With allegations that scientists hid their suspicions about the origins of COVID-19 to avoid giving credence to President Trump’s statements, Stephen Green wonders where we’ll ever get the kind of public trust necessary to fight a pandemic.
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38 replies on “Scientists and Politicians: Public Trust Shatters as ‘Experts’ Play Politics with Pandemic”
Who believes these vaccines were developed under Trump?
Science by it’s nature is intended to start from a place of mistrust / skepticism. This is why when someone makes a scientific claim, we ask for all their information and methods and then take the time to perform the experiment ourselves to ensure the truth / accuracy. Only when the ideas been tested many times with the same outcomes do we judge it a “probably true…maybe???” , always keeping a little skepticism incase someone comes along with counter evidence / results.
Anyway do your own research and draw your own conclusions…
If your not sure, just try to Fail Safe.
Scott is spot-on about science. It is a process, not an ideology, person, product, or religion.
I think what Bill said was accurate. About the group average (without being influenced) being spot on.
People used to use their common sense and think things out. I know my grandparents and parents did that. Take time to consider pros/cons, etc. Made up their own minds.
I think the public schools and universities and tech have dumbed down subsequent generations.
Trust in the government, do what you’re told, and don’t ask questions. Hate your country because it’s so unfair, racist, and run by white males who are toxic, we’re all victims, etc.
I learned shortly after I joined the military not to trust the govt. I’ve held out hope since then, only to have it dashed repeatedly.
I hope one day ALL the people will hear the truth about what their govt. has REALLY been doing over its history.
Only then will they realize how corrupt the politicians, lobbyists, big corps, and elites are. They are the root of all that is rotten.
History is not some old, molded info. in a text book. It’s supposed to inform us so as to avoid making the same stupid choices over and over.
Unfortunately, the government has controlled the information and education for far, far too long. Younger generations continue to know less and less about the travesties of our own government because we have allowed the government to control text books and education. Far too few still worship people like Walter Cronkite as the last good journalist, when, in fact, he knew the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was false, yet continued to help LBJ build Viet Nam into the disaster it was. Too few know what our own government did to WWl vets who came to DC begging for their bonuses promised them. Far too few understand the generals we celebrated in WWll were the same ones who destroyed the last generation’s vets. The list goes on and on.
If I had unlimited storage capacity, I would archive every article I read and then, of course, I would need the financial capacity to employ at least a small team to catalogue it for searchability. All this to lead up to saying I read very early in this plandemic that WHO personnel were under tremendous political pressure to change their initial stance on mask wearing. Those stories are gone, as far as I can find, just like the WHO doctor (attractive younger lady) doing the presser about how there was ZERO evidence of children spreading covid, and as a matter of fact, considerable evidence that they had a natural enzymic resistance.
Scientists are great at advancing knowledge. Scientists are not the Priesthood of the Great God Science that the left tries to make them out to be. There is no Great God Science so there’s also no Priesthood thereof.
Science is a tool of mankind and a very valuable one. Raw, pure science is generally useless to general mankind until an engineer figures out a way to practically apply it. For example –
Does the knowledge that the Higgs Boson exists mean any change to your personal life at all? No. If the existence of the Higgs Boson once proven leads to a new theory for the creation of a new energy source, how about that? Does that make any personal difference to you? Nope. If an engineer figures out a way to tap that new energy source and connect it to the existing power grid … That will make a difference to your personal life.
Science and engineering are dependent on each other. A scientist needs an engineer to create practical, workable applications of his science. Science may be said to exist for science’s sake alone but that’s an incomplete picture. An engineer will be observing that science trying to work out practical applications whether the scientists wants him to or not.
An engineer needs the knowledge and principles of science to apply to practical, workable mechanics. An engineer cannot develop applications without science.
(The very best, most practical to the human condition examples are where both scientists and engineers work together, intentionally and for a common purpose. The Bell Laboratories’ discovery of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) came about because engineers discovered a radio signal issue they first attributed to pigeon poo. Working with their in-house scientists led to the discovery of the CMB.)
So let’s apply this to a modern, controversial “science” topic. We’ll use AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, the fancy scientific term for human caused climate change which I will use henceforth as it’s easier than writing out “human caused climate change”) because it’s something with which most people are at least passingly familiar.
Is the climate in fact changing? Yes, and you already knew that if you paid any attention at all in your Junior High School science classes. Is man causing some amount of climate change? Maybe, it’s possible and completely likely that the combustion of massive amounts of hydrocarbon fuels on a global scale is doing something. Do we know what the results of human induced changes, if any, will be? Perhaps. Because we have historic data on what occurs to the planet when it warms.
