaccine, a series of three shots, painful shots, and I remember it was in the news and talked about by everyone, including my family, but Salk was right.   In recent decades science has not only failed to live up to that motto, it's worked against the very idea of questioning everything, or for that matter anything that interferes with what is now the holy grail of science. Grant money.   Not truth, grant money, and when science becomes rich, it becomes politics. When science become politics, it becomes tyrannical.

Grant money, especially government grant money has made the term scientific integrity an oxymoron, so, since science has abandoned it, I've declared salvage rights and taken it as my personal motto and now I lay claim to it as my property.  When science changes I'll give it back to them.

Okay, I can hear it now.  You're a retired bugman, who the heck do you think you are?   I'm the guy who "questions everything", and I'm the guy that keeps being right.  Let's take a stroll through time and go over the three greatest scientific frauds ever perpetrated on mankind.

COVID:

>
uesday, December 23, 2014How Many Constitute 97%?   Remember when that was the daily meme from the media and the green activist?  It was all fraudulent and they knew it was fraudulent.  So, if the bugman could see this so clearly, how could all these highly educated and prominent people not see it?

Shall Every Knee Bow:   

"Darwin’s theories are not, in the modern phrase, settled science. They aren’t even unsettled science. They are educated guesses at best. To be science, Wolfe reminds us, “There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Has anyone observed the phenomenon — in this case, Evolution — as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution… well… no… no… no… no… and no.”' - Larry Thornberry on Tom Wolfe's, Kingdom of Speech

Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything were told has a historical foundation and context.  Everything were told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality.  If what's present to us fails in either category, it's wrong.  All that's left to do is develop the intellectual response to explain why it's wrong.  

  • Politicizing Science - A recent article in Nature lamented Trump's policy decisions to cut funding for specific government organizations and his call for investigations into studies laden with gender-based language. The scientific elite found these initiatives so unacceptable that some scientists are now threatening to leave the United States -- an act they frame as a protest............pushes for centralization imply that policy should be managed by government on the pretense of "science" making it easier to sideline dissenting voices. History is replete with examples of state-backed intellectuals failing disastrously, from Lysenko's pseudoscientific agriculture policies and Mao's Great Leap Forward, which serve as stark reminders of the dangers of state enforced science. Government shortcomings are not isolated incidents; they are systemic, impacting entire populations. Such examples underscore why science should inform political decisions, not dictate them.........Nature's aversion to these principles reveals that its priorities lean more toward political activism than genuine scientific advancement.


Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Fixing the Issue of Climate

By Rich Kozlovich 

On July 30, 2024 E. Calvin Beisner  posted this article, How NOAA Climate Catastrophists Mislead saying:

By now practically everyone who follows news and commentary about climate change has seen graphs of global warming over the past century or more. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produced this one in 2017, covering 1880–2016. 

He went on to say, "the chart under question was "utterly indefensible".

If you spend much time at all on social media sites on which people often post text or pictures meant to make points about controversial issues, you’re bound to have seen “fact checks” stating that a post conveyed “false or misleading information” because it was “missing context.” (That’s a judgment that’s often subjective and driven by the “fact checker’s” ideology, but we can ignore that for now.) What you now know is that, when it comes to “missing context” about climate change, official government agencies can be among the worst offenders, not just on social media but also on agency websites -- from which their products, like the NOAA graph evaluated here, regularly make their way into scientific journals and mainstream media.

So, what's to be done, since it was known from very early on all this global warming was a load of claptrap and a massive scientific fraud, and those promoting it were deliberately fraudulent. 

First, stop the money flowing to the academics and Lysenkoist scientists.  Overnight the climate problem will disappear like fog in sunlight. 

Stop the vast waste of public money funding stupid alternative energy schemes, start drilling, building power plants with traditional energy sources, repeal laws that allow environmentalists to tie up any of that for years via lawsuits, and energy independence will follow.

All of these people who’ve taken public money in any form need to be investigated for fraud, found guilty, fined and sent to prison. Criminalize and sue each and every one of the green movement organizations, force them to expose their funding, and go after those who fund them, and put some of them in jail, and overnight there will be a miracle.  The world will be healed and the climate will be just fine.


Friday, June 21, 2024

C.S. Lewis: When science becomes magic, Parts One and Two

C.S. Lewis: When science becomes magic, Part 1 

 "The new oligarchy must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists until in the end the politicians become merely the scientists' puppets." – C. S. Lewis, "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" (1958)

By Ellis Washington, Published August 23, 2013

 Legendary scholar, writer and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) more than a half century ago, warned about how science (a good thing) could be systematically perverted to attack religion, deconstruct law and destroy human freedom (a bad thing). In this essential documentary, "The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism," noted scholars analyze Lewis' prophetic warnings about the political corruption of science (scientism) or the efforts to use the scientific method to explain, control, enslave every part of human life and how Lewis' predictions are essential for us today.

 Historically, the first half of the 20th century was defined by almost incessant wars and the rise of fascist dictators who in less than 50 years caused more genocide than the history of mankind up to 1900. Nevertheless, we were warned by three prophetic writers about the evil side of unbridled scientific and utopian technological progress: 1) G.K. Chesterton, "Eugenics and other evils"; 2) George Orwell, "1984"; and 3) C.S. Lewis' "Abolition of Man." C.S. Lewis possessed a passionate interest in the emergent power of scientism – the fascist technique of perverting the methods of science to define, manipulate and dominate every aspect of human existence...............

C.S. Lewis: When science becomes magic, Part 2.

