We’re introducing a new section to the Daily Sceptic today: Reviews. (You can find it at the bottom of the right-hand menu.) We’re also publishing our first ever book review in which Bo Winegard, an American with a PhD in Psychology, writes about How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre. The problem with the book, as Bo explains, is that McIntyre’s understanding of science is naive and idealistic and bears little relation to how actual science is practised. Not only that, but nearly all the examples McIntyre gives are of right-wing science denialism, not left-wing science denialism. Here is an extract:
McIntrye begins by contending that “for a number of years it has been fairly clear – at least in the United States – that truth is under assault. Our fellow citizens don’t seem to listen to facts anymore” (p.xi), an observation which motivated his previous work such as Post-Truth. This is a common claim, of course, and one that I have almost certainly made myself, but it’s not at all clear that it is accurate. Is the truth more under assault now than it was during the Vietnam War? During the era of pushback to claims about a causal link between smoking and cancer? During the rise and temporary triumph of Freudian psychology? I’m sceptical. Probably the claim that truth is uniquely under assault is like the claim that Western Civilisation is collapsing: it feels true to every generation because there are always challenges to truth, to science, to civilisation.
And there are always challenges because science, like civilisation, is very unnatural. This doesn’t mean that it requires completely suppressing human proclivities and, as it were, reshaping the human mind. Rather, it means that it requires the appropriate (and historically rare) norms and institutions to flourish. Like a diligent landscaper, science guides and disciplines nature. And its fruits should be as astonishing as Kew Gardens or green lawns in the desert of Arizona. Like those miracles of human attention and ingenuity, science requires constant vigilance lest the jungle of human impulses overtake the truth with a thicket of myth, superstition, and ideologically useful flapdoodle. Put shortly, the truth is always under assault, not just by liars, charlatans, cranks, and millionaire profiteers, but by human nature. The hackneyed movie line that the real enemy is inside is appropriate because the struggle for science is mostly a struggle against innate emotions and biases. And the surprising thing is not that many people misunderstand, misrepresent, and opportunistically attack the truth, but rather that we care about the truth at all.
This is important because to understand ‘science denialism’, we have to understand science. And this is a major problem with McIntyre’s book. His understanding of science seems simplistic and unrealistically unambiguous. I should confess that I have not read his earlier book, The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience, so it is quite possible that he has a more sophisticated and nuanced view of science than I can discern from How to Talk to a Science Denier. But if so, then I wish he had made those views more obvious in this book. After all, if one is going to call a person a “science denier”, then one should be clear about what the person is denying.
Instead, readers can find only hints and intimations of what science actually is (and thus what a science denier is denying). For example: “In my earlier book, The Scientific Attitude, I had argued that the primary thing that separates science from nonscience is that scientists embrace an attitude of willingness to change their hypothesis if it does not fit with the evidence.” (p.10.) And: “But this is quite simply not how science works. Scientists do not merely look for support for what they hope to be true; they design tests that can show whether their hypothesis might be false.” (p.35.) And: “Scientific consensus is the gold standard for rational belief.” (p.137.)
It’s laudable, of course, to be humble, skeptical, and willing to change one’s mind, but I don’t think that embracing these qualities is the sine qua non of science. I’ve met quite a few practicing scientists, and I’d wager their propensity for dogmatism is about the same as anybody else’s. And in fact, many revered and consequential scientists were dogmatic, arrogant, and steadfastly (and even irrationally) committed to proving their own theories despite strong evidence to the contrary.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Monkey see, monkey do.
There’s monkey business everywhere.
Or could it possibly be:
See Monkey, Do Monkey?
Just Go Ape!
Monkey business indeed. Using photos of shingles. There is a lot of shit (and money) flying around, and people are about to go bananas all over again. Sigh.
Here we go again.
But with an added twist: are TPTB going to risk accusations of homophobia?
All they need to do is to tell queers to identify as heterosexuals.
Good one!
Nooooo….I don’t think so thanks.
If you are bulimic you might welcome Googling ‘felching’ but I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise.
