Bowing Down To The Science
By Paul Homewood
There’s a highly pertinent article in Canada’s Financial Post. It is inevitable about COVID in Canada, where the lockdowns seem to be just as draconian as here.
But every word could have been written about climate change as well:
In 2020, lockdown diktats from our chief medical officers reminded me of an old joke. A woman has died and is waiting in a long lineup at the Pearly Gates. When an old, bearded gentleman wearing a lab coat and stethoscope skips the line and gets ushered right in, the woman marches up to Saint Peter and demands an explanation. “Oh, that was God,” Peter tells her, “Sometimes he likes to play doctor.”
During this panic-demic, medical authority has become God-like. “Obey the science” has come to mean “Believe what we tell you and do as you are told.” Pronouncements from medical officials deserve skepticism, not because they are bad doctors or scientists, but because they have lost sight of the limits of their own expertise. They insist that because of COVID-19, you must not visit your family for Christmas and small businesses and restaurants must close. Yet these are not medical or scientific questions. Instead, they involve trade-offs: social, economic, psychological and political. Trade-offs reflect values, and values are not scientific. Scientific evidence may be relevant but never determinative.
Science is supposed to be in the business of neutral observation. In 1840, William Whewell described the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries as “the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man’s mind to a professed dependence upon external observation.” Scientific discovery challenged established belief. The sun does not, in fact, go around the Earth, and the world is not, in fact, flat. Skepticism and dissent, not consensus and authority, fuel scientific progress.
Yet the scientific establishment has come to stand on consensus and authority. It, not the Church, is now the despot. “Obey the science” is an anti-scientific sentiment wielded to achieve public compliance with political agendas. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. … It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science … Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others.”
Full article here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Using exactly the same framework of muddled data, “Following the science”, “scientific consensus”, virtue signalling (electric car or face cloth), deliberately mistaking association for causation and so on makes it easy to see that economic ruin is the not-so-hidden agenda. The IPCC said as much in a little-known subcommittee in 2010.
I must say that the two have become increasingly interchangeable over the last six months. The revelation that Ferguson’s advice was based entirely on a model created with dodgy code was immediately reminiscent of Mann’s hockey stick and there has been a lot of talk about using the ‘social control’ of the pandemic as a template for action on climate.
Very sinister.
According to an interview, the loathsome Prof Ferguson admitted that he was impressed by China’s draconian Lockdown restrictions, but didn’t think they would be allowed in the “West”. Sadly, as Italy showed, that notion was wrong – freedom as we used to know it is gone forever…
Mike, I bet Ferguson’s dodgy code would be completely recognisable to ‘HARRY-READ-ME’
😀
Every politician should read this article.
I have found it interesting that the green climate alarmists have been able to go right past the fact that the pandemic lockdowns were able to rapidly lower our carbon fuel emissions exactly as they keep asking for, but they seem to ignore the devastating social and economic effects all around them that are the direct result. Somehow, these experts seem to believe that continuation of that policy to reach zero emissions will not have the same results when the pandemic is under control. Head-in-the-sand science?
They also ignored that it had bugger all effect on global CO2.
What I found most pertinent was the comment that science should be a servant, not a master. Excellent article.
It is true that a Chinese style lockdown is difficult to replicate in free countries but you have to remember that in China they rapidly built isolation hospitals to separate Covid cases. The UK has not done this and as a result hospitals have been probably the major source of spreading the infection. There has been an admission of 10,000 nosocomial deaths due the failure to isolate cases and it is probably a lot more but they won’t want the true number to be published.
When some authorities tired of waiting for the legendary ‘world beating’ track & trace operation to work they did their own and found a majority of infection cases led back to hospitals and care homes. Even now there has been an admission that 25% of cases are coming from hospitals which now have lots of fresh cases to help them spread it.
