by Maryanne Demasi, Childrens Health Defense:
A widely accepted theory, such as the theory of evolution, depends on a consensus being reached among the scientific community — but it must be achieved without censorship or reprisal.
In a recent interview, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was challenged on his scientific views about COVID-19. He said, “I’m only interested in consensus” — words that would have Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei rolling in their graves.
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The appeal to “scientific consensus” is fraught with problems, just like “The science is settled” and “Trust the science” and other authoritarian tropes that have dominated the pandemic.
A widely accepted theory, such as the theory of evolution, depends on a consensus being reached among the scientific community, but it must be achieved without censorship or reprisal.
As Aaron Kheriaty, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, recently said:
“Science is an ongoing search for truth & such truth has little to do with consensus. Every major scientific advance involves challenges to a consensus. Those who defend scientific consensus rather than specific experimental findings are not defending science but partisanship.”
Consensus by censorship
It’s not difficult to reach a scientific consensus when you squelch dissenting voices.
The origin of COVID-19 is a classic example.
Twenty-seven scientists published a letter in the Lancet condemning “conspiracy theories” that suggested the virus did not have a natural origin. Dissenting views were censored on social media and labeled “misinformation.”
Only now that the U.S. Department of Energy and the FBI say the virus was likely the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, it’s possible to have these discussions openly.
The Great Barrington Declaration is another example. Three eminent professors from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities, argued against lockdowns, which they said would disproportionately harm the underprivileged.
But former NIH Director Francis Collins dismissed them as “fringe epidemiologists” asking Dr. Anthony Fauci for “a quick and devastating take down” of the declaration.
Scientific consensus has become a manufactured construct, dictated by politics and power.
The recent release of the “Twitter Files” reveals how government agencies, Big Tech, media and academia colluded in an effort to police online content, and censor dissenting voices to create a false perception of consensus.
One egregious example was Stanford University’s Virality Project which brought together elite academia, experts in artificial intelligence and social media companies to censor “true” stories of vaccine injuries under the guise of fighting disinformation.
Dr. Robert Malone, physician and pioneer of mRNA technology summed up the situation accurately when he said:
“The real problem here is the damn press and the internet giants. The press and these tech players act to manufacture and reinforce ‘consensus’ around selected and approved narratives. And then this is being weaponized to attack dissenters including highly qualified physicians.”
The pandemic has made this insidious behavior more visible, but the reality is, it has been happening for a long time — I would know — I was caught up in it.
Consensus in mainstream media
As a TV presenter on ABC’s top-ranking science program “Catalyst” for over a decade, my role was to investigate science issues and, if necessary, challenge orthodoxy.
The ABC is not funded by private industry, but by the public purse, to avoid the bias which befalls the commercial networks. Or so I thought.
Several years ago, my successful career at the ABC came to a grinding halt after defenders of “scientific consensus” criticized several documentaries I produced, which questioned various medical orthodoxies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, nutritional guidelines and the over-prescription of medicines.
One documentary questioned the health impacts of prolonged exposure to wireless devices (such as iPads, laptops and smartphones) which emit low-frequency radiation — we did our due diligence and undertook an excruciating process of reviewing the program for legal, editorial and factual integrity.
In the program, we questioned why the Australian government’s radiation safety authority (ARPANSA) had safety standards that were out-of-date and excluded important evidence from multiple peer-reviewed papers by independent scientists.
It unleashed a firestorm of complaints from the Telco industry, the regulatory authority and ARPANSA, all of which had been preparing for the biggest wireless rollout the country had ever seen.
Industry experts emerged from the shadows, and the media obliged, uncritically reporting criticisms of the program while ignoring those defending it. No attention was paid to the industry’s influence over the science.
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