Ulla Lulla
Community Member
- MBTI
- XXXX
I anticipated someone would write the above.
Listen, you and I probably agree more politically than you know. I appreciate your cynicism of centralised power and, quite frankly, I appreciate the disobedience of many so-called "anti-vaxxers" and anti-lockdown protesters. But, institutions like democratic politics, medicine, science and journalism are foundational to socially cohesive communities and societies. Do many of them need to be reformed? Yes. But let's not replace them with unvetted demagogues and agitators. I don't want to live in a techno-feudalist world. I also don't want to live in a techno-kakistocratic world. Enjoy your weekend.Please keep in mind the context within which I made my claim. It was under the condition that each container held an ounce of gold.
I appreciate your point. A peer reviewed journal is more likely to contain these ounces of gold. But that does not mean other literary sources have no possibility of containing ounces of gold (metaphor for papers of a high level of veracity) or that peer-reviewed papers may contain steaming piles of crap and also looking elsewhere is critical. Especially when money and power are involved.
What I am reading here seems to me to bely a high level of naivete and a lack of street smarts, street savvy.
Money and power can be incredibly persuasive. Scientific journals are very much the provenance of multi-million and multi-billion dollar corporations, governments, and academic institutions that vie for funding. Right off the bat, you can bet studies are allocated according to corporate desires and conclusions.
If anyone can't see fertile ground for deception, I have ocean front property in Nevada to sell them.
I'll give two examples.
Aspartame
Searle, manufacturer of aspartame was highly interested in making bundles with aspartame (nutrasweet). If you examine two demographics (papers sponsored by Searle versus papers with no such bias) you'll see that there is a compelling difference in their conclusions. Searle papers see no harm, the others very much do. I just did a quick internet search. Easy to verify.
Hemp
Hemp was outlawed in a coordinated campaign between corporations, media, and the government. DuPont wanted it declared illegal because hemp was more cost-effective as clothing than nylon. Hearst interests wanted it illegal because the newspaper magnate had paper manufacturing facilities using wood and hemp is more cost-effective than wood for paper.
So, they linked hemp with its close cousin, cannabis. There was a study that showed that cannabis was fatal to mice. Just another one of those high caliber studies in some nice shiny container.
It was determined later that the mice did not die of cannabis toxicity, they died of asphyxiation. So much cannabis smoke was drilled into the mice that they were oxygen deprived.
Then you have tobacco in the early days.
It is not only recommended to also examine material in blogs and other sources outside of the corporate-government-university nexus, it is essential.
Unless you want to buy a bridge.