[Disclaimer: Bulimia is a serous mental health condition and no disrespect or otherwise is intended by this post. It’s just that the concept of felching would make anyone want to vomit.]
The targeting of queers from the off is straight out of their divide and conquer chapter of the big book O’Tyranny. I think the mistake they made last time was waiting for a group to blame in the unvaxxed rather than identifying one from the outset.
The notion that this is spread purely among puffs is utterly ridiculous.
The notion that this
is spread purely among puffsexists is utterly ridiculous.Agree with the divide and rule bit. But facts are facts. Gay and trans people account for a disproportionately large number of new HIV infections – 25 percent, according to HIV-AIDS agency Avert.
One can only wish, for their sake and everyone else’s, that they were as “hesitant” as we vaccine refuseniks about potentially dangerous substances being injected into us – by whatever means.
HIV/AIDS is not what you think it is. Read Kennedy’s Fauci book and prepare for your jaw to hit the flaw.
Read it. My jaw did indeed hit the floor.
I haven’t read it. Give us a clue ….
AIDS didn’t kill people. Fauci’s ‘cure’ did that.
And now add in all the covid jabbed people – multiple times – who might have VAIDS
https://palexander.substack.com/p/smallpox-vaccine-to-prevent-monkey?s=r
and see what a monkeypox jab might do to them
Wait until Fauci re-designates the AZT as the required cure!
Wreaked havoc last time around!
As so many MPs do already.
Primatephobia?
What on Earth do they do with puppies or shouldn’t I ask?
I don’t think it’s actual puppies. More like wearing a leather mask and a lead, and being obedient etc. But I’m not going to Google it either! See also: girls dressing as kittens or bunnies.
Similar to most of the UK from March 2020 then! (the wearing a mask and being on a lead and being obedient)
Monkeypox epidemic modelled last year to begin on 15 May 2022 on behalf of globalists
How long before there will be a vaccine with a mandate for 5-11 year olds?
See the Israeli wargaming of the “omega variant”.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-leaders-hole-up-bunker-during-covid-19-drill-2021-11-11/
Israeli politicians appear to be as bossy as any found elsewhere.
Some articles indicate that younger people are more at risk, as they were still jabbing kids for smallpox until about 1970 in the west. My take on that is that it’s to encourage those who haven’t been modified and databased to get on the program.
Seriously, monkey pox? The implication is that someone from areas where it’s endemic travelled to these events and then spread it to 12 countries? In a few days? Previously it’s popped up in one country after some associated incident, eg infected animals.
Javid has already bought 20,000 doses of monkey pox vaccine at the end of last year apparently. Oddly enough.
Wow so we’re back to persecuting gays again now – wasn’t expecting that.
Perhaps they’re relaunching a new version of the AIDS narrative.
It’s their monkey victims I feel sorry for
Do monkeys actually catch monkey pox?
Probably not.
It can infect all primates.
It certainly explains what happened to Welby.
They get homopox!
It’s not the homosexuality per se – it is the number of sexual partners. Hundreds per year in the case of the San Francisco bath houses back in the 1980s.
That’s garbage, plenty of men in the 80s shagged around with women.
Fauci was deeply involved with HIV too, the apple never falls far from the tree
Hundreds of sexual partners every year is not a good way to maintain hygiene.
But any contradiction fot eh idea that HIV caused AIDS was instantly shut down. People like Peter Duesberg had their careers ruined because of it – even though Nobel Laureates like Kary Mullis and Luc Montagnier didn’t accept the HIV hypothesis.
RFKJ has it all covered in his exposé take down of Fauci in “The Real Anthony Fauci” – everyone should read it.
Fauci Recommends Stopping Spread Of Monkeypox By Covering Eyes, Ears, Mouth
I read earlier in the day on ZeroHedge:
12 countries. 12 monkeys. Good film about a killer mutant virus disease.
Bizarre, but good movie.
Monkey around with someone else’s bottom and There may be trouble ahead
Good job you’re a former police cadet with that kind of attitude. You’d be thrown out nowadays and rightly so
How dare you!
