“It’s political manipulation of scientific data like this that makes people not ‘trust the science,’” said J. Michael Waller, a senior analyst at the Center for Security Strategy, in a tweet. “It is unscientific to withhold data because people might disagree with your policies.”
COVID lies
All posts tagged COVID lies
Global Research, February 09, 2022
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Fact-checking is one part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality
Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how virtually everything you see and hear online has been co-opted, or taken over to serve a greater agenda
Instead of real journalists and reporters, the media is infiltrated with propagandists who dictate what’s “fake news” and what’s not
The public is being manipulated to want their information censored by third-party “fact”-checkers, which were introduced as a tool to confuse and control the public further
“Conspiracy theory”, “debunked”, “quackery” and “antivaccine” are examples of terms that are being used as propaganda tools; if you hear them, it should make you dig deeper for the truth
Those who rely solely on the internet for their information are at serious risk of being controlled; you can fight back by doing your own research, trusting your cognitive dissonance and using your common sense
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Prior to 2015 or 2016, you could still read what you wanted online without much interference. This has since changed, as propagandists have infiltrated the media and, along with other major players, like Big Tech and government, set out to control information. Fact-checking — a once-obscure term that’s since gone mainstream — is one part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality — but it’s all a ruse.
Speaking with Jan Jekielek, The Epoch Times senior editor and host of the show “American Thought Leaders,” investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how virtually everything you see and hear online has been co-opted, or taken over to serve a greater agenda:1
“One has to understand that nearly every mode of information has been co-opted, if it can be co-opted by some group. Fact checks are no different either, they’ve been coopted in many instances or created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda.
And your common sense is accurate when it tells you that the way they chose this fact check and how they decided to word it so they could say this thing is not true when at its heart it really is true, but the message they’re trying to send is that you shouldn’t believe it, your common sense is right.
That’s been created as part of a propaganda effort by somebody, somewhere, as part of a narrative to distribute to the public so virtually every piece of information that can be co-opted has been.”
The Information Landscape Is Being Controlled
Attkisson calls out several common online sources that are heavily manipulated — Wikipedia, Snopes and most “fact” checkers to name a few, along with HealthFeedback.org, which is a fake science group used by Facebook and other Big Tech companies to debunk science that is actually true.
Fact-checkers are often referred to as scientists, but this, too, is “part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.” While there have always been efforts to shape the information being given out by the media, it used to be that news reporters would push back against organizations to ensure the public had the other side of the story.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Attkisson noted a shift from efforts to simply shape information to those that attempt to keep certain information from being reported at all. This was particularly true among the pharmaceutical companies she was covering at that time. Attkisson described “efforts by these large global PR firms that have been hired by the pharmaceutical industry, by government partners that work with the pharmaceutical industry, to keep the story from being reported at all.”2
Now, suppressing and censoring information that those in charge don’t want to be heard is really common. Attkisson believes the practice really took off in 2015 to 2016, “with Donald Trump proving to be a unique danger perceived by both Democrats and Republicans, and by that I mean by the interests that support and pay for them to be in office and make certain decisions.”3
With a wild card in office, a campaign was organized that exploited a media that was already conflicted and less apt to report what was actually going on. “This all dovetailed together to create this crazy information landscape we have today,” she said. Instead of journalists seeking to uncover the truth, we have “writers seeking to spread whatever establishment scientists or politicians want them to say, uncritically and at the expense, oftentimes, of accuracy.”
Now, instead of real journalists and reporters, the media is infiltrated with propagandists who dictate what’s “fake news” and what’s not. Many believe that fake news is a product of Trump, but Big Tech was brought into the campaign early on. A lobby campaign by behind-the-scenes propagandists met with Facebook and said you’ve got to start censoring and “fact” checking information, Attkisson said.
