Follow the science, p.32
Follow the Science, page 32
Chapter 16
New Beginnings
Carvey and Spade
When popular culture icons start lampooning the government’s Covid missteps, you know a chord has been struck. At the end of June 2023, comic entertainers Dana Carvey and David Spade engaged in a satirically titled “We Miss Covid” segment in their #FlyOnTheWall podcast.
Carvey: I miss Covid.
Spade: I know. Dude, dude! You know when I knew there was trouble? When anyone that came to our country didn’t have to get a vaccine. And I go, “If you’re telling me I can’t go to work, but everyone coming in doesn’t have to get one?”
Carvey: Well . . . when Fauci said [imitates Fauci voice:], “Okay, I’m sorry, if you’ve had two boosters and two vaccines, you can get and give Covid to another guy who’s had five vaccines and four boosters. . . . (It’s just more vaccine but ‘booster’ sounds better.) Anyway, a guy with 25 vaccines would get and give Covid to another guy with 25 vaccines. That’s why I’m introducing the daily Covid shot. Every day, you get a shot. By the time you get to your car, you got no immunity. But it’s a beautiful 39 seconds!
Well, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. As you finish this book, I suggest there are two key takeaways.
First, the ethics lapses and fraud that happened during Covid—from the cover-up of its origins, to mismanagement of treatments, to the disaster of the vaccines—are on a scale larger than the world has ever seen before. We will be living with the aftereffects for the rest of our lives and, I’m afraid, so will our children and theirs. Just as with America’s series of financial crises, those who created and profited from the systems that broke down seem to still be there running things. Not a single public health official has made so much as a mea culpa, given an apology, or even made a public acknowledgment that they were mistaken about the disease or vaccines. In other words: they’d do it all again. In the same way that the CDC made the farcical conclusion that its primary sin was just being too science-based, the official “lookbacks” of policy mistakes and misbehavior tend to deflect from the real issues. Congress had some hearings and left it at that. Nobody has been held responsible. No action taken. The need to dismantle and rebuild the CDC and, arguably, our entire public health structure, was conceded by even some of CDC’s staunchest supporters. But those reforms didn’t materialize. And the CDC, NIH, HHS, and FDA continue to receive collective billions of dollars in budget increases each year to help them accomplish more of the same.
The second takeaway is that all of this has prompted a call to action that’s louder than most any before. More people are coming to understand that the perversion of science impacts virtually every aspect of our health. It’s why chronic illnesses are running amok under the watch of the best-funded public health system on the planet. Why our government allows (and even mandates) that we eat food adulterated with cancer-causing chemicals, hormone disruptors, neurotoxins, and other poisons. We feed it to our children at home, and they’re fed more of it at school. It’s why our meat and fish contain harmful additives. Why our water is deemed safe to drink when it actually contains pesticides and other chemicals, and medicine that’s leached in after being excreted into sewers from our overmedicated population. In this way, males are drinking water tainted with birth control medication, women are sipping on unnatural testosterone, and nearly all of us are inadvertently consuming some level of antidepressants, statins, diabetes medicine—whatever the population at large is ingesting. And none of this seems of concern to our government. In what noncorrupt world does this make any sense?
It’s also why, when anomalies surface, such as the spike in autism or gender confusion, the cry to learn what could be causing them is muffled by industries seeking to normalize and deflect from the true sources.
Americans are increasingly depressed, fat, infertile, unfocused, and medicated. Among comparable developed nations, we’re taking the most pills, paying the most for our medical care, and growing the sickest. Yet it’s as if our health experts don’t notice what’s right in front of their noses. They remain hyperfocused on collaborating with the insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical interests that are getting rich off our poor health.
Doctors toil away in their stovepiped specialties, rely on propaganda passed off as medical studies and public health guidance, and shrug their shoulders when an illness baffles them. By design, they lack the time or curiosity to figure out what’s really causing diseases like cancer or autism, and remain eager to pump out the latest pill or injection.
