One of the things you’re sick of reading, and I’m tired of writing, is that if there is such a thing as Official Disinformation, there must necessarily be Official Truth, and that there must be an agency or agencies in charge of creating, promulgating, and policing these.
We also predicted that the task could be handled in whole by the government, the bureaucracy being so large, but that because our culture is saturated in scientism, the government would seek the patina of Science on all Official Truth. Thus some of the work on Official Disinformation and Official Truth (OD and OT) would be farmed out to unversities.
That prediction has verified.
With a cacophony of scientific voices on social media – some well informed, others crackpot – establishing scientific consensus on key issues is proving more difficult than ever. But a project led by Durham University academics may soon have the answer to that thorny question of what can be confidently called a “scientific fact”.
Under a scheme headed by Peter Vickers, co-director of Durham’s Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society, scientists from across the world will be emailed to give their view on issues on which opinion appears to be split. Results from the polls, which seek to reach as many as 100,000 scientists at a time, will be shared to help the public gauge the true level of consensus on contested topics.
It’s hard not to laugh, so don’t try holding it in, when you learn of the name of this to-be-created agency: Institute for Ascertaining Scientific Consensus.
The scientism manifests in assuming a “scientific consensus” exists and is desirable, and that consensuses would become the OTs, where departures, outside narrow windows, as we’ll see in a moment, would be ODs.
It should also be obvious (by now) that the panel of scientists chosen to vote on ODs and OTs matters.
Dissent from a small number of scientists can often give a false perception of the strength of scientific consensus on an issue, as shown in the 1960s and 1970s when tobacco companies sponsored doctors and scientists to question smoking’s link to cancer, [Vickers] said.
“If this institute had existed when science was battling against Big Tobacco, even if tobacco firms had produced 100 scientists casting doubt on the cancer link, we could have showed they were still a very small minority,” explained Professor Vickers.
Ah.
The criticism that voting does not prove Truth is obvious. But it should be just as obvious that voting to prove Official Truths is going to be accepted, and even welcomed with relief. Especially in a culture that votes on morality.
We only have a vague idea who the mandarins will be:
The project will be piloted this year, but scientists from six continents have already agreed to support the initial trial phase – with Jim Al-Khalili, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Surrey and presenter of BBC’s The Life Scientific, among dozens of leading scientists who have agreed to be part of its advisory board.
Now I will not question the purity of Vickers’s heart: he may well be curious what scientists think on various topics, and no one denies there are things to be learned from the range of opinions.
But let me make a guess of what shape this effort will take, assuming it does not die aborning, as so many things do.
Scientists at various respected universities and research institutes will be asked, and some will serve. And the range of opinions of some topics will initially show broad, but constrained, variability. Because Western universities are devoted to DIE, it will not be recognized that the initial panel will already be somewhat corrupted, having only scientists will survive the DIE.
Soon enough, it will be discovered not enough Official Victims are on the panel. This will be rectified, further corrupting the panel in ways you don’t need me to describe.
In areas not affected by the DIE, whoever is in charge will either bully, or be bullied, to corral panel members, in order to show more unity on “important” questions. Likely this will be things like vaccines and “climate crisis.”
Scientists who have questioned publicly, or who are suspected not to hold with, consensuses will be not be included at the outset. Those who manage to sneak in, will find themselves removed. Unless they can fashion themselves into scientific David Frenches (“While it’s important to see the difference, in the end we must bow to superior numbers”).
I wouldn’t bet against me. We have seen this very trajectory already many times, and each instance “fact checkers” are created.
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Malice or stupidity or both. I think it’s malice on the part of the government and stupidity on the part of the scientists involved. How any vaguely intelligent person can imagine this is reasonable beggars belief.
You cannot have a religion such as Scientism without an official truth. I-ASC for the “truth” and you shall receive. Powered by DIE(!), I expect I-ASC will be unassailably infallible from the start. I wonder what the punishment for heresy will be…
Is it a coincidence OT and OD bear an uncanny resemblance to OG? ;-b
I-FASCist is a proper name for anyone participating in this endeavor.