The term “fake news” was popularized after Trump was elected, but it actually got its start before that — it was an invention of political activist website First Draft News, which is partially funded by Google.4
Inviting Propagandists Into the Newsroom
We’re in the midst of an information war where it’s difficult to tell truth from fiction or lies. Journalists are no longer the watchdogs; instead, they take information from obviously conflicted sources and then try to convince the public to believe that particular viewpoint. Other information that’s in conflict is censored or “debunked.”
It’s an unusual time in history where efforts are even underway to manipulate the public to want their information censored and appreciate third-party “fact”-checkers, which were introduced as a tool to confuse and manipulate the public further.5
Yet, when you only hear one side of the story, and you can’t access other information to the contrary, it’s nearly impossible to uncover the truth — and that’s precisely the point. Is this all just a matter of reporters not knowing how to think critically and ask the right questions, or believing that they’re doing the right thing?
Attkisson states that it goes much deeper. A lot of propagandists have become part of the media, and while there used to be a firewall between reporters and the people they reported on, “that’s long gone.” She says:6
“We’ve not just invited them to influence what we report, but we’ve hired them, not just as pundits and analysts but they are reporters. They are editorial presences within our newsrooms. Now we are one and the same.
It’s hard to say that there’s a distinctive difference in many instances between the people trying to get out a message and the messengers in the media who should be doing a more independent job of reporting accurately.”
The COVID Misinformation Campaign
In early 2020, as the pandemic first started brewing, Attkisson talked to everyone she could, including scientists with the government and outside the government. “Pretty quickly, I could see that certain things that were being said publicly were bearing out as not true, and certain things that other scientists were telling me privately rang true, and in hindsight have actually been proven to be true.”7
Early on, quite a few scientists she talked to were questioning the advice being given by government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and lead spokesperson for the president’s COVID response. She asked them if they should say something and speak out about their concerns, but they all came back with the same response:8
“They said they dared not speak out for fear of being controversialized and for fear of being called coronavirus deniers, because that phrase was starting to be used in the media. And secondly, they feared contradicting Dr. Fauci, who they said had been kind of lionized or canonized in the press for reasons that they couldn’t understand, because they really didn’t think that his guidance that he was giving publicly was the right guidance.”
Certainly, those scientists’ opinions deserved to be heard, but the fear of speaking out silenced them. They feared losing their grants, as most grants for research are funded by the government. If the government doesn’t like what you say or do, you can get fired or never get a grant again, ending your career and threatening your very livelihood.
“That started to strike me as, this is a really dangerous environment, when esteemed scientists who have valuable information and opinions are afraid to give them, and instead we’re hearing a party line that many of them disagree with but won’t say so,” Attkisson said.9
She mentioned the controversial U.S. government funding of gain-of-function research in China, and the notion that SARS-CoV-2 could have come from a Chinese laboratory — both were glaring issues that no one would talk about.
“These are the kinds of things early on that were sort of a red flag to me that says somebody’s trying to shape the information,” she continued. “They’re using reporters to do it. Public health figures are involved in some instances and that makes me want to know what’s really behind it.”10
‘Conspiracy Theory’ Was Devised by the CIA
The term “conspiracy theory” is now used to dismiss narratives that go against the grain. According to Attkisson, this is intentional, as the term itself was devised by the CIA as a response to theories about the assassination of JFK.
“It was shown in documents that there was a suggestion that agents go out and talk to reporters about these things as conspiracy theories — and again, common sense should tell you, as it does me, I’m married to a former law enforcement official who has said to me many times, you know the conspiracy theory phrase in its use doesn’t make sense. Nearly everything is a conspiracy.”11
Anything that involves two or more people is technically a conspiracy, but now when people hear the term, they’re conditioned to think it’s false. “That’s designed to pluck this little part of your brain that says, ‘well that thing’s not true.’” When Attkisson hears the term, however, she thinks that information may well be true. “If somebody’s trying to debunk it, it usually means a powerful interest is behind it and it makes me want to go search for more information on that thing.”
The term “conspiracy theory” has lost meaning now because it’s used so much. “Debunked”, “quackery” and “antivaccine” are all terms that are similarly being used as propaganda tools. “There’s a whole cast of propaganda phrases that I’ve outlined that are cues. When you hear them, they should make you think, ‘I need to find out more about it,’” Attkisson says.