We’re suckers. We continue to fund the broken system with record amounts of our tax money, while there never seems to be follow-through on serious oversight of the industries that give so generously to our media and politicians.
Fortunately, there are some tangible things you can start doing today to become well positioned to get at the facts.
There are steps you can take to expose the distorted medical system.
There are ways to fight back.
What follows is some practical guidance for truth-seekers looking for information rather than spin, and who are searching for honest scientific guidance when it can be elusive, ever-evolving, and always managed by unseen forces. I’m including specific sources for you to consider, as well as suggested actions that can help you become part of the solution.
Practical Guidance for Truth-Seekers
Assess the Track Record
Some rules that apply to divining truth in science are the same as those used to separate wheat from chaff in today’s warped news landscape, as I’ve outlined at length in previous work.
One of the best strategies for success in each scenario is to identify who’s proven accurate on key points in the recent past. For example, we now have the benefit of hindsight to see who was correct on fundamental controversies during Covid. I now give greater weight to those voices when they speak on emerging health issues, and I suggest you consider doing the same. Conversely, greater skepticism should be applied to the authorities who proved incorrect. While this may sound obvious, if you examine the post-Covid landscape, you’ll see that many in media and medicine continue to illogically reference and quote the same authorities that gave the worst, most damaging advice. Big tech companies and fake fact-checkers in the media are still advancing the pharma-government line and suppressing dissenting information. Google and the other information manipulators are still finding billions of dollars to fund dishonest propaganda of untold proportions. Unreliable sources are relentlessly pushed on us from every direction. So, it’s not always simple to sort through the noise.
Question the Prevailing Narrative
Along those lines, there are many sources you can consult specifically because the truth is frequently the opposite of what they claim. That can reveal a lot, too! When highly publicized “fact checks” and public health officials all seem to be saying the same thing, it’s often a sign that the invisible hand of powerful interests is at work. Those interests seek to dismiss information they see as damaging and change the narrative. When so many in the media were disparaging hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as Covid treatments, and smearing the doctors, researchers, and officials on that side, it meant to me that these drugs could actually have serious potential. It led me to dig into the question of: Who wouldn’t want people exploring the potential for these treatments and why? During early Covid, when it seemed as if so many sick people were being put on ventilators and dying, our health officials were at a loss for what else to do, yet continued to press the same strategy. It meant to me that we probably ought to be doing something else. When the CDC changed overnight from saying that Covid isn’t harmful to children, to insisting that all kids should be given experimental Covid shots; and when the media promoted this nonsense without so much as asking obvious, logical questions, it meant to me that something was up. These are commonsense thoughts that you may have had too. Trust them. It’s easy to begin doubting yourself and your cognitive dissonance when you’re surrounded by people who constantly insist that up is down. But their tactics only work if you buy into the fantasy.
Another way to identify questionable sources is by paying attention to the types of arguments they use. Do they advocate for censorship? If you’re under age thirty, you may not realize that the drive to censor certain people and ideas en masse is a relatively new one here in America. Historically, censorship was seldom overtly promoted because it’s contrary to the values under which the country was founded. Our forefathers specifically sought to eradicate tyranny over free speech, the kind of tyranny that had grown commonplace in England. Until not long ago, Americans were guided by the notion that bad ideas should be countered with better ideas—not censorship. More importantly, the government was constitutionally forbidden from having a role in defining the supposedly “bad” ideas and suppressing them. Otherwise, corrupt leaders would have the power to drown out dissent and oppress challengers.
But today, we know that American government leaders have interfered in our constitutional freedoms in the most invasive ways, then awarded themselves impunity. They’ve corrupted science, and crafted laws and public policies that enrich special interests. Then, the violators acquit themselves of their crimes.
In short, remember that the censors are never the good guys. Today, when a political figure, fact-checker, or other information source seeks to censor, you should take it to mean the censored item may be worth your consideration. The same is true when an information source spends a lot of effort smearing people or groups rather than countering their ideas with different, well-argued ideas. And lastly, those who attempt to shut down discussion by claiming “the science is settled” are almost surely spouting propaganda. No real scientist uses the term “settled science” or shuts down discussion on scientific topics, where knowledge is constantly evolving.