"I dread government in the name of science; that is how tyrannies come in." C.S. Lewis:

Conventional thinking by the progressive left treats science as something innovative, original and modern. For C.S. Lewis, however, science was more closely related to ancient magic. Lewis characterized science and magic as analogous, emphasizing three different ways science and magic are similar: 1) Science/magic as the ability to function as religion demanding absolute obedience, devotion and worship; 2) Science/magic as credulity commands groupthink and ironically promotes a lack of skepticism; and 3) Science/magic as power over the world in order to dominate society and triumph over nature and the universe.

Science as religion

Science has the capacity to induce worship to the same degree as any religion; her prophets are scientists and professors, their decrees infallible! Indeed, doesn’t a magical view of the world beguile one with a sense of awe that surely life is more than our humdrum daily lives? This grandeur of the universe gives us a sense of meaning and purpose that transcends the physical world, entering the realm of the metaphysical world. Even for those people who aren’t religious, this magical view of the world can in fact be more compelling, because science-as-religion substitutes God (religion) for scientism (magic, politics). Therefore, in reality, since Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” (1859), modern science has indeed devolved into a pseudo-religion; a racist, diabolical cult and a servile slave to socialist politics and government funding..............

My Take - As further evidence of the validity of the view of this author, this appeared on by Steven Hayward as the Thought for the Day, quoting Political philosopher Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012), writing in 1964, with prescient thoughts for our Age of COVID Authoritarianism (among other “scientisms”) saying:

A dogmatic belief in science is contrary to the principle of science itself; yet philosophy, not science, has appealed to the rational prohibition against closing of investigation, in the precise issue of the authoritativeness of science. Affected as we are by the tremendous prestige of science, we are well reminded that the power of science is a metaphorical expression for the power of man and that knowledge about man thus in a most important sense overrides the truth possessed by man about non-human things. For the power of man is a power to procure human good or ill; and as freedom undirected by reason is called license, so power undirected by human reasoning about human good or ill is tyranny or folly, or, most probably, both.

 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Response to Have I Ever Told You About Preconceptual Science?

By Rich Kozlovich

Yesterday I started the new week with this article, Have I Ever Told You About Preconceptual Science? and apparently some people liked it and I got a response from an old friend I really thought was worth publishing, and, here it is.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: We have the best government money can buy, and Will Rogers: We have the best politicians money can buy. 

We have the best scientists money can buy. 

Money is merely a medium of exchange that facilitates trading the product of one's effort to acquire the products of others efforts. Before the development of money, barter was the medium of exchange, which meant you had to find a producer of what you wanted who, coincidentally, wanted what you had produced. A very time consuming process. Money is just facilitated barter by making it more more efficient. 

Money isn't the root of all evil. That's a Biblical misquote. It's the love of money that's the root of all evil, and that's the actual quote, and love of money does have a strong potential to corrupt unethical people. 

Some people who have power; politicians, government employees, private sector employees, religious leaders have all been corrupted at times. One part of the problem is the mountains of grant money dispensed by the Federal Government. There's an old joke. Ask an elementary school teacher how much is two plus two. 

  • Why, four, of course. 
  • A scientist, why 4.0 times ten to the zero power. 
  • A statistician, 95% certainty it's between 3.95 and 4.05. 
  • A government grant researcher....... whaddaya want it to be

He who pays the piper, calls the tune. The other side of the problem is the lack of ethics and a lack of dedication to discovering the truth.

We commonly hear the term "My Truth." That expression is used by people who will not relentlessly pursue the truth, but ethically compromised people who want to believe something so badly they will ignore facts that do not confirm "their truth." As such, they are not scientists, but charlatans, with no dedication to discovering the truth. 

These people are dishonest reprobates who have no useful place in the real world. They are the liars and knaves who inhabit our world. 

He does  have a way with words, I hope you enjoyed it.
 

 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Have I Ever Told You About Preconceptual Science?

By Rich Kozlovich
 
My now passed friend Dr. Jay Lehr was at Princeton when Einstein was there, and he told me when Einstein first came to Princeton he delivered a series of lectures, and I think it was seven, but five for sure.  He said at the first couple of those lectures you couldn't buy or steal a seat in that room it was so packed, but by the last lecture there were plenty of seats.  
 
I was a bit surprised and asked why.  He said a lot of these people, many of whom were among the smartest people in the world, didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and clearly they didn't dare suggest is was Einstein who didn't know what he was talking about.  Can you imagine what that must have done to their egos?
 
Over the course of my almost 78 years respect for science has gone from the top of Mt. Everest to the toilet, and for good reason.   During and right after WWII science exposed the world to the atom bomb, sputnik, men to the moon, and amazing medical advances at disease prevention.  And as a result some scientist could look up from his microscope, or turn from his blackboard with all sorts of gibberish only they and their peers understood, and mumble out incomprehensible babble almost no one would understand, but everyone would be sure to believe.   And it might be true, and it might not.
 
As my friend Mike Shaw noted:   
 
Science, once indistinguishable from a search for truth—has become fatally corrupted by academia in a rapacious search for dollars.
 
With all the scientific jargon, and arrogant ivory tower isolation, we just didn't know any better, but time and truth are on the same side, and before now we just didn't know scientific integrity has always been a serious issue.
 
Evolution was at the heart of much of it, and was the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, until global warming, and this fraudulent coronavirus pandemic, and worse yet, the shots they forced on much of humanity they fraudulently called "vaccines".  The negative health consequences as a result of these vaccination mandates of are world wide, and will continue for decades.
 
