PSEUDOSKEPTICISM

    Many readers probably wouldn't guess the personal anecdote that I'm about to share: but, believe it or not, I was actually born in farming country and spent most of my early childhood on/around farms. I actually saw phenomena like we hear described today in certain media dedicated to the 'paranormal': crop circles, mutilated cattle, footprints and signs of various supposed cryptids---and other quite a few unexplainable events. 

    These types of events always generated a lot of local controversy, and occasionally made the local TV news. It never quite got to the point where military units suddenly started showing up, but Forest Rangers and the USDA Extension Office were interviewed and the officials usually ended up shrugging their shoulders and flatly stated that they didn't have an explanation (We had a lot more truthful government back then). The TV Stations would always then interview the obligatory 'skeptic'---usually at some academic institution. I think that we all know the type: the smug smile, the condescending attitude, the beady eyes. It always seemed as though no matter how these people were filmed, they were always looking (literally) down their noses at the reporters. In case anyone is wondering, they mostly attributed such events to 'lightning' no matter how absurd such an explanation really was.

    Since the advent of the Internet, these types have proliferated: in fact, they've even expanded into a new sub-category known as fact-checkers. However much they boast of their 'objectivity' and 'critical thinking', there are two things that most Skeptics never doubt:

    1. Their own intellectual superiority to the rest of mankind; and 

    2. The so-called 'Scientific Consensus' regardless of how many other scientists dissent from the official narrative. 

    It's gotten so bad that even Rationalwiki has a whole section devoted to it. The article's worth a read despite the irony of it coming from a source that doesn't always follow some of the principles that the article itself advocates. 

  "The correct, though less common, use of the term "pseudoskepticism" refers to those who declare themselves merely "skeptical" of a concept, but in reality would not be convinced by any evidence...This essentially is cloaked Denialism as there is a vast amount of real evidence which these pseudoskeptics wilfully ignore. Saying 'I am skeptical of X' seems more reasonable than saying 'I don't accept X and never will regardless of the evidence', even if the latter is more accurate.

  "Real skeptics are always prepared to change their positions based on new evidence, consistent with the scientific method. An example is Einstein's Cosmological Constant, which has gone through a number of revisions as to whether it applies or not---thus making skeptics who changed their mind on that issue when the scientific consensus changed, prima facie real skeptics. Clearly, if people change their mind on a topic, that is a positive defense against an accusation that they will not change their mind on that topic."

   This definition is basically correct, but what it doesn't take into account is the corruption of scientific consensus which is rife in our times. The author seems to believe that the same criteria for a 'scientific consensus' that existed in Einstein's era exists in ours. Albert Einstein lived in a time when some of the greatest scientists were intellectual entrepreneurs, so to speak, and weren't even products of the university system. Comparing the Scientific Consensus of today with what existed in the 19th Century is like those Economists who compare our postmodern Corporate Oligarchs to the industrial and financial leaders of that period who started out as coal-stokers and bank clerks and ended up millionaire owners of steel plants and large banks. We don't live in a Meritocracy any longer, and the scientific field is no exception. 

   

     Since the end of the Second World War, scientific research increasingly has been tied to funding---primarily from the Government and today even more heavily upon Corporations and the front-groups they set up for such 'charitable' purposes. In the beginning this system had a legitimate purpose. As taxpayer-funded institutions, the Government often turned to the universities for their expertise in developing military technology, space-exploration, alternative energy systems, computing technology, etc. Private Corporations typically had their own Research and Development Divisions, but would occasionally hire university professors as consultants. 

   However, as time went on, politicians learned that they could tie funding for research to produce outcomes favorable to themselves or the Vested Interests whom they represented. Likewise, following the principles of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Corporatists found that they could eliminate R & D Departments and increase profits to their stakeholders by dropping hefty tax-deductible financial gifts upon Academia and get their work done at a much lower cost---sort of a backdoor subsidization program where Big Business can gouge both taxpayer and consumer. As one anonymous writer explained: 

   Rigged science refers to the process of hindering free exploration by setting expected goals for monetary gains and survival of scientists, hiring opportunistic individuals, omitting data, avoiding the bigger picture that would contradict or put in perspective the rigged outcome.The scientific spirit, which is based on the willingness to put hypotheses to the test and let them be falsified is perverted by subjecting 'heretics' to character assassination and psychological warfare often supported by the commercially-controlled media and {the threat of} cut off funds. Also, increasingly, hypotheses are formulated in such a way, that they can not by falsified, i.e. in medicine and climate research. From a scientific POV these are ideologies rather than hypotheses."

   In contrast, consider the rather inquisitorial spirit promoted by pediatrician Peter Hotez and published in the respected journal, The Scientific American. Hotez, it should be noted, received a doctorate from Rockefeller University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences---both of which have varying connections to such wholly disinterested and objective organizations as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carlos Slim Foundation, and the never-Trump Koch Family Foundation. Scientific American is owned by media conglomerate Springer Publications (of whom we'll have more to say below):

    “Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience, just as we have for these other more widely recognized and established threats... Antiscience is the rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods or their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories, often for nefarious and political gains. It targets prominent scientists and attempts to discredit them.

   "Containing antiscience will require work and an interdisciplinary approach. For innovative and comprehensive solutions, we might look at interagency task forces in the U.S. government or among the agencies of the United Nations...We must be prepared to implement a sophisticated infrastructure to counteract this, similar to what we have already done for more established global threats. Antiscience is now a large and formidable security issue."