Is it suspicious that the global climate prediction models referencing AGW do not adhere to historic non-AGW induced warming … If your model doesn’t fit the facts, it is the model not the facts that are wrong and this casts doubt on gloom and doom predictions based on AGW.
All of that lies firmly in the purview of scientists. When we ask the question “What do we do about it?” then we shift from science to engineering. Have you noticed that there is no profession of “Climate Engineer”? Actually, there is because …
The science topic of AGW has been shifted into and exploited by the political realm. Please note that politics is neither science nor engineering. When science is applied as a political tool then anyone who votes according to their own, personal interpretation of science becomes an engineer. Thus there are millions, perhaps billions, of unintentional, unqualified climate engineers.
Considering how science and engineering are dependent on each other to make any difference in your personal life, does that seem like a good idea to you? Do you want politicians dinking with global climate based on the mostly ignorant faux “engineers” that voted for them? Does climate engineering to attain political power make any sense?
To the left, it makes perfect sense because the left does not worry about things like slippery slopes, unintended consequences or correctly, wisely applied science and engineering. The left is concerned with power and nothing else. If it bankrupts America, renders the planet less inhabitable and short-dicks every cannibal in the Congo but they get to rule over the ashes they have attained their goals.
This is why you should not worship a tool. The Great God Science is a false god. The worshippers of that false god are by definition themselves false. They don’t care if they’re false because serving their false god isn’t the focus of their agenda anyway. They’re just using their false god to manipulate their opportunities to gain power.
You know what else science is integral to….creativity. Without a creative mind you have no vision to be inspired, no imagination, and can’t design effective experiments to explore hypotheses. Artists and scientists have been coupled since the beginning. It is a rare person who has a scientific mind, a scientific bent and is also an artist. The two capacities complement each other. So say I.
The generous look would be that the left cares about intentions (not power) but that still leads to the same ends. The road to hell and its paving and all that aside, when you mean well and create a program to help people by giving them a fish every day, all you end up with is a bunch of people that sit there like lab rats (and if this is your real goal, congratulations) but your good intentions mean nothing when you’ve destroyed what you tried to fix. Do that with a small group of the population and the rest of us can help them back up. Wreck the planet (or, really just make it uncomfortable for humans, a lot of other things will be just fine) because you tried turning down the thermostat when we were heading into another little ice age, and well, hope Elon Musk has your parachute ready or we might kick you off the ship without it.
I remember the phrase: in theory there is no different between theory and practice. In practice there is. There is another think I don’t remember about dividing physics, chemistry and biology, something about if it smells, if it moves, or if it … something else.
The problem with the generous look is that it is not merited by reason of the obvious. When it has been clearly demonstrated that “helping” is not helping but that behavior continues anyway then clearly the goal is not to help.
You can skip the rest of this except the last two paragraphs, it’s just support for my argument. Unless you care to post a counterargument of course. Then you need to see how I arrive at the conclusions of the last two paragraphs. I know I can be wordy so I’m trying to give anyone who reads this a break …
There’s an old sales principle (which strangely enough also applies to prisoner interrogation in intelligence venues) that once you overcome an objection if that same objection still remains then there is some other objection that is not surfacing. So you need to go look for it.
I.E. The customer says “I can’t afford that.” So the salesman replies with figures showing that substituting current payment made on the owned item for the new item payment, plus longevity, durability, lower operating and maintenance costs etc results in a net financial gain. It turns out that indeed the customer can afford the item and is better served monetarily by making the purchase. Objection overcome. Then the customer says “I still can’t afford it.” The salesman points to the figures and politely observes that isn’t exactly true then asks “So what’s the real problem here?” To which the customer replies “My wife will kill me if I buy that.”. At which point the salesman has now confirmed that he’s selling to the wrong spouse and will begin working on the wife instead.
The objection “I can’t afford that” was masking, intentionally or otherwise, the true underlying operative objection. I’ll leave it to your very capable imagination as to how this applies to getting information from prisoners.
So after nearly 6 decades since the implementation of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Social Experiment’ and the Democrat Party’s sudden reversal on the issue of Civil Rights for certain minority groups … It being now clear that giving people that fish every day that you mentioned is not actually helping them — Something else is motivating the free-fish-a-day program because the stated intention is clearly not being accomplished.
That something else is the driving, abiding, overriding quest for power which some human beings are smitten with and seems so unfathomable to the rest of us.