Fact Checkers Pounce on Accurate BMJ Investigation
In another example of the lengths that fact-checkers will go to discredit a story — even if it’s true — take an article published in the BMJ, titled, “COVID-19: Researchers blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”12 Written by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, it details a series of problems with laboratory management and quality control checks by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
According to a regional director formerly employed by Ventavia, she witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns, repeatedly, she made a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and was fired the same day.13
Soon after Thacker’s investigative piece was published in BMJ, it was “fact checked” by a group called Lead Stories, which referred to the investigation as a “hoax alert” in the related URL. Along with “correcting” statements that Thacker did not make, Lead Stories disparaged the investigation for “missing context,” but as investigative reporter Matt Taibbi explained, “‘Missing context’ has become a term to disparage reporting that is true but inconvenient.”14
Lead Stories took further issue with the BMJ investigation because it was shared by people such as Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy, who themselves have been targeted by fake fact checkers. Taibbi added:15
“The real issue with Thacker’s piece is that it went viral and was retweeted by the wrong people. As Lead Stories noted with marked disapproval, some of those sharers included the likes of Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy. To them, this clearly showed that the article was bad somehow, but the problem was, there was nothing to say the story was untrue.”
Thacker also called the “fact check” against his BMJ investigation “insane,” telling Taibbi:16
“Here’s what they do. They’re not fact checking facts. What they’re doing is checking narratives. They can’t say that your facts are wrong, so it’s like, ‘Aha, there’s no context.’ Or, ‘It’s misleading.’ But that’s not a fact check. You just don’t like the story.”
Reality Is Being Altered in Real Time
As it stands, information is being changed in real time to meet the common agenda. This includes definitions in dictionaries and on official government websites. Examples of definitions that have been changed recently include those for pandemic, herd immunity, vaccines and anti-vaxxer. Attkisson reiterates:17
“Virtually every form of information and sourcing that can be co-opted has been. That includes the dictionary definitions; that includes everything because these are important ways to influence thought. Language is very powerful. People don’t want to be affiliated with certain names and labels.
It reminds me of ‘1984,’ the George Orwell story about the futuristic society, under which history was being rewritten in real time to jive with the version that the government wanted or the party wanted it to be. Definitions now are being rewritten and changed in real time to fit with the vision that the establishment wants people to think.”
For now, you can still use the Internet Archive, commonly known as Archive.org and IA, as a historical archive. In addition to digitally hosting more than 1.4 million books and other documents, Archive.org acts as a historical vault for the Internet, preserving cached versions of websites that are no longer accessible to the public.18
Archive.org’s Wayback machine preserves digital information that has been removed or deleted, whether intentionally or for other reasons, but it, too, could one day disappear. Attkisson says:19
“It’s been a fascinating way to prove the effort to change our perception of how things are and the reality and what we thought we remembered from the other day, because all we really have now is the electronic record, by and large, and if that can be manipulated, there could be a time when — if they get rid of the Wayback machine, for example — that we can’t ever prove that anything was any different.”
Attkisson is maintaining a running list of things the media or public policy got wrong during the pandemic, which can still be verified using the Wayback machine, but which were not acknowledged for being wrong or corrected by the press. They include:20
You Can Be Controlled if You Live Inside the Box
Attkisson references a whole generation of people who live inside the box, meaning the internet. Those who rely solely on the internet for their information are at serious risk of being controlled. She explains:22
“They didn’t know a time when information was to be gathered elsewhere by looking around and seeing what you hear, and seeing what you saw, and talking to people around you and looking at books and research and so on.
And the people that want to control the information understand that if they can only control really a few basic sources — we’re talking about Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia — they’ve got a lock on information, because we’ve all been funneled to those few sources, and that’s been the goal.
