An incredible piece that is extremely readable, and uncovers the whole mess.
"Oh come on, Alex, this is some prof from Idaho with a 23 h-index. Is this your refutation?"
I've not even gotten started yet.
How about Dr Peter Gøtzsche, over 180 THOUSAND citations, h-index 103 (this means over 100 papers with over 100 citations EACH). Is he credentialed enough?
Oh, yeah, he was also a founder and board member of the Cochrane Collaboration.
Here he is explaining why large pharmaceutical companies meet the definition of organized crime:
Here he is explaining how prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death:
"Ok fine. You found the village idiot. We keep him around because he has a funny accent".
Funny you should say that, because I have another dude with a funny accent for you:
456 THOUSAND citations, by some accounts, the most cited living scientist.
"Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias." journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/a…
Now, keep in mind, Ioannidis and Gøtzsche are two of the authors of the PRISMA statement, which is the consensus standard for how meta-analyses and systematic reviews should be done.
Naturally, all this had been foretold. All the way back in 1998, Charlton and Miles had laid it all out for us. A "science" that is named after the lie that all prior medicine was "not-evidence-based" is a discipline that lives by lies. researchgate.net/profile/Andrew…
The author wrote a retrospective 11 years later (13 years ago), basically explaining to us what would happen during the pandemic, when even the basic guardrails were thrown out because "EMERGENCY!!!"
In fact, this is not a medical, or for that matter, scientific problem at all. Deming had explained the problem of metrics-driven managerial top-down authoritarianism years ago.
PLEASE watch this video to the end. Don't let his deadpan humor fool you:
I hope this thread can serve as a reading list of material for people who have run into the same mess I did a year and a half ago, so they don't have to spend 18 months reconstructing it.
The evidence against evidence-based medicine is as conclusive as it is damning.
I actually consider this an optimistic thread. Whenever I've seen evidence of rot that is *this* clear, this public, the narrative eventually shifts. Maybe it will take a decade. Or maybe it will take longer. But it will shift. The question is "to what?"
The biggest reason I make these threads, and why I post them on Twitter, is all the additional material that comes up in the responses. In particular this video by @p_parry1 is an excellent complement to this thread.
In trying to keep up with the vast pace of developments across many fronts, I have started to hypothesize something. Perhaps it is oversimplified. Perhaps it is just wrong. I am open to all eventualities, I'm sharing this to get feedback.
When Mike Johnson did his complete turnaround, I started to wonder what he could possibly have been told that changed his view so drastically. It is tempting to think it was some personal threat to his reputation or family. But that is a low-context explanation that could apply to anything, and as such is not very informative, imo.
What if, what he was told, is that what is going on is pretty much the opening moves for WW3? See the map below and think about what was recently approved with the help of Mike Johnson:
- Warrantless wiretapping
- TikTok forced sale or banning
- Funding for Ukraine
- Funding for Israel
- Funding for Taiwan
- No funding for strenghtening the border (and actually perhaps some funding to get *more* people into the US)
Basically, infowar funding for the internals of the empire, and actual war funding to support the borderlands (Taiwan, Israel, Ukraine) against the rising BRICS powers. And an entry to the US of cheap workforce that will be needed to set up a new industrial base. At best we end up with a new Cold War. If we're lucky.
Maybe I'm giving people in power more credit than they're worth. Perhaps I refuse to believe they're simply arrogant and incompetent. But for better or worse, I can't stop thinking about this map, and what it means for the world.
I may have classified some countries wrong, by the way, I'm open to suggestions on specifics. In particular, It's likely that Hungary and Serbia should be at the very least a kind of greyzone. Also, US influence in south Asia probably goes further than I marked. And of course Africa is a competition zone, with Russia and China making inroads and France/EU losing ground, but nothing yet completely settled.
Anyway, hopefully this is interesting to others as it was to me. (runs away and hides in bunker)
Was about to mention that the poles are about to become a zone of intense competition between the blocks.
This Ben Shapiro/Dave Rubin clip is one of the most important recorded interactions for people who care about hypocrisy in the public sphere.
Thread 🧵 with some thoughts below.
First, Shapiro makes the argument that Daily Wire is a publisher (like a magazine or a newspaper) not a platform (like locals).
Interestingly, he implies that the Daily Wire was *subsidizing* Candace Owens. This would imply they were taking a financial loss to have her there.
Shapiro and Rubin, however, have also been massive critics of cancel culture. How did cancel culture get its name? From a campaign to cancel The Colbert Report over a tweet. Much of cancel culture is about inflicting professional harm for bad opinions. newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
At this point I treat Scott Alexander's writing as an infohazzard. Unless you are willing to check his facts and citations, it is probably inadvisable to read his material, as it is constructed to build a compelling narrative.
But watch the lemmings line up and jump off a cliff, obviously taking Scott Alexander, who has already admitted to falsely accusing multiple scientists, at his word.
Unless and until Scott Alexander commits to adopting a robust editorial process where blatant errors that are reported to him are corrected promptly, his work should be read as fiction "based on a real story, sorta".
To coin a term, this FDA tweet was a "narrative scaffold". After the narrative solidifies, it doesn't matter if the scaffold is taken down. Nobody will remember how things started anyway.
It's a synchronization signal for the elites to line up and promote the approved narrative. Once all the relevant people are committed, opponents' reputations destroyed, the original signal can go away, and the hive mind will continue singing to the same tune.
Other examples of narrative scaffolds? Where to start.
For one, the Steele dossier that led to the years and years of Russiagate garbage.
Yes the "diverse" photos Gemini generates are fun to chuckle at but let's also notice that this thing is generating straight up medical misinformation:
Google Gemini: "While some studies suggest potential benefits of maintaining a healthy weight for COVID-19 outcomes, evidence on weight loss as a specific protective measure is inconclusive."
Google Gemini: "There's no evidence that the spike protein in COVID-19 vaccines is directly cytotoxic. These vaccines only contain the genetic instructions for making the protein, not the fully formed protein itself."
I would like to use the occasion of this clip to remind everyone that the TOGETHER trial has still not released the raw data as it promised to do in its journal submission.
All the big name accounts complaining about fraudulent ivm studies have said NOTHING about this scandal.
I even offered Scott Alexander $25k of my own money if he would help get it released and he didn't move a finger.
Following the ivm rabbit hole has been the fastest way to find out that practically nobody from the medical establishment cares about the actual facts on the ground. Just posturing and repeating the hive mind talking points.
Thank God for whistleblowers, I have gotten access to the interim analyses from this trial, and when I publish them, the fraudulent nature of its conduct will be clear to anyone who cares to know about it.