Let's try and get this once and for all. Government grant money has made
 

Nothing has changed, and in point of fact it's getting worse, and will get far worse in the coming years because now any nitwit, or group of nitwits with computers and a "twitter" account can force science to reject anything they don't like. Nitwits are now part of the peer review process.  The article about the study in question went on to say:

On January 4th, the paper "Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average," was accepted to the journal. That same day, the abstract was published with the notice that the "final, formatted version of the article will be published soon".

Apparently the average IQ for college undergraduates has dropped, and a lot from "around 120 to 102, just slightly above the average of 100."  Let's  not delude ourselves, that's huge, and apparently it's true.  The authors went on to point out the ranks attending college is no longer from the higher IQ members of society, and as a result, "academic standards and curricula might have to be adjusted."  After what we've seen at Harvard, does anyone doubt that?

Well, this set up a fire storm of protest because they really didn't like the author's "tone".  It was demeaning, and lacked sensitivity, and criticized the peer reviewers for not finding fault with their paper, including the Frontiers in Psychology handling editor.  

The editor  of that journal, Eddy Davelaar, overrode all that and attempted to refute the evidence presented, and he did so....... with his opinions.......and has refused to respond to challenges over his actions and his opinions.  

But none of that changes the fact these young academics are dumber than ever, and are no longer required to perform mentally challenging tasks.  Academia is more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion than it is with honest education, that teaches critical thinking, versus Critical Race Theory.

Diversity without accomplishment is philosophy without form and incompetence without consequence.  Unfortunately, as with all these schemes, humanity pays the penalty, and in the future the consequences are going to be dramatic.  Negatively dramatic.  

One more thing, this whole Preconceptual claptrap mentality doesn't just apply to science.  It works for economics also. 

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Blast From the Past: Scientific Integrity is an Oxymoron

By Rich Kozlovich

I originally posted this on Thursday, December 15, 2011, titled, "Greenism: The Science of Smoke and Mirrors", saying:

 As I have said, my primary theme for this week is the idea that environmentalism has made scientific integrity an oxymoron!  The goal of the green movement is to get their 'truth' out.   No matter how many lies they have to tell.  The link would not work to the information below, but the video does.  RK

"Enviromental Scientist Caught On Video Faking Data - Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she's the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.  Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She's also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light as a result of a lawsuit.........  As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary called "Crude" that show Donziger and Maest colluding ignore their own findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims. Watch this:" 

 

"...Of course when you're endeavoring to pull off a multi-billion dollar legal heist in a banana republic you don't stop at just inventing damages; you stack the deck on the judicial side as well, since that just requires a little "donation."'

"What Chevron has been able to show from the out takes and records obtained is the Maest and her firm drafted substantial portions of the report of the independent expert, Richard Cabrera, who they allege Donziger was instrumental in getting appointed to do the court order study of the alleged environmental damage. Sounds like a criminal enterprise to extort, right? That's what Chevron thinks, and it's why they're suing under RICO."

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Meet the New Dark Age

November 24, 2023 By Mark C. Ross  

Not quite the same as the old Dark Age. The old Dark Age happened when the corporate governmental structure of Rome collapsed, allowing hordes of tribal heathens to overrun what had been the empire’s domain. Today’s Dark Age is instead happening because modern governments continue to become ever more powerfully intrusive into what used to be private affairs, using their assumed authority to enforce some sort of contrived orthodoxy and thus moving towards politicizing just about everything.

This is particularly obvious in the various fields of science. Having previously been the means by which civilization crawled out from the old Dark Age, science today is festooned with corruption. Back when it was tasked with the objective process of unraveling the mysteries of our world, science flourished. Nowadays science is largely in the business of acquiring politically controlled government grants. Exploiting various sexy fields of study to provide politically useful data and conclusions -- even if their accuracy is suspect -- is the key to professional success. Weather and climate are obviously at the top of the list for this kind of work. In spite of all this, there still are some non-governmental interests that manage to privately fund research, mostly to develop profitable and patentable innovations… much as in the past..............To Read More...

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Another Nail In the Global Warming Coffin

October 22, 2023 by John Hinderaker

Statistics Norway, the government agency that produces official statistics for that country, released a report last month titled “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” The report concludes:

[T]he results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.

The report looks at the last 400,000+ years of Earth’s climate history:.............To Read More....

The Climate is Indeed Changing – Grab a Warm Jacket - October 31, 2023 By Brian C. Joondeph -  Over the past few years, we have been lectured to by professed scientists to “follow the science,” echoed by the corporate media that often sees financial gain in following particular views of science.  For example, Pfizer is alleged to sponsor 15 television news shows, a sure fire way to get their version of “the science” (and their products) out to the masses............Or Steve Kirsch’s recent unsettling analysis, “The data is clear and consistent. The COVID vaccine killed 3.5X as many people as the COVID virus.”\  What are other examples of science morphing into propaganda? How about global warming, a.k.a. climate change?...........

Thailand’s tiger turnaround contradicts climate fearmongering - October 31, 2023 By Vijay Jayaraj - Thailand’s protected forest areas are home to the Indochinese tiger, known by its biological name Panthera tigris corbetti. Recent population numbers suggest that the tiger is making a comeback. Tiger populations in two of Thailand’s wildlife sanctuaries grew from 42 in 2012 to about 100 in 2022. The resurgence is one more conservation success story that defies the climate-obsessed mainstream media's doomsday narrative, which has been blaming anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for real and fabricated declines in animal numbers and even outright extinctions.,,,,,,,,,,,, 

 Another day, another climate ‘tipping point’  - October 31, 2023 By Jack Hellner - Dozens of scientists say we have hit the tipping point… again. It is amazing how often we’ve hit this tipping point, yet things don’t seem to be as dire as “they” predicted. From CNN via Yahoo News:

Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries.