I was never a police cadet. I had more dignity. I joined the force as a police officer so I could arrest twats like you immediately!
They still arrest twats like you today as the new law targeting ‘Extinction Rebellion twats’ comes into force.
Ally it to the new online harms bill and you’re bound for a knock at your door for restricting the passage of intelligent online discourse.
Newsflash: The new “Don’t take on your superiors online” bill is reaching it’s conclusion.
The punishment for which is a severe, persistent online slagging by former police officers.
Lightweights who misrepresenting their superiors former profession will be given time to improve their performance before they get a knock at the door.
Love it! A former beat bobby thinks he’s superior to someone with my wealth, success and intelligence. Do you possess a first class degree in Maths, or anything else for that matter!?
Joking aside, although I hate totalitarianism, those said rebellion twats do need rounding up and throwing somewhere.
“someone with my wealth, success and intelligence”
AKA A troll.
Not at all, someone who has earned far more money than a beat bobby could ever dream of. That’s quite a lot of the population to begin with!
I have long since left the police and gone onto a successful business career.
But just keep jumping to conclusions. It’s funny.
And so it starts. Declared as a High Consequence Infectious disease by UKHSA. Confirmed by PCR test. Level 3 PPE for suspected cases. Increased cleaning of premises and vehicles. Supportive treatment with smallpox vaccine offered to confirmed cases. the spread is stated as through broken skin by direct contact and through coughing and sneezing. Suspected cases are a fever, rash and contact with suspected case in previous 21 days. Deja vu anyone. Seriously, we have to stamp this out before they roll with it.
Unless, unlike Branch Covidiamism, this is a real disease and the Devil actually takes his own away to their spiritual home, leaving us in peace.
Oh Lord, please let it happen.
Funkypox.
Given this new information, it may also be worth remembering that AIDS began when a particularly desperate man had sex with a monkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlIy1F_rcLg
AIDS began when big pharma started dishing out chemotherapy drugs to people who scored a positive PCR for a low consequence virus.
PCR was not invented then, if I remember correctly.
It was two years later. Not sure if they started to dish out chemotherapy drugs before then.
The (mis)use of PCR to test for HIV was one of the reasons for Kary Mullis disagreeing/despising Fauci.
Mon
keypoxYeah or maybe AZ vaccines created from monkey versions of the adenovirus are “accidentally “ creating a new virus from multiple genetic sources.
Hey wtf knows when you start a giant genetic experiment what kind of Frankenstein shit you will get.
What a total shit show.
You mean like this?
Is that you Dr Fauci?
First time to post here but I’ve been reading more or less every day for the past 18 months or so. Could it be the jabs? Not that we will ever get that information. The worrying part is that they normally test vaccines on rhesus monkeys, could there be a link that they may push forward with in the future. Our blood group’s come under the rhesus positive/negative category, if this does blow up with the vaxxed dropping they might try to say it’s down to your blood type. I’ve been a sceptic since 9/11 so have taken all of this with a pinch of salt. The bottom line is that by hook or by crook this “vaccine “ had to go into as many people as possible, my hope is that it was a big money spinner but as each day passes it is looking like mass genoside. Sorry if I spelt it wrong!!
on a side note more related to this article, I live in a relatively small town in the valleys and was fortunate enough to have a few beers, we went to the sort of “in” pub in town at the moment and it was half full with freaks (as we used to call them in the 90’s) LBGT+ all 20 somethings, if this is the future then shoot me now. I grew up in the 80’s and it wasn’t that it was frowned upon but by todays standards the way that they act and speak to other people is way beyond acceptable, anyway rant over!! Keep up the good work!!
Keep posting. You are amongst friends.
So, do you think this may be linked eventually to weakened immune systems?
Welcome, by the way.
Which valleys? I’m not too far from Llandod. Would be good to know a few more skeptics in the area.
I wonder if it’s linked to AZ which is an adenovirus from monkeys. I wonder if it’s just a batch of preplanned tainted injections after seeing that it was planned by event 201 ( see latest post by DS above).
if it goes Accor to that, it will be an issue.
