Stanford Declares “The Science” instead of Engaging in the Scientific Method

This is an excerpt from article by highly regarded Stanford Researcher, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, whose account was shut down by Twitter, recently restored. An excerpt:

About a year later, after historian Phil Magness made a FOIA request, I learned a part of the story of how the U.S. government-sponsored propaganda campaign against the GBD came into being. Four days after we wrote the GBD, Francis Collins, the geneticist and lab scientist who was then the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, wrote an email to Anthony Fauci, the immunologist and lab scientist who is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the email, Collins called Martin, Sunetra, and me “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a devastating public takedown. The attacks on the three of us, aided by the cooperation of supposedly private social media platforms like Twitter, were launched shortly after Collins sent that email.

But this is not an article about the ethics of social media companies whose profits depend to a large extent on the friendliness of government regulators and whose employees may see themselves as partisan political activists. This is a critique of our best universities, which are supposed to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge—yet which turn out to be no different than government propagandists and private corporations in their self-seeking, amoral behavior.

. . . .

Stanford failed to meet the higher standard of positive academic freedom, which would have required it to promote an environment where faculty members engage with each other respectfully despite fierce disagreement.

. . . .

The irony in this idea of “science” as a set of sacred doctrines and beliefs is that the Age of Enlightenment, which gave us our modern definitions of scientific methodology, was a reaction against a religious clerisy that claimed for itself the sole ability to distinguish truth from untruth. The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth.

The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did. Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.

The title to the article: "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test: For America’s new clerisy, scientific debate is a danger to be suppressed."

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California School District Teaches Sex Confusion to Students and Hides it from Parents

In these videos, seven concerned parents and a former student step up to the microphone to express their concerns about gender ideology at Davis Joint Unified School District in California. In the past couple weeks, I have viewed similar parent/school-board videos from about five other public school districts. My prediction is that in 2023 we will be seeing dozens of lawsuits filed by parents against schools based on gender ideology.

I have first-hand knowledge of two concerned parents indicating that their kids' schools tell students that they might have been born in the wrong body, and where teachers and counselors hide from parents that children are being called a new name at school unbeknownst to parents and hidden from the official school records. I don't know how often this kind of thing is going on, but it is happening in more than a few districts. I share the parents' outrage that a school would engage in this behavior and/or hide this type of information from parents. Note that the first speaker at this link, Erin Friday, identifies herself as a democrat and a licensed attorney. There are enormous numbers of people who consider themselves liberal (I am one of them) who are aghast at what some of these schools are doing to students and parents.

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Michael Shellenberger’s Concern with Nihilism

Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Michael Shellenberger. The first third of the interview has been released. I highly recommend watching/listening/reading it. Shellenberger once identified as a liberal, but now he declares himself an independent, taking good ideas wherever he finds them and rejecting bad ideas. I agree with much of what he has to say in this part of the interview. Here is an excerpt from the interview where Shellenberger argues that a big part of our problem is nihilism:

Michael: I'm really interested in defending the pillars of civilization and the pillars of civilization are, as I see it, cheap, abundant energy, law and order, and meritocracy. My first book, Apocalypse Never, addresses the attack on abundant and cheap energy. San Fransicko describes the attack on law and order and meritocracy. You start attacking those pillars of civilization and you just don't have a civilization left anymore

Tucker: Can you repeat those?

Michael: Cheap energy, law and order, and meritocracy. All three are under attack in a really systematic way. This is why I find myself as somebody that's traditionally been on the left and is now independent. I see what conservatives are doing and the role of conservatives as important. They have the role of defending civilization. The role of the left has always been to demand change and push for change. And in some cases, I support that. But, right now, you see that the left has gone so far that even more moderate liberals have been radicalized and are undermining the bases of our civilization.

Tucker: But the alternative to civilization — and I've seen glimpses of it a couple of times — is so horrifying. It’s the total domination of the week by the strong. A 15-year-old with an automatic rifle can rape, can do whatever he wants, and you have no power. We spent millennia trying to build an alternative to that and we now have it. Why would you ever want to revert to the 15-year-old with the automatic weapon being in charge?

Michael: That's maybe the most important question of our time. And it's not an academic question.

Tucker: It’s a very practical question! And there are parts of the world where there's no civilization. I have personally seen them so I know. You can just buy a plane ticket and go there if you're interested. Why would anybody want that?

Michael: That is a huge question. I think one question is, “Do the people who are undermining civilization really want that? Do they know what they want?” To some extent, I think they do. But where all of my work has led me, and this is where my third book is going, is that what we're dealing with — and it's a bit of jargon, but I can't figure out how else to say it — a crisis of nihilism, meaning that as people stop believing in traditional religion, as people stop believing in God, they start to adopt new religions.

Nihilism has two meanings that are related. The first is that life has no purpose or value. We're just like animals. We're born, we reproduce, and we die. There's no point to any of it. And so it doesn't really matter what you do. You're not going to be judged at the end of your life to determine whether you go to heaven or hell. So that's the first nihilism. But then this turns people toward a kind of will-to-power. It turns into a desire to feel powerful, which itself is just a kind of hedonism when you get right down to it.... And it’s not just from the radical activists. We see it among elite media basically saying, “Unless we go back to pre-industrial energy sources, we're going to end up in a climate apocalypse.” They've constructed a new apocalyptic religion out of nihilism. I think that is what's driving this crisis of civilization. It’s a crisis of nihilism that arguably began a couple of hundred years ago....

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The LSAT has Become an Inconvenient Truth

Wilfred Reilly is a political scientist whose research focuses on empirical testing of political claims. I've followed him for a long time. He follows the facts where they lead. This time, the topic is the extremely sudden demise of the LSAT. This time, Reilly's topic is the extremely sudden demise of the LSAT, which happened just as it became likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will clamp down on affirmative action.

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Tulsi Gabbard Blasts Gender Ideology

Tulsi Gabbard now has a show. In this episode, Gabbard makes a powerful case that many teachers and medical professionals are betraying and permanently harming our children. The first 12 minutes of this video including video of many of these professionals spouting dangerous gender ideology. This includes several doctors who work at Boston Children's Hospital.

At minute 12, Tulsi talks with Chloe Cole, a young women who got caught up in gender ideology, At the encouragement of others, she came to believe that she was a boy named Leo at the age of 13. Two years later, she underwent a double mastectomy. After the surgery, Chloe felt a deep sense of regret. On November 10, Chloe announced that she had secured attorneys to bring a lawsuit against those who misled her.

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