Then, former climate scientist at NASA James Hansen said it is far worse than he originally anticipated in 1988:............

Friday, October 27, 2023

Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”? Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more. Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society.

But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not.

I had two important posts on this subject back in 2021: one from January 2, titled “Causation Of Climate Change, And The Scientific Method,” and the other from October 28, titled “‘The Climate Is Changing And Human Activities Are The Cause’: How, Exactly, Do We Know That?” Those posts covered the basics of how causation is generally established under the scientific method. Those posts also reviewed certain articles published at the time that gave good reasons to doubt the truth of the proposition that human greenhouse gas emissions are a main driver of significant climate change. Go to those posts for discussions of and links to the 2020/21 articles that I reviewed at the time.

The reason for today’s post is that a couple of important new articles have come to my attention that further make clear that the proposition that human activities, particularly “greenhouse gas” emissions, are causing significant climate change has not been proved and, based on existing data, cannot be proved. I’ll provide links and summaries, and let you draw your own conclusions as to the significance of these new articles.

But before that, let’s review one more time the basics of how causation is extablished under the scientific method. This is from my January 2, 2021 post:

We start with the basic maxim that “correlation does not prove causation.” Instead, causation is established by disproof of all relevant alternative (“null”) hypotheses. Everybody knows how this works from drug testing. We can’t prove that drug A cures disease X by administering drug A a thousand times and observing that disease X almost always goes away. Disease X might have gone away for other reasons, or on its own. Even if we administer drug A a million times, and disease X almost always goes away, we have only proved correlation, not causation. To prove causation, we must disprove the null hypothesis by testing drug A against a placebo. The placebo represents the null hypothesis that something else (call it “natural factors”) is curing disease X. When drug A is significantly more effective at curing disease X than the placebo, then we have disproved the null hypothesis, and established, at least provisionally, the effectiveness of drug A.

And yet somehow these principles don’t apply in the field of climate science. Instead, all the inside clique of the climate science community have decided to agree that the new way to prove causation is to show really, really good correlation with the preferred hypothesis, in which case subjecting the proposition at issue to a test of invalidation against a null hypothesis can be dispensed with. The climate science community calls its system for establishing causation “detection and attribution” studies. The basic idea is to come up with a model (i.e., a hypothesis) that predicts global warming based on increased greenhouse gases, and then collect data that show a very close match between what the model predicted and the data. Correlation with the model predictions is the claimed proof of causation. There are hundreds of such studies in the climate literature. My January 2, 2021 post linked to a classic of the genre, a 2018 IPCC-sponsored article written by a collection of some 36 co-authors who constitute a virtual “who’s who” of the insiders of the climate science cult (e.g., Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Tom Wigley, Ben Santer, etc., etc., etc.). The title is “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.” Key quote:

There is a wide range of evidence of qualitative consistencies between observed climate changes and model responses to anthropogenic forcing, including global warming, increasing land-ocean temperature contrast, diminishing Arctic sea-ice extent, glacial retreat and increases in precip- itation in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes.

Just get yourself enough “qualitative consistencies” with your hypothesis and proof of causation will be yours!

The authors of the two new papers beg to differ. First, we have a paper by John Dagsvik and Sigmund Moen of Statistics Norway, dated September 2023, titled “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” This paper is particularly significant because it has been issued by a governmental agency — the government statistical agencies being otherwise all in lockstep in support of the human-caused global warming narrative. Excerpt from the Dagsvik and Moen paper (page 5):

At present, there is apparently a high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made). This is certainly the impression conveyed by the mass media. For non-experts, it is very difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the research in this field, and it is almost impossible to obtain an overview and understanding of the scientific basis for such a consensus (Koonin, 2021, Curry, 2023). By looking at these issues in more detail, this article reviews past observed and reconstructed temperature data as well as properties and tests of the global climate models (GCMs). Moreover, we conduct statistical analyses of observed and reconstructed temperature series and test whether the recent fluctuation in temperatures differs systematically from previous temperature cycles, due possibly to emission of greenhouse gases.

And the conclusion of Dagsvik and Moen (from the abstract):

[W]e find, . . . that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.

A good deal of the discussion in Dagsvik and Moen covers various deficiencies and inadequacies of the existing temperature data series — inadequacies that make it impossible to draw conclusions from existing data about causation of temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions. Here is one comment on the data from page 10 that I find particularly significant:

For all three surface air temperature records, but especially NCDC and GISS, administrative changes to anomaly values are quite often introduced, even for observations several years back in time. Some changes may be due to the delayed reductions of stations or addition of new station data, while others probably have their origin in a change of technique to calculate average values. It is impossible to evaluate the validity of such administrative changes for an outside user of these records.

For more than you will ever want to know on that subject, see my thirty part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Bureaucrats altering the data to support their preferred narrative have rendered the data completely useless for any legitimate public policy purpose.

A second important new paper is from Antonis Christofides and co-authors dated September 26, 2023. They introduce their paper with a long post of that date at Climate, Etc. titled “Causality and Climate.” The part of the full technical paper relating to the climate science application can be found at this link. If you go to that last link and try to read through it, you will find technical math that will quickly have your head swimming, even if you are a quasi math geek like myself. However, their fundamental point as to causality in climate science is not very complicated: if you plot recent temperature increases against increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, it’s the temperature increases that come first, and the CO2 increases follow. Thus, if there is causality, it must be that the temperature increase is causing the CO2 increase, rather than the other way around.