Thank you!! I’ve just read back through what I posted last night, I’m not usually illiterate! It was the red wine talking 🤕
I think with all the madness that has been thrown at us over the past 2 years then I doubt anyone of us can predict what’s going to happen down the road in a few years time, trying to connect the dots it’s all pointing to a really bad outcome.
Statistically you are more likely to “catch” covid if your vaccinated so that clearly points to them weakening the immune system. There’s been a lot said about aids/vaids which if true is going to have catastrophic consequences for the jabbed.
What has saddened me is that how many people have fallen hook line and sinker into having them, the pressure from government and msm has been relentless and now it’s like it’s never existed?? Has the job been done so to speak and they’ve achieved what they’ve set out to do? Scary times ahead…
Hi AYM, I’m from Merthyr Tydfil (for my sins!!) that could possibly be the link there, and the first lot was only AZ if I remember rightly? My take on the event 201 (which I’ve painfully watched several times 🙈) is that it was event 21 and the big O wasn’t a zero but was signifying Omnicron, I’m probably wrong but it could be airborne HIV, wasn’t the first case in a South African woman who was HIV positive? I know there’s a lot said about viruses not existing but what if it was in the jabs all along? All I can see from my experience is that all multiple jabbed friends and family are catching it several times, in fact one family member has had it 5 times and each time it’s been progressively worse. I’m sure everyone is noticing similar problems occurring with the jabbed.
Well your about an hour south of me. But close enough to be neighbours in this environment. I’m geared up for the worst, or at least getting there so I’ll keep an eye out for you on these boards.
If it is, then how did they manage to target only sausage jockeys to take those batches?
Every year there are outbreaks of various diseases … this is nothing new. What is new, is people going potty about them.
Hi Mike, I’ve got a hunch about this one being ramped up though. If they really have blood on their hands for what’s been pumped into people then this could be the deflection. Every bone in me hopes that I’m wrong 🤞
The same narrative, remember Covid in Feb 2020? Two cases in a hotel in York, a couple of chinks. Then 9 cases, then 20. Not long after we had our first death “of covid”
This one could get really get the idiots frightened, the visible boils coupled with impending death surely mean only a lockdown can save the day
Who would have see this coming hey?
Gates predicted it with his ‘second sight’ clairvoyance abilities.
Worryingly he can’t stop gabbling on about Smallpox and Bird Flu either. How directly involved is he with both?
Why can so many not see what he is really so obvioulsy about with his “vacciness to control population’ mantra./
How many people in the world are now on the Gates payroll or benefitting from ‘grants’ he gives to every scientific, regulatory. medical and media establishment?
How has such wholesale corruption of all our Institutions – supposedly working on our behalf and for our protection – been allowed?
Dr Kelly was probably the first death in the globalists’ grab for world domination by stifling debate.
Love it: 271 million deaths…and heeeyyy, here’s a key issue…it’s “international financing for pandemic preparedness”.
“NTI” stands for “Nuclear Threat Initiative”. Their report.
“lab-modified version of monkeypox was intentionally released via aerosols in train stations in (…) Brinia (…) by agents of a terrorist group operating in neighboring Arnica”
“At the peak of the pandemic, nearly 500 million individuals are infected at the same time, and there are 161 million people simultaneously in need of hospitalization.”
This is from the “effective altruism”
cultmob. They’ve got tentacles in some interesting places…The photograph at the head of this article apparently started life as an example of shingles
https://mobile.twitter.com/scott4670/status/1527789277190365184
From a brutal public relations point of view, bodies covered with boils work. They scare people. Add coughing and fever for behaviourists to be in seventh heaven. Monkeypox has the added “punch” of having as one of its common symptoms the swelling of lymph glands in the armpits etc.
In Britain much of the population were testing for SARSCoV2 at least daily around
Christmas time last year.
It won’t take a big turn of the monkeypox dial to whip up mass support for another lockdown.
Pure speculation, but gotta wonder whether the plan may be to vaccinate everyone against smallpox. That must surely be a scenario that’s been war-planned.