So if you think of it that way, there’s a whole lot of people that get pretty much everything they know through the internet. And the goal of the people trying to make the narrative is to make people live online and to think that’s reality.”
The danger of this is that the internet paints a picture that’s different from reality. You may read something that doesn’t sound quite right, or that you don’t agree with, but the internet makes you feel like you’re in the minority — even if you’re really not.
“Understand that you may actually be in the majority,” Attkisson says, “… but the goal of what they do online is to make you think you’re an outlier when you’re not, to make you afraid to talk about your viewpoint or what you think, because you may actually be the majority opinion but they want to control that and make you think you’re the one who’s crazy.” The solution? Live outside the box:23
“You can be made to believe that — if you live in the box. So, I’m constantly telling people live outside the box. Yes, you can get information there and do what you do online, but certainly trust your cognitive dissonance, talk to the people around you. If you travel, talk to the people in the places you go. You’ll get a whole different picture, as I do, of what’s really happening out here than if you look online.”
The Truth Finds a Way To Be Told
While there are powerful forces at play to control information, all is not lost. Attkisson is aware of three entities that are actively working on a solution, which include:
- Investors who want to invest in independent news organizations
- Technical people trying to invent platforms that can’t be controlled and deplatformed by Big Tech
- Journalists who want to work or contribute to these efforts
Outlets like Substack newsletters and the video platforms Rumble, Bitchute and Odysee, which don’t censor videos for ideological reasons, are actively getting around the censorship of Big Tech, and Attkisson believes that these efforts will accelerate in the next couple of years.
Further, she says, “The propagandists may have overplayed their hand by being so heavy-handed and obvious about the control of information and the censorship. It’s no longer deniable. Even people who want their information curated, they can’t always be happy with the notion that they’re not going to be able to get the full story, or that they’re only getting one side of something.”24
Ultimately, she adds, “I think the truth finds a way to be told … it may take some time and there may be a lot of people that don’t want the truth out, but we inherently as humans seek it.”25 On a personal level, you can go a long way toward finding the truth by following your own common sense and reason, and Attkisson agrees.
“I always say, do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself. Trust your cognitive dissonance, use your common sense. You’re going to be right more often than you think, but open up your mind, read a lot, think a lot and don’t buy into the prevailing narrative at face value.”26
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Notes
1 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 2:43
2 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 5:44
3 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 6:23
5 The Epoch Times January 23, 2022
6 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 15:28
7 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 17:00
8 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 17:46
9 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 18:50
10 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 20:00
11 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 22:26
12, 13 BMJ 2021;375:n2635
14, 15, 16 Substack, TK News by Matt Taibbi February 1, 2022
17, 19 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 25:31
20 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 30:00
21 N Engl J Med 2020; 382:1268-1269
22, 23 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 39:30
24 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 53:50
25 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 51:10
26 The Epoch Times, American Thought Leaders video, January 20, 2022, 58:30
Featured image is from The Corbett Report
The original source of this article is Mercola
Copyright © Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola, 2022
by: Cassie B.
Sunday, February 06, 2022
This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author
Many people choose to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because health authorities insist they reduce a person’s risk of experiencing a more severe case of the virus. However, data from Israel indicates this may not be the case.
In fact, most of the severe cases of the virus at one of the country’s biggest hospital complexes are being found in people who have received at least three doses of the vaccine. This is according to the hospital’s coronavirus ward director.
Israel is an interesting place to study this type of data because it has one of the greatest rates of vaccination in the world at around 90%. Moreover, many of the country’s high-risk patients have even received a fourth shot.
Professor Yaakov Jerris of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center – Ichilov Hospital, the country’s second-biggest hospital, said that between 70 and 80 percent of the serious cases they are currently seeing are among vaccinated individuals.
He added: “So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just 20 to 25 percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”
Moreover, despite Israel’s high vaccination rate, there were more cases of COVID-19 identified in the country in January of this year than in all of 2021, according to the Times of Israel.