Here is the key chart from the post at Climate, Etc.. The authors present it as a quiz: look at the chart, and the explanations, and without any further mathematical analysis, draw a conclusion as to the direction of causation:

From the technical paper:

[T]he surprising finding [is] that, while in general the causal relationship of atmospheric T and CO2 concentration, as obtained by proxy data, appears to be of hen-or- egg type with principal direction 𝑇 → [CO2], in the recent decades the more accurate modern data support a conclusion that this principal direction has become exclusive. In other words, it is the increase of temperature that caused increased CO2 concentration. Though this conclusion may sound counterintuitive at first glance, because it contradicts common perception (and for this reason we have assessed the case with an alternative parametric methodology in the Supplementary Information, section SI2.4, with results confirming those presented here), in fact it is reasonable. The temperature increase began at the end of the Little Ice Period, in the early 19th century, when human CO2 emissions were negligible; hence other factors, such as the solar activity (measured by sunspot numbers), as well as internal long-range mechanisms of the complex climatic systems had to play their roles.

I would make this comment as to both the Sagsvik and Christofides work: They both are using the only available data, which is data emanating from government sources that have been tampered with and altered. However, the important point is that even that data would appear to refute, and certainly does not prove, the endlessly repeated claims of impending climate doom from human CO2 emissions.

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Science’s inviolability just took another hit

October 16, 2023 By Andrea Widburg

Over the years, we’ve seen that much of today’s “science” is corrupt. Climate “science” for example, is often climate cultism, with scientists retrofitting data to reach predetermined conclusions. When it came to COVID and the vaccine, profit seemed to be the main driver, along with some scary WEF theories, including some people believing that the real purpose behind the dishonest rush to force vaccines on people is tied to “transhumanism” and depopulation, both of which are values the WEF crowd promotes. Now, there’s even more evidence about the utter unreliability of modern science.

Science is not a god. It is, instead, an approach to processing and analyzing data. In a perfect world, one has a theory to which one applies a very strict methodology and, from that, achieves a reliable result. Livescience offers as good an explanation as any:........To Read More....

My Take - I commented on that post, and I think that comment is worth repeating here: 

 I, and a lot of friends of mine, have been writing about this since the beginning of this green neo-pagan pseudo-religious craze. The nature worshiping Druids of ancient Germania would have been on board with it, since both require human sacrifice.

The motto of science is supposed to be De Omnibus Dubitandum. "Everything is to be questioned"....and it's not. The holy grail of science is no longer truth, it's grant money, especially government grant money, and government grant money is more often than not predicated on proving preconceived notions to implement predetermined polices allowing for draconian tyrannical control over humanity, and the EPA is up to their eyeballs in that corruption.

My good friend Dr. Jay Lehr, who recently passed, and one of the founders of EPA said the EPA hasn't done anything worthwhile since 1980 and needs to be dismantled. Here's a 2011 interview with Jay I arranged for our Ohio Pest Management Association newsletter.  Jay put together a five year plan on how to  do it.  I think if Trump had been re-elected this might have gone forward as the White House called him to say the President decided to take his advice and abandon the Paris Treaty.

In my youth the Reader's Digest used to run a piece called "My most Unforgettable Character". I've had an interesting life, but Jay was the most interesting person I've met in my 77 years.  For those interested, here's my Jay Lehr file. 

Monday, October 16, 2023

Era of ‘Unquestioned and Unchallenged’ Climate Change Claims Is Over

New studies undercut the ‘scientifically empty’ warming narrative, says astrophysicist and aerospace engineer.

By Alex Newman Oct 11, 2023

Leading voices in the climate community are in an uproar as their warming hypothesis comes under fresh assault by new scientific papers.  The authors of the papers are being attacked and say that “activist scientists” threatened by the new findings are “aggressively conducting an orchestrated disinformation campaign to discredit the papers and the scientific reputation of the authors.”  Indeed, from insults on social media and furious blog posts to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests demanding emails from a journal editor and federal scientist, the controversy is getting heated.  Several scientists who spoke with The Epoch Times expressed shock at the tactics used against those whose latest research is casting renewed doubts on the official climate narrative........
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2023/10/11/id5507844-5.jpg?_gl=1*1asr0uc*_gcl_au*MTg0NTYzNjI0Mi4xNjk2NzUzNTk2
 “Of course the climate cult will be dismissive of any information—no matter how scientifically correct—that is politically incorrect," he told The Epoch Times, noting that the new findings made important and valid points. The reason that climate activists are so upset is that the findings of the new papers—a trio of peer-reviewed studies by astrophysicist Willie Soon and dozens of other scientists from around the world—are casting further doubt on the narrative of man-made global warming.  The papers are also fueling even more public skepticism about the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which the authors say ignores the facts as well as climate science more generally.........To Read More....

Thursday, September 7, 2023

To Be Green is to Be Irrational, Misanthropic, and Morally Defective, Part II

By Rich Kozlovich

The world has been told for decades we must go green or we're doomed.  We don't need 'fossil' fuels, we can provide all humanities needs by moving to alternative energy sources.  There's only one problem.  It's a lie, and all in support of the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetuated on humanity. Anthropogenic Global Warming. 

These next articles demonstrate one lie after another, and one green boondoggle after another.  Boondoggles and insane polices the taxpayers are funding, and are expected to continue to fund.  There are two things the left, and especially the green left excel at.  Being wrong and failing to deliver, and they fail to deliver massively.  And the reason they're always wrong, and always fail is because everything they promote is predicated on lies.  Lies of commission and lie of omission.  

Normally I wouldn't care except they've pushed this on to humanity and there are serious consequences for them being wrong, and those consequences result in serious penalties to humanity and the environment.  