“The generous look” is thus wholly unmerited. In fact, it’s what those who at all costs seek power over others calculatedly rely on. That the good and generous will excuse their behavior by interpreting it in the best possible light out of goodness and generosity. This is a very effective tactic but it is nothing more than a tactic. It is so effective that it often persuades the truly good and generous to follow those applying the tactic and has the effect of softening the opposition from those who do not follow them.
This is how evil uses the goodness and generosity of others against them. We need to stop letting evil do that now and it may already be too late.
“I can’t afford that” doesn’t always imply the needed financial resources are not available… š
I was going with Bill’s “grant them their argument” idea and taking them at their “we mean well” reasoning, then trying to show, as you did, that even meaning well isn’t enough. It might be enough for Good Samaritan laws to kick in so your surviving family can’t sue me, but I don’t know what I am doing and kill you while helping, you’re still dead.
This is true. As we all are aware, and that was not my point. As I’m sure you are aware. It’s sensible to assume we were talking within a price range cited by the customer and other things of that nature. If you’re going to make me cover every single possible contingency to avoid “Gotcha! pouncing” this stuff is going to get even more wordy …
I can do that but I shouldn’t really have to when discussing things with intelligent people.
You’re belaboring the obvious because when someone goes actively shopping for a thing — to the point they are discussing prices and terms with sales staff — it’s reasonable to presume they have the financial resources to procure it. Salesmen do not stalk the streets looking for people to drag into appliance, furniture or electronics stores and car lots so they can bludgeon the financially unavailable into buying something. That’s what advertising is for .:)
Bill has a lot of good ideas but granting evil doers the thing they use to dupe the gullible and attack the good and generous is not one of them. It is a form of political correctness that we can no longer yield to the opposition because they have weaponized it against us and to bad ends.
Successful evil always presents itself as a good. We need to stop letting them do that with this thing called America, we can’t afford to be so nice anymore.
“Allowing people their argument” is a big part of the problem because it is now obvious the argument is not sound.
… and all I was trying to do was make a funny. š
I do take your seriousness about the “granting the argument” though and agree that the claims they are making are highly flawed. I haven’t had to discuss them with too many people so picking which argument to use hasn’t been an often made choice for me.
Ah, comm failure due to the narrow bandwidth of text based interactions …
I discuss those claims quite a bit on the internet. Not so much in person these days. My position is the same either way. I’m not a bit nice about it either because being nice is wasted on the willfully ignorant.
Turning people into human cattle by providing them barns and hay is not helping them. It’s expanding the vote herd at the expense of the rest of the nation and that has a breaking point.
Anyone who supports the left because it makes them feel good that they’re “helping” others has been duped. Anyone who feels superior because they’re subscribed to such a busted-ass narrative is bereft of intellect and common sense.
It is cruel to everyone including them not to tell those people the truth in no uncertain terms. it’s not easy to do that, nor kind, considerate, compassionate, politically correct or any other form of concern for politely avoiding hurting anyone’s feelings.
It hurts to find out what you believed to be a kindness and made you a “good person” was having the opposite effect and actually makes you cruel and a cretin. Sparing those people that hurt just gives them an excuse to rationalize. Pain is a good motivator.
Can’t learn from pain if you never meet the teacher.
And talk about narrow bandwidth, our columns just get narrower.
Trust, its an interesting quandary… I listen to what is said, then look at who is saying it and what their motivations might be… Who does this help, who does this hurt? What are their sources? Can they provide reliable repeatable data? I don’t blindly trust anyone or anything. Skepticism is healthy. Question everything! Having said that, based on years of observation and research I’ve found that none of the current media sources can be trusted AT ALL! With the exception of the Epoch times (who’s bias is skewed against the CCP) all current media sources are propaganda followed by blatant lies. Independent media like Bill and co try to get it right most of the time, but they are not immune to the media. I love these guys, but from time to time, I see a media lie seep in…
Schools don’t teach critical thinking and haven’t for a very long time. That inconvenient truth becomes painfully obvious anytime you read modern commentary/analysis in print and even more so in reporting.
I’ll never forget the day of the heavily-televised O.J. Simpson acquittal when Marcia Clark, celebrity DA, was being interviewed, and was asked, “So, with this acquittal, will you continue to go after the REAL killer?”. Her babbling reply was completely unmemorable. It should have been something like, “NO. There’s no evidence that anyone else did this.” End of story.
I was born, raised, and received the first 12 years of my education in Los Alamos, NM. Those who are familiar with Los Alamos will be able to appreciate that it is virtually impossible to go through their educational system without being exposed to the sciences and scientific method. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, we had one of the top rated school systems in the nation. What Scott says about true science is right on!