Last month, the preliminary results of a major study in Israel found that getting a fourth booster of the Pfizer vaccine is only partially effective when it comes to protecting against the omicron variant. This is consistent with a report from the German government, which revealed that more than 95 percent of omicron cases in that country were among vaccinated individuals.
Vaccines may not protect against serious illness, but vitamin D helps
However, Israeli scientists have revealed one very helpful piece of information. They say they have now obtained the most convincing evidence yet that vitamin D supplements can help patients with COVID-19 to reduce their risk of serious illness or death.
Using research that was carried out during the country’s first two waves of the virus, which was before the vaccines were available, the peer-reviewed study by researchers from the Galilee Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University said the impact of vitamin D was so strong that they could actually predict just how well infected patients would fare simply by looking at their ages and vitamin D levels. The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
One of the researchers, Dr. Amiel Dror, said: “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not.”
According to Dr. Dror, vitamin D’s ability to strengthen the immune system allows it to address viral pathogens attacking the respiratory system in an effect that is just as relevant for omicron as it was for previous variants.
Preliminary findings that were published by the researchers in June showed that 26 percent of COVID-19 patients who were deficient in vitamin D shortly before hospitalization ended up dying, compared to just three percent of those who had normal vitamin D levels. Moreover, hospitalized COVID-19 patients who had a vitamin D deficiency were 14 times more likely than other individuals to end up in critical or severe condition.
The researchers also addressed the common question among scientists of whether any recent health conditions in patients could have skewed the results. To determine whether vitamin D deficiency was a symptom or a contributing factor, they looked at the patients’ vitamin D levels during the two years prior to being infected by the virus.
Dror said: “We checked a range of timeframes, and found that wherever you look over the two years before infection, the correlation between vitamin D and disease severity is extremely strong.”
The study’s wide scope means it can provide the world with compelling evidence that boosting your levels of vitamin D can be highly advantageous during the pandemic.
Sources for this article include:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/525071-doctor-covid-medical-research/
RT.com
29 May, 2021
By Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.
Those of us who put forward an alternative view to the prevailing orthodoxy on the virus or on vaccinations are being vilified, threatened and cancelled. This is not how science, or a functioning democracy, works.
I haven’t written for a while, sorry. Instead, I have been sorting out two complaints about my writing made to the General Medical Council (GMC). Also, a complaint from NHS England, and two irate phone calls from other doctors, informing me I shouldn’t make any negative comments about vaccines
For those in other countries, or who don’t know about such things, doctors in the UK are ruled by many different organisations, all of whom feel able to make judgement and hand down various sanctions. The deadliest of them, the Spanish Inquisition if you like, is the GMC, who can strike you off the medical register and stop you working as a doctor. They have great power, with no oversight.
Prior to this, I had been phoned by, and attacked by, two journalists and a couple of fact-checking organisations that have sprung up which can decide your guilt or innocence with regard to any information about Covid-19. Of course, no one can check the fact-checkers. They are the self-appointed guardians of ‘truth’. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – indeed. Who does guard the guardians?
In truth they have not scared me off, just greatly annoyed me. The problem is that if they really decide to hunt you down, then you are wiped from the system. Dr. Joseph Mercola, the American alternative medicine proponent, is, for example, having to remove information from his site in great haste. Once wiped from the internet, it becomes very difficult for anyone to read anything you write or listen to anything you say. It is a major problem if this is how one makes a living.
I was removed from Wikipedia a couple of years ago, but I do have a couple of insulting pages on Rational W to take their place. Edited and controlled by – who knows?
I think it is the extreme wing of the vegan party who decided to wipe me from Wikipedia and write the Rational W slights. I say this because a large number of other people I know who are critical of the diet-heart hypothesis, those who dared to suggest that eating animal products is perfectly healthy, were also obliterated from Wikipedia at pretty much the same time.
I did rather like the idea of Wikipedia when it started, but it has been taken over by people, some may say zealots, with their own agendas. This is particularly true of a few scientific areas I am particularly interested in. Diet, heart disease and Covid-19.