What we're seeing are deranged people, many are wealthy, many are in powerful positions promoting insane policies that even the average guy on the street can see are insane.  Why?  That's the 64 thousand question.  But it's clear all their schemes will ultimately lead to tyranny, leading to dystopia for humanity.  To be as delusional as they are, one has to think there's something seriously wrong with their minds.  In short, they're all certifiable. 

As Afghanistan collapsed, Pentagon had greenie better things to do report - August 31, 2023 By Monica Showalter - So when they should have been focusing on the Afghanistan withdrawal, they were locked up in committee meetings and reading bureaucratic paperwork about the importance of inserting the green agenda climate considerations into every decision the military made. This sounds like bad satire. The Pentagon has one job: To win wars. The only "war" they were paying attention to for vast stretches of time as the world looked on in horror at the shambles of the U.S. military pullout was the green agenda.  Anybody over there notice the junk priorities?..........

Cult Failure: Green Energy Companies Want to Renegotiate Their Contracts With Blue State as Costs Eat Into Profits - A number of green energy companies and advocacy groups have petitioned the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC) to renegotiate contracts with state utilities as rising costs could threaten the viability of numerous projects, according to UtilityDive. The requests to increase prices in established offshore wind and other green energy contracts in New York could bump up residential electricity rates by 2.5% and 1.5%, respectively, or a cumulative $4.67 per month, according to New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). “New York has outlined ambitious targets for clean energy generation and transmission, and the projects that have sought these modifications to their contracts are crucial parts of those targets. If these projects are not able to move forward, yes, it would endanger the goals New York has established,” Anne Reynolds, executive director of Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACENY), told the Daily Caller News Foundation..........

Western economies wither at the altar of climate lies -  Under President Trump, the U.S. economy thrived. In 2023, that same economy—together with those of most European countries—is being destroyed by a campaign of climate lies. One of the biggest attempts at disinformation ever perpetrated is that man-made global warming is an existential threat. We can thank opportunists like Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Greta Thunberg for spreading the hysteria that the ice will melt, the oceans will rise, and we will all die from heat exhaustion. Contrary to their frightening warnings, the glaciers have not melted, and the world has not ended. The global warming hoax is the result of faulty science, endorsed by inept bureaucrats at the UN, the WEF, the EU, and the Biden administration. Government policy in the U.S., and most of Europe, is based on the delusion that human beings can control the climate. This is pure nonsense that is contradicted by the facts..............

Green pusher Michael Mann ramps up the rhetoric against the people on MSNBC segment By Jack Hellner MSNBC continued its campaign against average Americans by bringing on Michael Mann, a well-known “green” pusher, who blamed Republicans for Hurricane Idalia, because we won’t sign our own death warrants and go along with the rapid destruction of industries that use oil, coal, and natural gas. To summarize what Mann said: warming water caused the storm to be more severe, and severe storms cost more, in terms of life and property. What you don’t see is any scientific data that shows a direct link between our consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas and temperatures, because temperatures have fluctuated while consumption of these natural resources has skyrocketed. Basically, this is a propaganda piece pushing a book and the radical green agenda................

The Key to Understanding the Global Warming Fraud - As vice president, Al Gore led the negotiations to establish the U.N. Kyoto Protocol in 1998.  The Kyoto Protocol was a "climate treaty" ostensibly designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the signatories during the period 2005–2012 to a level equivalent to 95% of each country's 1990 emissions.  While it did not introduce any new scientific means to reduce CO2 emissions (worldwide CO2 emissions grew by 32% during the period), the Kyoto Protocol introduced a novel economic concept: the trading of carbon credits and offsets. At first, the concept of trading carbon credits was straightforward; it was known as "cap and trade."  Each country was allocated a level of carbon emissions each year by the signatories to the agreement based on an annual targeted reduction in carbon emissions to reach the goal.  If a country or emitter expected to exceed its cap, it could "trade" or buy unused carbon credits from other countries that expected to emit less than their cap.  However, if a country failed to meet its emissions target and did not purchase carbon credits, the protocol required it to make up the difference in the second commitment period, with an additional 30% penalty...............

New Discoveries In Climate Science - Climate science is a wild and woolly multi-disciplinary field in which virtually every proposition is controversial. It is only the politics that is settled; the science is up for grabs. A recent study in Climate illustrates the point, not by introducing new concepts but by measuring the obvious:  A new study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Climate, by 37 researchers from 18 countries suggests that current estimates of global warming are contaminated by urban warming biases.  It is well-known that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside...........There is no question that the Urban Heat Island Effect exists. The question is, how much does it skew current temperature readings in an upward direction?...........The study also found that the IPCC’s chosen estimate of solar activity appeared to have prematurely ruled out a substantial role for the Sun in the observed warming........

Zero Carbon Is a Whale-Killer - John D. Rockefeller destroyed the whaling industry by replacing whale oil with Earth's natural compost: refined oil.  Whale oil had many uses, pharmaceutical and industrial, including lubricants for nearly all machines and trains.  And it was the age of machines.  The whaling ships of Nantucket were slow.  Their primary prey were gray whales who do not navigate by echolocation, like many other whales.  They follow the contour of coastlines, and they swim only about 3–6 mph.  Modern ships move much faster, and they will have technology to find and kill the faster and more acrobatic whales, including blue whales and humpbacks.  Using modern technology, they can find and kill them where they feed, in the Bering Sea...........
 