Identify Propaganda Terms
If you take notice, you’ll find that propagandists frequently reveal themselves through their use of hallmark terms. Look to see whether a scientific information source is using key buzzwords. We can assume the terms are chosen because some PR guru somewhere discovered they tested as most effective at swaying public opinion. Examples include claiming a scientific idea or researcher is “discredited,” “bogus,” “debunked,” “quackery,” “shoddy,” “lies,” “pseudoscience,” “disgraced,” “a conspiracy theory,” or “a myth.” Propagandists may refer to their targets as “nutty,” “nutjobs,” “baseless,” “cranks,” “kooks,” “quacks,” “anti-,” “deniers,” “hesitant,” or “-phobic.” They may claim “science” is “settled.” Visit RespectfulInsolance.com for an exemplary case of a propaganda website that makes liberal use of these terms. Just for kicks, try conducting a Google search for the word “discredited” or “debunked.” See which news sources use those terms a lot, and what they’re discussing.
Be Skeptical of Narrative Dominance
Another way to identify false narratives and bad sources is by seeing what seems to be dominating in the media, on social media, and on the news. When you conduct an Internet search for health or scientific information, note how suspiciously homogeneous the results are. Be skeptical when there are dozens of “fact checks” of the same “facts,” and when they use similar language and phrases, always reaching the same conclusions on matters of debate. Be wary when they try to tell you that something in dispute is not in dispute. Be aware when a person or idea they claim is “controversial” is only controversial because they made it so. The odds are zero that so many writers and journalists would independently draw the same conclusions and use similar language at the same time over and over again. So when you see these patterns, it suggests an orchestrated effort. It should lead you to wonder who would want you to think that way, and why. You should consider the possibility that valid scientific counterpoints or facts are being suppressed.
Broaden Your Consumption
Please note that I’m not suggesting you cut out sources of information. Quite the opposite. Broaden your dragnet rather than shrink it. It’s a matter of how you use the sources. You’ll actually find yourself best informed if you continue to absorb slanted information pushed out daily so that you can compare it against better sources. Staying versed on false narratives dispatched by the usual suspects will make it easier for you to identify trustworthy information.
The Best Medical Propagandists
Now that you’re armed with some basic strategies for ferreting out good information, here are a few examples of propaganda sources that have proven reliably unreliable. Their sketchy track records teach us that when they “fact-check” or make a claim, it’s worth considering the opposite of what they say as possibly true.
Wikipedia’s health-related content is among the most frequently pushed and accessed in the world. Google consistently ranks Wikipedia pages high in search results and features Wikipedia’s spin on medical topics. Since the popular “digital assistants” Siri and Alexa use Google, and Google refers to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is ubiquitous. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one of the most prolific purveyors of propaganda and misinformation on matters of science and health. That’s because those writing articles and doing the policing have conflicts of interest. For example, under Wikipedia’s policies, biographies are supposed to be written “responsibly, cautiously, and in a dispassionate tone, avoiding both understatement and overstatement” and should “document in a non-partisan manner what reliable secondary sources have published about the subjects.” But in practice, biographies of people who are off-the-pharmaceutical industry narratives on health issues tend to be viciously slanted in ways that violate Wikipedia’s policies. Yet the behavior goes unpunished and uncorrected. When biographies of controversial health figures, such as the vaccine industry’s Dr. Paul Offit, are filled with glowing accolades, and when they omit serious mention of controversies and missteps, it typically means paid interests or people with strong ideologies are controlling the page. Likewise, Wikipedia’s anonymous agenda editors control pages on health topics that further one-sided and inaccurate information. Pharmaceutical representatives have gotten caught editing Wikipedia topics under pseudonyms to promote their company’s medicine, “debunk” side effects, and attack competitors. When Wikipedia tells you something medical-related is “debunked,” it may well mean the thing is actually true. When Wikipedia tells you somebody is “known for promoting” a “debunked” treatment or idea, take that to mean the treatment or idea may actually work. There are active propaganda efforts to make people think that Wikipedia’s health information is unbiased and wholly reliable. But in practice, under the current model, that can never be the case.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/Merck’s Dr. Paul Offit, and Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Peter Hotez have been some of the most-quoted and profuse propagandists speaking on the side of pharmaceutical interests. Even as they’ve frequently proven wrong or made false and libelous statements, the media continually returns to dip into the same well of disinformation. When these figures go on the warpath about a topic or against a person, the record teaches us that they may be covering for an uncomfortable truth.