Sadly Covid arrived at a time when we have the most incompetent government in recent times and all over the place the people running organisations are also incompetent and ignorant, even if they possess qualifications that say otherwise it would appear that promotion to the top job has rotted their brains.
Gerry, we may have the most incompetent government in recent times, but we voted for them. Unfortunately, we have no say on the most incompetent Civil Service of recent times – many with their own (green – and now, more often, Red) axe to grind.
In 1953/4 as a small child I had Scarlet Fever and spent 4 months in isolation hospital. The worst experience of my life, being desperately ill and separated from my family. My mother also caught it and was in for a short while during my stay. The experience left me with a hatred of the Tyrolean Hiking Song and a dislike of even visiting hospital.
But I’ve wondered why 70 years ago this was was standard practice for infectious diseases that could kill and today we seem to do the opposite and send infected people with a disease known to kill certain groups into those very same groups.
The other question is how could a country still recovering from a world war and still deeply in debt, with a housing problem manage and an NHS less than 10 years old be as well organised as to whip me off to an isolation hospital almost instantly and 70 years later we have to protect the NHS by not being ill
You’ve probably answered your own question!!
Deadly infectious diseases were so widespread in those days that isolation hospitals were the logical answer.
Nowadays, we have successfully conquered such diseases, so keeping loads of empty hospitals open, just in case something like COVID strikes, would be a huge waste of money
What we need is an explanation of why the whole freaking world went STUPID and became SHEEPLE all at once. “The Science” is some kind of magic term that induces mass idiocy??? I do not understand how the stupid occurred worldwide simultaneously. All humans became doormats, put on face diapers and locked themselves into their houses over a virus. Please, please, please, someone explain. Did our technology make us stupider than the cavemen or what???
“Did our technology make us stupider than the cavemen or what???”
I think technology HAS got a lot to do with it – the vast majority appear to have fallen for every government scare tactic going, helpfully promoted by social media. I wonder how many users realise that Twatter, Farcebook & Google are actively removing anything they deem to be “Misinformation”? In addition, the UK’s Ofcom have threatened the entire “Conventional” media with sanctions if they publish anything contrary to the “Official” narrative.
On the other hand, those of us who’ve watched the Climate Change scam unfold are wise to these tactics, complete with very similar insults & accusations being thrown at us by the believers…
Dave, I realised how the technology is dumbing down our next generation when my (mature) daughter asked me if I’d watched The Crown on Netflix. I said, no, I saw it live. It went straight over her head. She went on to tell me (and all present at the lunch) that she found it so interesting because it shone a light on the history of the Royal Family. Nothing I could say about how the writer had admitted to making up dialog and scenes would persuade her that she had not been learning true history.
That’s the future. History lessons will be whatever the owners of the Present want to make them.
Bowing to the faux-science…
What a lot of rubbish. Here you can find medical instruction for nurses and doctors given FREE for those who want lectures based on peer reviewed medical literature.
MedCram.com Dr Seheult. Lets not be misled by disgruntled old men who want to get out of their houses to go to the pub. You are playing with lives because you don’t have the humility to admit that you can profit from instruction. see Dr Thomas Sowell https://www.medcram.com/
https://www.tsowell.com/columns.htm
Wow M E. You’re in la la land.
MED CRAM is an accepted venue for CME (Continuing Medical Education) that physicians are required to take. I certainly hope they are getting it right. And as to Thomas Sowell, he’s one of the leading Conservative thinkers in the US.
Nothing “la la” about either.
Falling on deaf ears in the UK ‘…need to have a hunger for compliance ‘. L@@K and L$TEN what’s happening in Europe from 2021… The Remoaners wouldn’t want you to know all this. Pity our MSM is more occupied with American politics, etc instead. Good job we’re “ou” now, but looking forward… who knows where this derailed wagon is going.
Speaking of Canada….
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/police-show-home-quebec-neighbor-snitches-residents-illegally-gathering-drags-man-neck-video/
They don’t have police, they have gestapo.