In order to save the whales, we must kill the whales - September 7, 2023 By Ben Bartee - That's how The Science™ works, boys and girls.  Respect it, or be made to answer to the Department of Homeland Security, bigot. If you live on the East Coast of the U.S., chances are you've seen and/or heard tell of the increasing-in-frequency local news reports on the dead-whale-washing-up-on-shore phenomenon. Via Michael Shellenberger: "A new documentary, 'ThrowThat's how The Science (TM) works, boys and girls.............Anyway, what's a few thousand dead whales when a totalitarian social control agenda is on the line?  You want to make a climate change omelet, you're gonna have to break some marine mammal eggs.......
 
The hidden energy crisis -  September 4, 2023 America is wrestling with the worst energy crisis in its history, a period of high prices and limited supply. According to the Brookings Institution, in 2022, the average U.S. residential retail electricity price was 15.12 cents/kWh, an 11% increase from 13.66 cents/kWh in 2021. In the first three months of 2023, the average U.S. residential monthly electricity bill was $133, or 5% higher than for the same time in 2022. There is confusion with savings or cost expectation of solar and wind conversion, also government decisions have impacted the natural gas and energy supply. While electric vehicles are a much-touted solution for replacing oil, gasoline or diesel fuel contains 40 times the energy as a state-of-the-art battery. Questionable efforts are being made by utilities and government leadership to address our energy future. Critical solutions have been avoided and hidden. Fossil-fuel plants are closing faster than green alternatives can replace them. Producers of oil and gas can't keep up with the confusion in supply. Fantasy thinking has taken hold of President Biden and Democrat leaders. Progressives and their media followers are guilty of denial concerning the reality of how to solve a potential climate/energy crisis.
 
Bill Gates and others behind massive deforestation scheme, for ‘global warming’ of course - We're being held hostage by "green" megalomaniacs with man boobs and CIA-linked eco-terrorists.As reported by Joshua Philipp, investigative reporter and host of the Epoch TV's Crossroads program, Bill Gates's company Breakthrough Energy Ventures is a main player behind a new deforestation scheme.  Per Philipp, Gates and "other investors" have contributed $6.6 million in a "stealth effort" to a California startup called Kodama Systems, which is offering a "novel" approach to the net zero agenda.Wondering who those "other investors" might be?  Well, for one, a woman named Jackie Kossman.  Wondering who those "other investors" might be?  Well, for one, a woman named Jackie Kossman.  Kossman is a partner at Congruent Ventures, a San Francisco–based investment firm, and according to her company bio, she previously worked for In-Q-Tel (the venture capital firm of U.S. government intelligence agencies, notably the CIA).So what does Kodama Systems have in mind?  Well, the company is launching efforts to deforest about seventy million acres, or around 110,000 square miles of trees, and then bury the biomass, all with the help of the U.S. Forest Service.............
 
Western economies wither at the altar of climate lies - Under President Trump, the U.S. economy thrived. In 2023, that same economy—together with those of most European countries—is being destroyed by a campaign of climate lies. One of the biggest attempts at disinformation ever perpetrated is that man-made global warming is an existential threat. We can thank opportunists like Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Greta Thunberg for spreading the hysteria that the ice will melt, the oceans will rise, and we will all die from heat exhaustion. Contrary to their frightening warnings, the glaciers have not melted, and the world has not ended. The global warming hoax is the result of faulty science, endorsed by inept bureaucrats at the UN, the WEF, the EU, and the Biden administration. Government policy in the U.S., and most of Europe, is based on the delusion that human beings can control the climate. This is pure nonsense that is contradicted by the facts..........

Bloomberg Falsely Says Climate Change Is Harming Crop Production, Reality Says Otherwise - A recent post at Bloomberg, titled “Climate Change Is Helping Pests and Diseases Destroy Our Food,” claims that recent crop shortages are due to increases in pest infestations and disease because of climate change. This is false for multiple reasons. First, the crops listed are not seeing substantial declines outside of particular production regions, which is to be expected from agriculture some years. Bloomberg contributor Mumbi Gitau writes that pests and disease “are exacerbating crop shortages that have sent prices for goods like cocoa, olive oil, and orange juice soaring.” Gitau also asserts that these shortages will “become even more prevalent as extreme weather events multiply.” To be clear data show that extreme weather events are not getting more frequent or extreme, even amid the last hundred-plus years of warming. Climate Realism has covered this fact many times, here, here, and here, for just a few examples..................

Electric vehicles plagued by logistical issues, but few mention the elephant(s) in the room - The push to exchange gas for electric in transportation is an idea that has ironically placed the proverbial cart in front of the horse. While the problems of an inadequate power grid, too few charging stations, short range, high costs, long recharging times, and battery fires are real, there are two gigantic issues looming that rival them all. Current state and federal gas-tax regulations siphon off more than $53 billion a year in tax revenue; for reference, about 67 cents from every gallon of gasoline purchased in New York, and around $1.18-per-gallon in California. Those taxes account for more than a quarter of the expense of road and highway costs around the nation.  No such system of taxation exists for electric vehicles. For every ten-percent reduction in gas vehicles being replaced by electric, a resulting decrease of more than $5 billion in tax revenue will occur. Add this to the long list of issues that the rush-to-electric crowd has failed to address........

Pelosi: China Terrible on a Lot of Issues, but We Need Them for Climate Utopia - During portions of an interview with Bloomberg released on Thursday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stated that “we have to find an accommodation” with how the U.S. and China treat each other, and while China is awful on security, the economy, and human rights, “we have a shared planet, and we have to work with the Chinese to save the planet, because they’re now, I think, the biggest emitter, if not us, they’re second, and they are part of the solution in all of this.” But we shouldn’t reward China, but have a “mutual discussion about how we can go forward.”...........