A host of blogs, bloggers, and websites are on a daily mission to disseminate a singular narrative on health questions. Some of these sources use words like “science” and “skeptic” in their titles to try to convey a patina of credibility. You can count on them to sing from the same song sheet and smear those who dissent. They take the industry side in any discussion as if the non-industry views could never, under any circumstances, possibly have merit. They also claim to know the definitive truth on emerging health issues that nobody could have the final word on. Your instincts should tell you that whatever position they’re taking, the opposite may be true. Here are some examples, though some of these propaganda sites have changed their names over time or moved on to the job of spinning on other health topics: Autism News Beat; Autism Science Foundation; HealthPartners.com; Left Brain Right Brain; Media Matters; Respectful Insolence, Retraction Watch, Science Based Medicine, and ScienceBlogs (David Gorski/“Orac”); The Science Post; Sense About Science; SethMnookin; Skepchick; Skeptical Raptor; The Vaccine Blog; Voices for Vaccines; The Vaccine Mom; Popsci; The Skeptic’s Dictionary; The Skeptical OB; and Quackwatch.
Sadly, today, you can put most news and quasi-news sources in the category of those that should not be taken at face value on health matters. It doesn’t mean that every article they publish is wrong or that all their reporters are bad. In fact, many organizations that rank among the worst offenders for health misinformation also have some very good reporters who work there. But those reporters are inevitably drowned out by their publication’s indefensible editorial slant. Don’t assume you are getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from these frequently biased sources: The Atlantic, CNN, Daily Beast, Daily Kos, Forbes, Fortune, The Hill, Huffington Post, Intelligencer, Mediaite, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, MSNBC, New York, New York Times, Politico, Salon, Slate, Talking Points Memo, USA Today, Vaxopedia, Vox, or Washington Post.
Academic, journalism, and government bodies; professional associations; nonprofits; “fact-checkers”; and “patient groups” have all been created or co-opted by propagandists on a massive scale, as we’ve discussed. For example, the American Cancer Society receives an undisclosed amount of funding from the very industries that make products that can cause cancer. Patient groups like “Vaccinate Your Family” are arguably fronts for pharmaceutical interests. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) furthers industry propaganda on nearly every health controversy you can name. So do universities, academic groups, and nonprofits that receive funding from special interests to conduct “fact-checks” or produce “media literacy efforts” and create “media resources” that always take the side of the pharmaceutical industry and frequently distribute misinformation. Some of the offenders include the FDA, the CDC, the World Health Organization, Annenberg Public Policy Center, American Heart Association, Credibility Coalition, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, Center for Countering Digital Hate, Columbia University, Duke Reporters’ Lab, Facebook Journalism Project, Facebook’s Lead Stories, FactCheck.org, Google and Google News Initiative, Health Feedback/Science Feedback, Health Policy Watch, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, International Fact Checking Network, Knight Foundation, Medscape, PolitiFact, Poynter, Snopes, the University of Pennsylvania and many other academic institutions, WebMD, Verify or VerifyThis.com, and YouTube, to name but a few. Many of these groups claim to be unbiased, neutral, science-based, or fair—but remember, there’s no law that requires propagandists to describe themselves honestly and accurately. Just because they say they’re something doesn’t make it true.
