How Science is Being Undermined
By none other than the media and "fact" checkers
Lately, in the last couple years especially, there has been a surge of fact checking services. Instagram and Facebook use these services to warn users of “misinformation” and “falsehoods”, and many other media cite these services as credible sources. For a long while, these warnings on IG and FB were of little matter to me and sometimes they would even pop up on completely irrelevant posts that the algorithms would detect as “misinformation” to my amusement. However something I saw recently finally tipped me over the edge.
I saw Dr. Peter A. McCullough speak on Joe Rogan’s Podcast and so I went to his Wikipedia page to see what his credentials were, and to see a general summary of his work. First two sentences are a quite basic, innocent summary of the man, however the third sentence (which also shows up in the little information box when you search his name on Google) is where things take a turn for the worse. The third sentence reads: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, McCullough promoted misinformation about COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine, and COVID-19 treatments.” Now, they cite 3 sources for these claims, and I have gone through all 3 of these in detail. The first 2 are not quite as egregious (and maybe even sinister) as the 3rd one1 so I will be focusing on that to make my point. The first claim of his that they analyze is “Once an individual recovers from Covid-19, they have robust, complete and durable immunity with a negligible risk of ever getting Covid-19 again.” Their so-called debunk of this claim quotes the WHO “The World Health Organization (WHO) states that infected people without symptoms can still transmit the virus.” Notice how these statements have absolutely nothing to do with each other, McCullough is discussing recovered individuals, and WHO currently infected individuals. Coming from the world’s oldest news agency calling this negligence would be underplaying their malice. This is an obvious attack on a scientist nonetheless in order to discredit him and his knowledge.
The second McCullough quote is “We don’t need to treat everybody but high risk people over age 50 with medical problems should receive early treatment to reduce hospitalisation and death.” The way AFP debunks this claim is by quoting CDC “…CDC says … younger people should still be vaccinated…” In addition to CDC Olivier Schwartz, head of the Virus and Immunity Unit at the Pasteur Institute in France, says “It is obvious that people under 50 who are in good health should be vaccinated.” Not quite as blatant, but they still (attempt to) invalidate Dr. McCullough’s stand on things without actually providing sources to support their own claims. And this is the main problem I wish to address.
Science, or at least science that is displayed through the media, and the science that the governments, media and the people listen to, has become dogmatic, very much resembling religion. Any opposition to the norm is instantly shut down and discredited with fact checks. Is the “debunk” above really a debunk? Are the the scientific facts so certain (Well that is what a fact is…) that they can simply shut down a fellow scientist by saying “No”?
For two years and counting, the West has been constantly going in and out of lockdowns, encouraging (by taking away the unvaccinated’s rights) vaccinations. I do not see a significant improvement in our lives. Deaths have stopped following the surges in cases, but that’s about it. There is a general unrest, constant protests all around Europe, people are unhappy. But throughout all this, one thing that has ceaselessly stuck around is the government’s and the media’s undoubting trust in science that supports lockdowns and vaccines. Why have they discouraged the use, or even the research on the efficacy, of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and other alternative medicine? Doctors who dare promote these are berated, fact checked (using the science they oppose so obviously they will be labeled as a misinformation spreader) and even suspended from the very hospitals they work at. Why are we so adamant that the current science is absolutely correct?
One potential cause I can see right now for this dogmatic, almost religion-like behaviour from the media is that they have repeated the “correct” science so many times that they have internalized that information and simply demonize any other science. Now some might say “But that’s just the media, obviously media is not to be trusted.” etc. Media and government are in a feedback loop with each other. Media is upset about something? Government is forced to listen in order to appease the media (thinking they are making the people happy), in turn when government mandates something media does not question it, they take it as absolute truth and start fact checking anyone who dare oppose. And the majority of people listen to the media, or they are forced to listen simply because by seeing something repeated many times one learns that information as if it was certain truth if one does not know any better.
The state of science surrounding COVID-19 reminds me of Galileo Galilei’s story, the authority using their authority to supress the truth. Do know that I am not implying that every opposing bit of information is right, I am simply taking notice of the fact that (COVID-19) science has become dogmatic, hostile to criticism, almost like the Catholic Church of 1600s.
I like your article a lot, it contains a lot of brain food. But I have 2 comments:
1) About the second McCullough quote, one thing that people don't understand is that science doesn't stand for the truth, but for the known measured truth, and that changes as you get more measures. The CDC could be used to debunk the CDC itself, because, as new facts become available, the recommendations and statements are updated, sometimes even contradicting the previous position. But that is science! And that is even more true when a lot of money is invested in an urgent investigation and new facts surface, like this COVID situation. That is an issue when you're in a crisis and you need everybody to follow your lead, but you change new facts that affect that lead: people stop believing in you, specially when, as you said, they have repeated the previous facts "so many times that they have internalized that information and simply demonize any other science", even the new science facts.
One unrelated example: Pluto becoming a dwarf planet instead of a whole planet. Why? Because they found objects bigger than Pluto in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There were 2 options: call those new objects planets -that was absurd because of their size and physical behavior- or recognizing that the science facts supported a new space object type. And there were a lot of protests.
2) About ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and other alternative medicine. Now research has been blamed. Actually, a lot of research has been done and is being done. The reason some people is being punished is for encouraging people to use a medical procedure that didn't work. Ivermectin was researched in many different hospitals around the world, but the evidences that were found to support it didn't resist a peer review. That happened with a lot of trials because the beginning of the COVID pandemic was so crazy and doctors were so unprepared that they did a lot of Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy. And that lead to some great treatments that are used today, after review and retest. But Ivermectin, given the current facts -that's what science is about-, didn't. And you can defend that randomised evaluation at the beginning of a pandemic, but once you have a set of approved and reviewed treatments you have to go back to normal: use the safe medicines in real life, evaluate new treatments under strict conditions. The NIH doesn't recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin, but the statement is clear: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/
A research paper about Ivermectin: https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111678
"research related to ivermectin in COVID-19 has serious methodological limitations resulting in very low certainty of the evidence, and continues to grow.37–39 The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials."
About hydroxychloroquine, the story is worse. The NIH says that "despite demonstrating antiviral activity in some in vitro systems, neither hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin nor hydroxychloroquine alone reduced upper or lower respiratory tract viral loads or demonstrated clinical efficacy in a rhesus macaque model" and recommends against its usage (https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/chloroquine-or-hydroxychloroquine-and-or-azithromycin/). If you read the text, other than in vitro studies, the patients treated with hydroxychloroquine lasted more in the hospital, but the death rate didn't decrease.
As a doctor, I wouldn't recommend treatments that after 22 stressful months of trials have not been proved to work, specially when other treatments have been proved to work and they have been peer reviewed. But I'm not a doctor.