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Caught-Red-Handed’: Scientists Call for Full Retraction of Nature’s Proximal Origin Paper, as Fraud Accusations Mount

“‘Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,’ the authors wrote in February. Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.” ~ Jon Miltimore

  Jon Miltimore – July 31, 2023 @ American Institute for Economic Research

A growing number of people, including prominent scientists, are calling for a full retraction of a high-profile study published in the journal Nature in March 2020 that explored the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The paper, whose authors included immunology and microbiology professor Kristian G. Andersen, declared that evidence clearly showed that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate from a laboratory. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors wrote in February. 

Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely. 

“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors. 

Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.

” …the fact that we are discussing this shows how plausible it is,” Garry said of the lab-leak hypothesis. “We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.  To complicate matters further, new reporting from The Intercept reveals that Anderson had an $8.9 million grant with NIH pending final approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci when the Proximal Origin paper was submitted. 

‘Fraud and Scientific Misconduct’?

The findings have led several prominent figures to accuse the authors of outright deception. Richard H. Ebright, the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, called the paper “scientific fraud.”  “The 2020 ‘Proximal Origin’ paper falsely claimed science showed COVID-19 did not have a lab origin,” tweeted Ebright. “Newly released messages from the authors show they did not believe the conclusions of the paper and show the paper is the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct.” Ebright and Silver are among those pushing a petition urging Nature to retract the article in light of these findings. Among those to sign the petition was Neil Harrison, a professor of anesthesiology and molecular pharmacology at Columbia University. 

“Virologists and their allies have produced a number of papers that purport to show that the virus was of natural origin and that the pandemic began at the Huanan seafood market,” Harrison told The Telegraph. “In fact there is no evidence for either of these conclusions, and the email and Slack messages among the authors show that they knew at the time that this was the case.”

Only ‘Expressing Opinions’?

Dr. Joao Monteiro, chief editor of Nature, has rebuffed calls for a retraction, The Telegraph notes, saying the authors were merely “expressing opinions.”

This claim is dubious at best. From the beginning, the Proximal Origin study was presented as authoritative and scientific. Jeremy Farrar, a British medical researcher and now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), told USA Today that Proximal Origin was the “most important research on the genomic epidemiology of the origins of this virus to date.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking from the White House podium in April 2020, cited the study as evidence that the mutations of the virus were “totally consistent with a jump from a species of an animal to a human.” Fact-check organizations were soon citing the study as proof that COVID-19 “could not have been manipulated.” 

Far from being presented as a handful of scientists “expressing opinions,” the Proximal Origin study was treated as gospel, a dogma that could not even be questioned. This allowed social media companies (working hand-in-hand with government agencies) to censor people who publicly stated what Andersen and his colleagues were saying privately—that it seemed plausible that SARS-CoV-2 came from the laboratory in Wuhan that experimented on coronaviruses and had a checkered safety record.

Indeed, even as media and government officials used the Proximal Origin study to smear people as conspiracy theorists for speculating that COVID-19 might have emerged from the Wuhan lab, a Defense Intelligence Agency study commissioned by the government questioned the study’s scientific rigor.  

“The arguments that Andersen et al. use to support a natural-origin scenario for SARS CoV-2 are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions,” the now-declassified paper concluded. “In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Andersen et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory…” 

Despite the many problems with the study’s findings, Monteiro continues to resist calls for retraction—perhaps because Monteiro himself publicly inferred that the lab leak hypothesis was a conspiracy theory in March, 2020.  Whatever the case, it remains unclear how long Monteiro can resist calls for a retraction in face of overwhelming evidence of scientific misconduct.    “There can be no doubt the Proximal Origin authors consciously and inappropriately downplayed the #COVID19 research-related origin hypothesis and coordinated efforts manipulating media coverage,” said Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration official and a WHO expert advisory committee on human genome editing appointee. 

Power, Accountability, and Impunity 

Why there was such intense pressure to declare that SARS-CoV-2 was of natural origin is obvious today.  The federal government was funding risky coronavirus research at Wuhan Institute of Virology, which would make officials complicit to some degree in a leak of a deadly virus. This is no doubt why the government had an interest in funding the study, which gave them a measure of control over its results. “Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins [then director of the National Institutes of Health] are very happy. Works for me,” Holmes Slacked his colleagues after the pre-print was submitted.   The Proximal Origin paper increasingly looks like a whitewashing job, and some influential people have noticed. 

“This is a huge scandal,” said statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver. “Scientists like @K_G_Andersen believed a lab leak was extremely plausible, if not likely, they concocted a plan to deceive the public about it, and they’ve been caught red-handed.”   Silver is not wrong; yet so far, no one has been held accountable. 

This lack of accountability is concerning, and to understand why it’s worth consulting age-old concepts of power and justice. As FEE’s Dan Sanchez has observed, power is not the mere exertion of unjust force. True power lies in the use of force and the absence of any accountability.   “Systematically getting away with it—or impunity—is where power truly lies,” wrote Sanchez.

In his famous work Republic, Plato showed what raw power looked like. The legendary “Ring of Gyges” did not make one strong. It made one invisible. This did not mean the wearer could do anything he wanted, but it did mean he would never be held accountable for his acts of injustice. 

This is the most frightening part of raw state power. The greatest danger is not that people will act unethically. It’s not even that state actors will commit crimes to serve “a greater good.” The real danger begins when people are not held accountable—even when they are caught “red-handed.”

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.  Get notified of new articles from Jon Miltimore and AIER. SUBSCRIBE