Misuse of science to impose ideology

Tal Bachman writes,

What about Covid science over the past eighteen months? From Anthony Fauci on down, public health authorities around the Anglosphere have lied—or at least, been starkly wrong about—almost everything to do with this virus. That includes everything from how the virus originated, to how its home lab was funded, to the public health benefits of restricting travel from Wuhan, the lethality of the virus, the efficacy of masks, the efficacy of the vaccines, whether children and adolescents need vaccines, the efficacy of various non-vaccine treatment and therapy options (see also here), the efficacy of lockdowns, the human costs of lockdowns (see also here), the accuracy of the Covid hospitalization and death numbers, the possibilities of vaccine passports and mandates, the risks of the vaccines, and pretty much everything else you can think of.

Also disturbing is the fact that, to this day, science—at least throughout the Anglosphere—still has no substantive standard treatment protocol for anyone who contracts Covid. Test positive, and odds are your doctor will only say, "Go home and quarantine. Call us if you start losing your ability to breathe"—after which they'll put you on a hospital ventilator, which will probably finish you off (see also here). You probably won't hear a single word about the well-established antiviral effects of medicines like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. You might even hear them maligned, even though they are two of the safests, and most effective, medicines ever developed.

In fact, you'd win money if you bet that the entire "scientific" establishment would declare war on every non-vaccine Covid treatment and therapy which ever emerges. After all, that's no more than they've done so far with hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, and various antioxidants, all of which aid recovery if administered early enough. But no—for most in the scientific establishment, only a vaccine will do, the end. And perhaps not so coincidentally, "vaccines only" is precisely the position which most financially benefits vaccine manufacturers. Hm.

What about decades of science's nearly-unanimous recommendation of a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet? You know, the diet which told you that margarine was better for you than butter; Cool Whip was better for you than whipped cream; and that everyday, you should eat up to eleven servings of "bread, cereal, rice, and pasta"?

Nearly every doctor, nutritionist, and researcher recommended that diet for years. The American Heart Association even published a pamphlet in 1995 asserting you could eat anything you wanted—including "hard candy, gum drops, sugar, jam, carbonated soft drinks", etc.—as long as it was low in fat. This authoritative, but lethally erroneous, scientific advice created the obesity epidemic, and by extension, the explosion of diseases like Type II diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, severe sleep apnea, kidney disease, and even certain varieties of cancer. It literally killed thousands. Yet that whole time, ample evidence suggested the diet was wrong. That didn't matter. Only other factors did.

One of those factors was money. By now, you might not be surprised to learn that the influential Harvard scientists who, starting in the late 1960s, began shaping scientific orthodoxy by downplaying the risks of sugar, pushing a high-carb diet, and eventually helping write the government's (malnutritious) Food Guide Pyramid—all contrary to the best nutritional evidence, even then—were the secretly paid shills of the sugar lobby. Those were the guys who set "scientific policy" on how we should best nourish our bodies. And we believed them.

I increasingly wonder to what extent science exists, as opposed to just scientists. That's not to say nothing can ever be known. Of course it can. The problem is that (estabishment) science seems, at best, far less a reliable source of knowledge and virtue than any of us would like to believe, and for that reason, its superiority as a guide to human life over the guides it has displaced—venerated tradition, religious teaching, common sense, scripture, and even "the best evidence available"—now seems genuinely doubtful. This feels especially true given that science doesn't seem to have any kind of reliable internal safeguard against its own hive mind acquiescence, indifference to truth, inhumane excess, saleability, or misuse of science to impose ideology.

appreciate beneficent scientific breakthroughs as much as the next guy. At the same time, I've come to wonder about Enlightenment optimism regarding knowledge, human rationality, science, and moral progress. I wonder about the Enlightenment elevation of scientists to the status of ultimate epistemic and moral authorities. And I wonder if having scientists serve as our culture's high caste of epistemic and moral authority, rather than some other type of person, is really optimal. They seem very co-optable. That's a danger when imperial Wokeness is on the march.

Read more here: https://www.steynonline.com/11725/tal-bachman-we-have-met-the-enemy-part-xxii