Jimmy Akin

Final excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research
to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research
in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer
models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make
the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present
structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative
teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a
clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be
just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in
this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by
private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be
pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The
institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular
area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement:
teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many
cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and
those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address
the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our
way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in
global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Earth narrowly avoided an "asteroid" strike Sunday when an "asteroid" whizzed past Earth so close that it went under the orbits of some satellites.

Fortunately, it was tiny (16 feet wide, which makes me wonder whether it should even be classed as an asteroid).

Wouldn’t have hurt us (or so they say).

It was the second-closest such miss on record.

GET THE STORY.

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus

is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science

is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees

that E=mc². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus
is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science
is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees
that E=mc². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we’re
asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?
And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody
lost their minds?

Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they
worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably:
Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all
the horse[manure]? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it
would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for
sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy
source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and
Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.
Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know
its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport,
or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet,
an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, . . . . [COPIOUS EXAMPLES
SNIPPED] . . . None of this would have meant anything to a person in
the year 1900. They wouldn’t know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s
even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the
future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s
thought knows it.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Yesterday I told you Scary Science Story #1, which ended more or less harmlessly because Virus W turned out to be more or less harmless to humans.

After that story, you could breathe a sigh of relief.

Now listen to this one:

1. Chimpanzees are out running around in the wild doing chimpanzee things.
2. Somehow these chimps develop a virus that we will refer to as Virus X.
3. Virus X spreads widely in their population.
4. Humans come and capture some of these chimpanzees.
5. They are then turned over to scientists.
6. The scientists vivisect the chimpanzees to obtain their kidneys.
7. The kidneys are used to culture a vaccine to cure a disease that harms humans: polio.
8. Somewhere in this sequence of events (possibly as far back as step 3 or as far forward as step 10), Virus X mutates into Virus Y.
9. Unbeknownst to the scientists who cultured the vaccine in chimpanzee kidneys, the process they are using does not kill Virus X or Virus Y, neither of which which
   has yet been identified by human science.
10. Virus Y piggybacks on the polio vaccine.
11. The infected vaccine is sprayed into the mouths of thousands of human beings in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).
12. Millions of people in the Congo become infected with Virus Y.
13. Surrounding nations become a region of pandemic Virus Y infections, with the Congo–and specifically the villages where the oral polio vaccine was distrubted–as its epicenter.
14. Virus Y is passed from people in this region to people all over the globe to the point that 80 million people have been infected worldwide.
15. Virus Y does not immediately kill humans, which is why it is able to spread so far.
16. But after about ten years, Virus Y creates Syndrome Z, which is 100% fatal.

The real name of Virus X is Simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV (technically, it’s one strain of SIV).

The real name of Virus Y is Human immunodeficiency virus-1 or HIV-1.

The real name of Syndrome Z is Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS.

The theory that Oral Polio Vaccine was the means by which HIV entered the human population is called the OPV AIDS Hypothesis.

The above story may be true, though it is highly controversial.

This is probably because HIV-1 does kill humans.

Since it does kill humans, the polio vaccine makers are
circling the wagons and impeding investigations of the matter–and
possibly lying about their vaccine cultivation methods in order to
cover themselves. All those are very human reactions.

Some have even been openly dismissive of why the matter should be investigated.

I’ll tell you why the matter needs to be investigated: Because if it’s true then it’s the biggest bloody medical disaster of all time and we need to know about it!

Even if it’s not true, we still have to be on guard against such things, for the case of SV40 (Scary Science Story #1) shows that things like this can happen.

READ WIKIPEDIA’S ENTRY ON THE SUBJECT.

READ AN EARLY ARTICLE THAT POPULARIZED THE OPV AIDS HYPOTHESIS.

READ A WEBSITE THAT CONTAINS THE LATEST ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER-ARGUMENTS.