    Let us all hope this is willingness to put hypotheses to the test and let them be falsified enough!

    The corollary to corruption in research stems also from the fact that this funding is largely based upon a given scientist's academic reputation---as reflected in his publications in peer-reviewed journals. Again, peer-review once served a useful purpose. It was a sort of self-policing mechanism---ironically in today's context---to keep vested interests and fake theories out of Academia. Peer-Review publishing today has become slightly more than a pay-to-play scheme and most of these publications have been subject to the same kind of industry hijacking that Federal and State Regulatory Agencies have.

   Three major media combines own half of the peer-reviewed journals: Wiley-Blackwell, Elsevier, and Springer Publishing. Wiley-Blackwell owns about 12% of these journals, but has a near-monopoly on textbook and encyclopedia publishing. Headquartered in New York, their CEO is Brian Napack, a former executive at Disney who headed Disney Educational Productions. In 2020, Napack gave a very Great Reset-friendly interview with the magazine EdTech, where he boasted of Wiley-Blackwell that "about half of the world's research flows through our platforms."

   Napack went on to describe a new innovative technology called MThree, which he bragged that Wiley-Blackwell would implement throughout Academia: "a truly innovative business that works with some of the most well-known corporations around the world to help them literally build the labor force talent they need to compete and win. We do this by working with client companies to identify their specific talent needs – say 100 mobile developers for a development shop in Toronto. Then, mthree directly recruits, trains and places talent directly into jobs fully prepared with the exact, company-specific skills that they need to succeed." And naturally Wiley-Blackwell is quite 'woke:'

  "In recent months, like many companies and organizations, we’ve been doing a lot of deep thinking on the topics of inequity and injustice. The evidence of systemic racism is undeniable and continues to mount every day. At Wiley, we’ve been discussing not only what we should do to respond to the moment, but also how we can use this moment and our collective outrage to drive long-overdue action.

  "We start with values that include a grounding belief that acts against any of us hurt all of us, and that acts that lift each of us up, lift all of us up...We are evaluating how we operate as a company and how we work with our communities of students, researchers, authors, and partners. And we are putting together action plans to ensure that our company and our community are informed and driven to enact positive, lasting change. At Wiley, we know that inequity and injustice is not someone else’s problem. It is our problem. We intend to be part of the solution, within our walls, in our industry, in our communities, and in society at large."

   Does any of that sound objective? What do you suppose the odds of a scientific research paper disputing whether "corporations around the world building the labor force talent they need to compete and win" is a desirable economic or psychosocial goal gets published by Wiley-Blackwell?

      Elsevier is based in Holland and has a cozy relationship with Great Reset tyrant, Dutch PM Mark Rutte. Currently, Elsevier controls about a quarter of all scientific peer-reviewed journals. The company is a subsidiary of British Media octopus, RELX Plc. RELX states that Elsevier "publishes 420,000 articles a year in about 2,500 journals." As a specimen of their scientific detachment and objectivity, RELX also describes this division as: "RELX's Scientific, Technical & Medical business provides information, analytics and tools that help investors make decisions that improve scientific and healthcare outcomes. It operates under the name of Elsevier." The top shareholder of RELX is WEF/Great Reset linchpin BlackRock, which owns about 9% of the company. We're assured however that none of this impugns on Elsevier's scientific credibility in the slightest. 

     Springer is a subsidiary of German Media giant, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group---which though little known in the US is one of the top five English-language publishers in the world since its acquisition of Macmillan. It also owns Holt, Tor, St. Martins, among many others. Holtzbrinck was founded in 1948 by a former publisher of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. 

   In 2015, Holtzbrinck purchased Springer with the help of corporate raider international investment firm BC Partners. BC has slightly more than a passing interest in Big Tech and Big Pharma, as may be seen from their list of major holdings. And while we're on the subject of Nazis, BC's CEO is one Stephan Cretier, also CEO of Canada's GardaWorld, "one of the world's largest private security providers." Well, we can all surmise what role that such a company has played in Canada recently. 

   It seems that maybe some of these Skeptics would be doing a little more good by worrying less about circles in cornfields and worrying more about who's pulling the strings on what they call settled science. If there really is a growing 'anti-science' sentiment in America, you're reading here what is really causing it: the fact that most science today is corrupt, unreliable, agenda-driven and could change tomorrow with a bigger payoff. Then, there's this growing tendency of science-supporters to meet criticism---not by counter-proofs, but with a police jackboot on the necks of their critics. This is an atmosphere which makes it incredibly easy for jugheads like Vox Day, Owen Benjamin, and Rollo Tomassi to spread some of the most ludicrous pseudoscience as a 'counter-narrative.' And why not? The 'official narrative' tells us absurdities about homo 'equality', man-made climate change, gender without biological or psychological origins, and many others during the so-called 'Pandemic.' 

   This is the situation that naturally arises when Science is a matter of 'controlling the narrative' and 'achieving consensus.' The next step, as is increasingly being made clear by various academics, is for Scientific Consensus to become Dogma. Remember from our own history when people who denied the 'settled science' that the earth was stationary paid for it with the Rack, Strappado, and the Stake. As recently as the 1860s in our own country, challenging the 'settled science' of racial inequality in the Confederacy was punishable by hanging. Don't imagine for one minute that it happen again. Then, as now, science was perverted to serve vested interests and the quest for truth and enlightenment has never been especially high on the list of these interests' priorities.