Years later, I returned to Los Alamos to pastor a small church there. One of the roles of a pastor is to help people work through the moral and ethical dilemmas that they encounter in their lives.
I can report – first hand – that on several occasions I was taken into the confidence of good, Christian, scientists who were battling with the ethical dilemma that they were being confronted with in their jobs at Los Alamos National Lab. In both the genetics and the climate research facilities, these REAL scientists were told that they could not include in their final reports some of the actual data they found because it would undermine the desired outcome of their “study.” If they included the actual data, their departments would “lose funding”. In a couple cases, those honest people chose to find other employment rather than to compromise their personal integrity.
All that to say that even the most respected “research labs” have been corrupted to report only the “science” that supports the desired conclusions of the people who are paying for the research. And many otherwise honest scientists risk losing their jobs if they don’t skew their results or at least “look the other way” when somebody higher up edits their reports. Follow the money!
Thanks gang…aka –ucare2much4them…on the left too…but we trust–verify and trust.
All well said, gentlemen!!! KUDOS!!
Why trust a bunch of hypocrites?
Bill, you might appreciate this. My Dad was a pilot most of his life starting in 1941 and continuing until his death. His opinion of the US Weather Service follows this same skepticism of scientists and government on a more casual level. Any time he had to file a flight plan he would check the weather enroute and at his destination for his trip. He even checked for changes while in the air during the flight. This is a direct quote, “You can generally trust the forecast for the next 6 hours to be accurate, but beyond that, it’s purely a guess!” You will notice the word “generally” in that statement.
The incident that brings this home was a flight I made with him to ferry a Cessna 310 to Teterboro airport. He had to file VFR in marginal conditions because the airplane lacked the proper equipment for IFR. We had to skim the rooftops on the way in because the ceiling had lowered. It was the only time with him that I was worried.
When I was in the military I knew several Met Techs. They all had a similar saying…This is the only job where you can be wrong 95% of the time and still keep your job.
You’re both right as far as those things go but that’s not the case anymore.
I work for the NWS/NOAA on a volunteer basis in an organization called “Skywarn”. Basically I’m an trained advance weather spotter. NOT a “storm chaser”, though I have been known to follow a storm at a safe and respectable distance. People who chase deadly weather are idiots in my view.
My point is that in that capacity I keep a very close eye on the forecasts, much closer than most people would. Even closer than pilots because I don’t just check the forecast where I am and between point A and point B. During the course of the day I look at a lot of weather information including convective outlooks and such things.
Generally the forecast is 95% correct covering the next 24 hours. The computer models and monitoring stations (which I have one of those about 25 feet from where I sit) have improved a lot over the last 15 or so years. So it’s gone from “6 hours” to “24 hours” that the forecast is probably correct.
The forecast is generally reliable to a significant degree up to 72 hours out. Just arbitrarily I’d say somewhere in the vicinity of 70-80%. Sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more. Usually where the forecast faults is in timing with a weather even arriving earlier or (more often) later than forecast.
Keeping track of the weather is both hobby and avocation to me because I live where hurricane impacts are possible and we can have tornadoes in the winter. Which just happened a couple weeks ago.
What I see when it comes to people complaining about weather forecasting is that they don’t really pay much attention to it … Until they have some sort of plans for outdoors and then they check the forecast. Because if they were watching the forecasts as closely as I do they’d realize it’s most often correct by a very large margin and especially over the next 24 hours.
People tend to notice when the forecast is wrong much more vigorously than they do when it’s right. Usually they most strongly notice when a forecast is wrong AND they’re out in the weather for some reason. Then they say ‘Well surprise surprise surprise, the weatherman screwed up again.”
The forecast will never be 100% correct in our lifetimes but it has improved tremendously since I was a kid … over a half century ago.
Now, all of that said, I’m talking about the official products of the NWS/NOAA. I’ve noticed a huge problem with civilian market weather forecasting. The Weather Channel (owned by IBM) and the local news broadcasts tend to way over-sensationalize the slightest weather hiccup. I never, ever rely on those sources for weather information.
If I wanted to, I could trace the roots of these problems backwards through history at least as far as Plato but that could take years and cost millions of lives. Suffice to say that when people believe that reality can be whatever you want it to be (possibly subconsciously, but subconscious faculties always begin consciously until they become automatic), they will – shocker – try to manipulate reality. These days we call that creating a narrative. (I’m lookin’ at you, Fauci.) Then others, not knowing how to critically examine what they’re told, especially by authorities, will accept that as reality. When the “manipulated” reality fails to match actual reality, trust is broken in those who accept no substitute for actual reality. (Ask me about my ex. Wait, no, don’t.)