Thought experiment: lets assume, there is an all knowing instance, you may call it God or whatever. And scientists are asked to present what they think are undeniable truths/facts in their field of research. They are told that they’d get instantly liquidated if they give even one wrong answer.
I wonder, what would be left of todays body of “knowledge” in climate science, for instance.
Vicky is a hackademic from a junior college. It’s shuddering to see how puny and wan is the ivory tower. More like a sheep shed guarded by coyotes.
The Truth will put up for a vote by a panel of charlatans? Yuk yuk yuk
Contrary to the belief of many, and I don’t assume to know more, but leave it as an avenue of further inquiry, I believe that the worst is not the state or government — I think the people that pose as scientists are worse, are essentially broken, evil *and* stupid. If the class as a whole stepped up and spoke their minds as real academics, scientists, or what not, the state would not have any more excuses than the use of blunt force. Maintaining the situation as it is, the tentacles will spread and soon we will all be crushed. The worst part is that your eventual killer will be your neighbor, not the state police, because the latter will be using essentially the former, and not as an employee, such as was the case in East Germany. The little sweet girls in Med School are more dangerous than the goons employed by the state.
A panel of 100,000 Experts casting votes via email? What could possibly go wrong?
Since survey response is apparently to be voluntary (or non-anonymous) believers will be much more likely to respond than non-believers.
The best way to do it is just to rip the band-aid off. When you realize most of the top
people in government are controlled by blackmail and policies like this are designed by
the owners the real world comes into view. The ‘if I say it three times it’s true’ world
of despotism.
The TRUTH About Jeffrey Epstein w/ Whitney Webb | PBD Podcast | Ep. 198
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVHWVoZ4kU
Science via email poll of academics who are all leftists who will automatically vote for whatever the current leftist narrative is on every issue. The mainstream news media, naturally, will follow along mindlessly. Leftists everywhere are wagging their tails and peeing themselves in delight. Every question will now be officially settled.
Our wonderful Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that will punish medical doctors who dare speak outside the lines of Official Government Covid Narrative. As he never lets us forget, California is the leader.
Whenever you see “consensus” and “science” together you know you’re being fed propaganda, because science doesn’t operate from consensus. If it did, we’d still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, and Galileo would have been cancelled.
I’ll do you one better!
We also need a lost of Official Mysteries!
Things that must officially remain unanswerable and unsolvable by any rational discipline; only reverenced in awe, whose depths of infinity cannot be constrained by definitions, and accepted dogmatically.
Such as:
1. What is a woman?
2. How did Jeffery Epstein’s kill himself?
3. Does the national debt have an actual ceiling?
4. How did all those traders during 9/11 get so lucky?
5. Where did Saddam Hussein hide all those WMD?
6. Why is Joe Biden the most popular President in history?
7. How did Benedict XVI separate the Papal ministerium from the munus?
8. Why did Russia blow up its own pipeline?
9. Where did the fighter aircraft tailing Flight MH-17 come from?
10. How did Syrian chemical weapons fail to hurt anyone? Were they manufactured as badly as Russia’s Novochik?
And more!
Golly, Professor Briggs….If a kid wants to find out if there’s a man in the moon, or if those space aliens are real, who’s he gonna ask?
https://youtu.be/mSiJy3kJzPg
Actually e-mailing 100,000 people and getting reliable responses seems like it would be a huge pain logistically. More likely they will send 100,000 people a link to a poll, probably a basic one with no protection against multiple votes and thus which can be trivially gamed.
But assuming that they do actually e-mail people individually and verify the responses as coming from actual scientists, everyone in academia knows such answers will be used for reprisals. For example if they ask biologists “are transwomen biologically real women?” they know that if they say “no” they can expect their dean/provost/etc. to be contacted about their “hateful views.” Even if this is not actively done each time the threat is still there and the benefit for giving an honest vote is basically nil, so the threat itself is sufficient to provide the “correct” responses.