Frustratingly, there is nothing you can do if Wikipedia decides to wipe you out. There is no appeal. Those who have gained the power to edit Wikipedia are answerable to no one. They rule their little empires with absolute power. They are, of course, exactly the sort of people who should have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with science. Their minds were made up years ago. They have agendas, they are the anti-science, anti-scientist brigade.
The main purpose of science is to question and attack. To subject ideas to the greatest scrutiny. Those who decide to shut down and stifle debate – whatever they may believe themselves to be doing – are, in fact, traitors to the cause of science. Stranglers of the enlightenment, assassins of progress.
They are not alone, and things have gotten far worse in the past year or so. Science has taken a terrible battering during Covid-19, though I have always known that dissent against a widely held scientific hypothesis is difficult.
Just trying to get published is a nightmare. The peer-review system is one of the many weapons used against innovative thinking. ‘Let’s see what the current experts think of this new idea which threatens to overturn everything they have researched and taught over the last 30 years, and have built their reputations on… I wonder if they will like it and approve it?’
Experts certainly create a formidable barrier to change. As described by David Sackett, a founding father of evidence-based medicine, in his article, ‘The sins of expertness and a proposal for redemption’:
“… It then dawned on me that experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.
“The second sin of expertness is committed on grant applications and manuscripts that challenge the current expert consensus. Reviewers face the unavoidable temptation to accept or reject new evidence and ideas, not on the basis of their scientific merit, but on the extent to which they agree or disagree with the public positions taken by experts on these matters.”
And his remedy:
“But there are still far more experts around than is healthy for the advancement of science. Because their voluntary retirement does not seem to be any more frequent in 2000 than it was in 1980, I repeat my proposal that the retirement of experts be made compulsory at the point of their academic promotion and tenure.”
Expertise is great. ‘Experts’… well, that is a completely different matter. We certainly have a few formidable ones kicking about with Covid-19. In the UK, we have the great and good of the SAGE committee made up of – who knows? – and chosen for whatever reasons. They wield enormous power, and never disagree on anything. In the US, we have Fauci and the CDC. Ditto.
In the background we have the World Health Organisation (WHO)… who can tell you what way the wind is blowing if nothing else. They remind me of Groucho Marx’s famous comment. “These are my principles. And you if you don’t like them… I have others.” However, we at the WHO would like to make it clear that nothing about Covid-19 has anything to do with China, in any way. Can we have more money please?
Anyway, where are we with this virus, and with science?
In my opinion, Covid-19 succeeded in breaking my last vestiges of faith in medical scientific research. I cannot believe anything I read. I accept no mainstream facts or figures.
We are told such utter nonsense. For example, the ‘fact’ that vaccination protects against Covid-19 more effectively than having had the disease itself… This is just utter nonsense.
We were told that the virus was spread by touching contaminated surfaces… Really? We were told it spread through droplets, not aerosols. Which is the most complete garbage. We were told that everyone has to wear a mask. We were told it could easily be passed on by asymptomatic people. Based on nothing at all. I could go on.
Yet, no one seems remotely bothered by any of this nonsense. The public seems to lap it up, and attack anyone who questions the current narrative. I feel that I am clinging onto a dying religion. The religion of Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment, as set out here:
“Baconian method, methodical observation of facts as a means of studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This essentially empirical method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, as a scientific substitute for the prevailing systems of thought, which, to his mind, relied all too often on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.
“After first dismissing all prejudices and preconceptions, Bacon’s method, as explained in Novum Organum (1620; ‘New Instrument’), consisted of three main steps: first, a description of facts; second, a tabulation, or classification, of those facts into three categories – instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees; third, the rejection of whatever appears, in the light of these tables, not to be connected with the phenomenon under investigation and the determination of what is connected with it.”
This way of thinking, it seems, lasted from 1620 to 2020. 400 years of immense scientific progress. The age of enlightenment. We are moving back to the prevailing systems of thought… to fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science.
The Dark Ages are returning.
Tales from the Conspiratum 