Once trust is gone, it’s not coming back, ever. You can move on from the loss of trust so it’s not affecting your day-to-day life but you will never forget it. It will forever color your interactions with the person you lost trust in, to one degree or another.
The same goes for institutions. There is, among those of us who do know better, no more trust in government, the media, big tech, big corporations (and a large number of small ones), and even associates, friends, and family who won’t let go of the narratives in the face of reality.
Anyone can be on either side of this, whether or not they’re aware of it. Have you ever been just absolutely certain of something, only to find out later that you were wrong and your error hurt someone you care about? Unknowingly, you were under the assumption of a false reality. Unintentionally, you broke the trust between yourself and the other person.
Now, since it was an honest mistake, you’re not guilty of anything so it’s easier to repair the loss of trust, though never completely – further mistakes will make the situation worse and enough of them can lead to complete distrust. But people like Fauci intentionally try to manipulate reality. When that happens, it should be the case that all trust is lost, permanently. And justifiably.
Until full commitment to actual reality is ingrained in us all, there will always be lies and trust will always be in danger.
Therein lies the rub … such an comprehensive commitment is unattainable. Hence, we must individually muddle through reality the best we can.
True. But we can work to get at least a majority to that point.
While it’s an attribute that eludes me, such optimism is encouraging.
Your comments are on the mark. When someone like Fauci deliberately lies and later on tells you that he was lying – well the trust is gone. The trust is gone not only for Fauci but all the people and all of the organizations that supported his lies. In my opinion, the CDC is absolutely untrustworthy now.
This brings up another point and another problem that we have. That problem is that half of our population still believe these lies. They are either not paying attention, absolutely gullible, or are so wrapped into the leftist agenda that they accept every point of the leftist approved thought.
For our society to work, you need the country as a whole to be informed, skeptical, and willing to acknowledge some level of risk in their lives. If these conditions are met, you can argue and analyze issues, and then move on to a solution. We have vast swaths of the population that don’t meet those basic conditions. We are in so much trouble now and most just are blissfully unaware of this. I think that people will be shocked when our problems fully manifest themselves.
I won’t be shocked when they’re shocked, though. Even after all the failures of socialism/communism they still can’t see.
My guess is that most of the young followers of the authoritarian Left just seek acceptance by their peer group. To them history is something that happened before they were born and is not relevant to their current circumstances.
Yet another failure of the education system.
Follow the science? No! Follow the scientists that agree with the leftist agenda.
I’ve come to believe that “scientists” will “conclude” whatever the grant money wants them to conclude. Most of the scientists receiving government grants have been completely corrupted by politics.
Fauci might be the most responsible for the loss of trust. When he first admitted that he lied about masks to prevent a run on them was bad enough. What he should have done was say that masks work but urge the public to not try running on them as a civic duty. Many would have ignored him, but many more would have listened.
The one that was it for me was when he attended the Nationals’ game, wore his mask to virtue signal during that sorry excuse for a 1st pitch when nobody was near him, and then get caught with his mask off when he was in the stands. Instead of owning it, he spewed out an obvious PR Agent approved “I think they were being mischievous” to address his critics, with of course no pushback from our press.
And idiots here in The People’s Republic of Arlington, VA still practice their idolotry with yard signs glorifying this goon
Masking, if it has any preventative value, is marginal at best. This according to the CDC which did a study on the efficacy of mask wearing, sometime back in 2015 (I think.)
About 3 weeks ago, I had what turned out to be a kidney stone (excruciatingly painful, but small – it passed, I’m fine,) but a trip to the ER was advised by my doctor. Yes, I was required to wear a mask, as were all the personnel in the ER. But this is how much trust the health care workers had in masks; everyone, and I mean everyone was wearing a minimum of TWO masks, many of them wore three, PLUS one of those plastic shields that look like they’re going to do some welding.
The regular masks hold back ~80% of the particles. Read carefully: the particles. In the media it is often rephrased as 80% of the infections or something else — that has no ground whatsoever.
What is rarely talked about, is that the remaining 20% that is not held back is split to much finer aerosol. Those go more far away and stand in the air longer.
So even not counting the numerous problems the masks invoke, the effect is a mixed bag at best, leaning toward doing more harm than good for this case.
OTOH they have great security theater rating and other properties beneficial for political purposes. The advanced version of yellow stars across the board.
Yeah, he’s full of shit. And one major faut of Trump to not fire him in the first two weeks. Actually the referred admission of the lie was the lie itself, the original say was the naked truth before politics took over.