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Another Anti-Science Cabal

14 Comments

Now it’s Alzheimer’s. It is infuriating, and tragic. In nutrition, in climate, and in medicine in general, the peer-review system is so broken, it would be better to just get rid of it entirely.

[Thursday-morning update]

How Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg corrupted climate science.

[Update a while later]

Tuberculosis vaccine found to be effective against Alzheimer’s. It seems, to the degree that it’s effective at all, to be more prophylactic than a cure.

14 thoughts on “Another Anti-Science Cabal”

    1. Regrettably so. Back in the day it was the King’s or Queen’s purse that financed the endeavor through the auspices of the Royal Society or some other favored institution of the crown, regardless of the country.

      Nowadays its the national equivalents of the NSF or NIH or NASA and all the hierarchies therein. It’s been largely Science by Socialism since WWII with a *few* industrial exceptions. It’s a pity no one has done a study of the effectiveness of research funded from a society, institute, administration or foundation vs a dart board.

      1. Even in the absence of an organization, scientists make their own groups and associations because they suffer the same pathologies and behavioral quirks as all the other humans. It goes far beyond in/out group dynamics, but that is one that provides many examples.

        Here is a great one, the story of Ignaz Semmelweis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

        I think the problems will only get worse as divinity of self, hubris, and a lack of understanding about their own humanity continues on the trend they are now on.

        1. The human liabilities you point out is what makes current day Science by Simulation so treacherous. We may have to go a better part of this century in the wild pursuit of dead ends until this gets properly resolved. Let’s just hope we can survive it.

  2. As one peer reviewer wrote about a funding proposal Itzhaki submitted in 2010, “very few [of your] papers have appeared in the most highly regarded journals.”

    “And here I thought research should be judged on its own merits,” Itzhaki said.

    The inability of reviewers to judge research on its own merit is a direct result of colleges graduating students who lack the ability to think critically. They rise to positions of influence more by political savvy than any real contribution to science, then betray their inadequacy through comments such as the peer reviewer’s above. It is something that has always existed, but has come to dominate science (and to an ever-increasing extent, engineering) mostly in recent years.

    I fear for the future of civilization.

  4. I’m 62 and can remember being told when I was a child that “commercial nuclear fusion is 20 years away.” I recall reading that a similar cabal has had a stranglehold on fusion research for over 50 years. That’s why cynics say that commercial fusion is the energy of the future and always will be.

    The same thing happened with low fat diets that were high in carbohydrates. Scientists like to portray an image of rational impartiality but with careers and billions of research dollars on the line, scientists are just as likely to do whatever is necessary to advance themselves as anyone else including outright fraudulent research.

  5. And in archeology. The “Clovis First” narrators of human migration into the north polar American continents across the frozen land bridge has attempted to suppress all competing notions of other or earlier migrants coming to southern coasts, via ocean going vessels.

    It’s also interesting to see the inversion in pale0ntology with regard to the Alverez Hypothesis: that an asteroid impact drove dinosaur extinctions. There were prior notions, and some of those survive, and there are also newer notions that seem to account for both the extinctions and the iridium layer at the extinction boundary that (physicist) Alverez brought to the attention of the paleontologists. But the simplicity of the impact hypothesis has occluded other ideas.

    Group Think and the “Road to Abilene” social dynamic always affects our work.

    1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/

      Atlantic magazine ran one of their rambling articles on Gerta Keller, dinosaur extinction skeptic of the Alvarez Impact Hypothesis.

      She is going great guns with her skepticism on mainstream theories until she gets all Greta Thunberg-ie at the end about how humans are going to become extinct from burning up all of the hydrocarbon fuels.

      OK, a skeptic in one thing doesn’t have to be a skeptic in everything, and believing in the Climate Emergency ties into her belief (yes, I said belief) in massive volcanic eruptions emitting mass amounts of CO2 altering the climate to the detriment of the dinos.

      But for a person who is gung-ho standing up against the Scientific Establishment on the Impact Hypothesis as having hijacked science, is unquestioning acceptance of Climate Change, just a little, wee, tiny bit irony impaired?

  7. I think most professional scientists who have managed to get grants for their research would do rather well at selling used cars.

  8. I can recommend ” The corruption of Real Science” by Bruce Charlton. Available on Amazon. It is worse than you think.

  9. It’s human nature-

    “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
    ― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

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