My email to Muge Cevik: "Do you want to see the record-level data showing you got it wrong?"
For some reason, today's scientists NEVER want to see ANY data showing they got it wrong. We are really going to have to redefine the word "scientist." I provide a list.
Executive summary
Scientists never seem to be interested in any data that shows the opposite of what they write.
Maybe it is time to redefine the term scientist as “someone using scientific methods possessing an unfailing belief in the correctness of their work with a demonstrated unwillingness to consider any credible data that clearly shows that they might have got it completely wrong.”
I have other possible definitions in this article. You’ll love the list I’ve assembled.
The BMJ editorial
I read this
which concludes:
“The risks of remaining unvaccinated are clear and far outweigh the unknown benefits of re-vaccinating the general population. Rapid scale-up of vaccination coverage globally remains the most urgent public health priority.”
The first sentence is nonsensical. How can clear risks outweigh the weight of something that is unknown?!?!
The second sentence about scaling up the COVID shots being the most urgent priority I have an even bigger problem with.
So I wrote this email.
I’m just documenting that we DID let these people know that the most reliable data we have disagrees with what they are saying.
But they they just hate it when the data doesn’t support what they claim.
Our friend Jake Scott is first author on this paper. Muge has an h-index of 42 which is very respectable.
Honest scientists would respond and explore the best dataset to see what it reveals.
Sadly, I am still looking for an honest scientist among those advocating for the COVID shots. Please let me know in the comments if you know of one.
Alternative definitions of scientists
Here are a few aphoristic versions in different tones — choose the one that best fits your intent, or I can refine further:
1. Mencken-style (biting and sardonic):
A scientist is a man who worships evidence—provided it confirms his funding proposal.
2. Twain-style (dry wit, worldly observation):
A scientist is one who doubts everything, except his own conclusions.
3. Philosophical (stoic clarity):
Science begins in humility and ends in pride. The true scientist stops before the second step.
4. Modern satirical definition:
Scientist, n. — A person trained to seek the truth until finding it becomes professionally inconvenient.
5. Political-tinged realism:
A scientist is a bureaucrat armed with a hypothesis and a grant, defending both as if they were holy scripture.
Scientist (n.)
A modern priest of certainty; ordained by peer review, funded by industry, and excommunicating heretics in the name of progress.
Scientist (n.)
One who begins with curiosity and ends with consensus.
See also: bureaucrat, pharmacologist, grant recipient.
Scientist (n.)
A professional skeptic toward everyone’s data but his own.
Scientist (n.)
A person employed to prove what has already been decided.
Scientist (n.)
A once-noble seeker of truth, now a certified defender of it.
Scientist (n.)
An alchemist with better funding and worse imagination.
Interesting post Steve, thanks for writing.
So far you have kept within the bounds of science, fighting fire with fire. You show how medical scientists have contradicted their own creed and got their conclusions wrong. The data, for you, proves that the shots were dangerous and ineffective as a matter of objective scientific fact. I agree with you. Thus far you have either been ignored or insulted; never debated and never disproved. For me, you are the "real scientist the room ". Your critique is so overwhelming they cannot refute you. You in science - Siri in law.
In this post you go outside your usual arena and consider the nature of science itself. You are forced to become a philosopher of science as you fight to comprehend how most so called medical scientist - as in the first quote here - can contradict their own precepts in a single sentence "unknown benefits" for goodness sake. You offer your own insightful definitions of science. Much better than most. My background is in the philosophy of science so it is great to have you in my area as I am usually floundering about it yours.
Science has grown far too big for its boots. It really got going in the 16th century as the application of mathematical certainty to physics and its greatest early triumph was to establish the sun as the center of the solar system to the lasting detriment of the then dominant knowledge form which was catholic theology, orthodoxy and dogma. As the centuries rolled by science colonized nearly all areas of human interest until we end up now with nothing but science. Now politics, law, medicine, economics, biology, geography, cosmology, psychology, and so on, must be "scientific"; the only road to truth is years of "study" in a university followed by publications adjudicated by popularity and consensus. This domination by just one form of human knowledge is an obvious recipe for disaster. Covid was that disaster. By 2025 science has become a far worse orthodoxy than the catholic church or indeed any other religion or philosophy. Science is so out of control it can mass poison the world, claim it didn't hurt anybody, and even if it did it was all for the public good.
Here is a passage from William Durant, on Blaise Pascal, from page 63 of his seventh volume, The Age of Louis XIV, where he addresses this issue. I quote this to demonstrate the dangers of science have long been knows by the wise but apparently forgotten, or never known, by 95% of the modern medical world who are as addicted to "science" as they are to drugs.
"Science, therefore, is a silly presumption. It is based on reason, which is based on the senses, which deceive us in a hundred ways. It is limited by the narrow bounds withing which the sense operate, and by the corruptible brevity of the flesh. Left to itself, reason cannot understand - or offer a solid basis to - morality, the family, or the state, much less perceive the real nature and order of the world, not to speak of comprehending God. There is more wisdom in custom even imagination and myth than is reason, and " the wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has rashly introduced."46 There are two kinds of wisdom: that of the simple and "ignorant" multitude. who live by the wisdom of tradition and imagination (ritual and myth) and that of the sage who has pierced through science and philosophy to realize his ignorance. 47 Therefore "there is nothing so comfortable to reason as to disavow reason," and " to make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher." 48. "
The modern medical establishment is not scientific at all. Not even remotely. It is largely a faith based belief system grown so corrupt it can poison and kill babies for profit and award itself medals and riches for doing so.
Your great skill is to show in detail and in a way a layman can understand how the science is wrong on its own terms. Please keep up fighting fire with fire and showing how dumb the acolytes of the new church of medical science really are.
Mr. Kirsch must be continually applauded for pounding away at the blocks of wood masquerading as "Scientists". A thankless task that can only cost him time and money. But for our grandchildren we must persevere and attack these blockheads who have changed the scientific method from experiments with verification, to a process which is about consensus guided by commercial interests and status mining.
Both of us went to MIT and at this point "reputation mining" at top universities is more lucrative than Bitcoin mining. The Universities keep adding more undergraduates and administrators, to the point where local universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley now have over 5000 administrators; and for what?
I don't know how we can fix this except perhaps through some kind of public humiliation. I think that is the only thing that will get them back down. They relentlessly use their appeal to authority to ignore and block competing points of view.
Perhaps the evolution of AI will bring some sense, because the AI tech, if is not corrupted by sneaky pre-programmed biases, should find the raw data very alarming.
I can see this taking the rest of Mr. Kirsch's life, and i wish him a long and healthy existence, because this could take a while.