Mandatory (or even forced) vaccination didn’t work as they originally hoped with Covid. Despite the clamour from all quarters of media.
This new scare tactic is indeed just the next move in “vaccinating the world” to “keep you safe”.
In reality of course, it’s the wide open door to medical slavery, the digital ID, the vaccine passport, and a “kill shot” when someone determines you have outlived your usefulness.
And it is pure, pure evil…
Yep it seems like it is to mop up all those non-jabbees who wouldn’t fall for the covid jabs because the “disease” wasn’t bad enough and the jabs were rubbish so that they can fearmonger and dish out digi ID’s to the “remainers”.
Only problem is that there is going to be a section of that venn diagram where you have people who already had the smallpox jab as a child and who didn’t get the covid jab who will again decide to take their chances leaving them with a group who JUST WON’T GET JABBED.
Mind you, a small group, so probably small enough to fit into the camps then when they begin rounding up the unjabbed.
In Britain much of the population is addicted to being tested once daily and, as in all addictions, will not now be easily weaned off their addiction.
I suspect a non-African hand was requested.
If this is a genuine outbreak, and it extends, how likely it is to be attributable to mRNA and vector vax damage to immune systems?
Good point, highly possible I would think.. No research to back up this statement but given all the skullduggery around the mRNA jabs it wouldn’t surprise me.
More than likely that it will be blamed on those who selfishly decline to get vaxxed.
All those poor souls who suffer from and exhibit skin eruptions are being set up to be vilified by the fear mongers and will be targeted by a gullible, panic stricken public.
What about my (occasional, very, very mild) psoriasis?
Sorry, this was meant as a reply to ellie-em.
It is instances like you describe, that I was thinking of. Most of us now know how vast swathes of the public respond to the ‘nudges’ from TPTB.
Wear gloves!
Can I be the first to suggest a change to LGBTQM..?
It wasn’t just a SARS & monkey pox pandemic that was gamed out, Gates-funded Cargill gamed out food shortages in 2022 which results in a global carbon and meat tax is 2030 – if I was a conspiracy theorists, I’d say this was all planned 🙂 https://www.cargill.com/story/food-chain-reaction-simulation-ends-with-global-carbon-tax
In Spain it was linked to one sauna. They do not say what their clients do there.
Well, it was in a family-friendly context!
Or is that a Monkey friendly context?
I think the close contact in those kind of venues involves events of buggery
Monkeypox – the up and coming thing. Ukraine is so yesterday, darlings…
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/tecovirimat-siga#authorisation-details-section
This new treatment for smallpox,vaccinia side effects of smallpox,monkey pox just happened to be registered and allowed by EMA in the end of January 2022
No such thing as coincidence. I’m waiting for the photo of Gates stroking a large fluffy white cat…..where’s James Bond when you need him?
And it is EUA.
Again.
What could go wrong.
How long before they try to tell us it can be spread heterosexually?
Interesting, if any one has read the book on Fauci by Robert Kennedy junior it is to be noted that Fauci and Gates have history with regards to focusing medical experiments in drugs and vaccines on the Gay community and likewise on the 3rd world, call me cynical but this focus on a relatively minor ailment by the WHO, and Governments would suggest we are about to enter another phase of demonisation and discrimination against a section of society as directed by the Government.
As a side note I eagerly await the calls from the Covidians to be vaccinated for monkey pox.
Fetish brotherhoods; rubber, leather, skinheads, army, puppies
Sadly there are some quite depraved people about.
And that’s just the houses of parliament.
This photo is from the Times with the headline 97 year old women dies of Chickenpox. It’s my opinion that as the vaccine destroys the immune system the latent Chickenpox virus which is in most of us is reactivating causing Shingles and Chickenpox. What test are they using to diagnose Monkeypox?
😅 Just read its diagnosed by a PCR test
If there’s smallpox, is there bigpox?
Yep: it lives, currently, in No 10 Downing Street.
Just waiting for SAGE to declare that it’s essential to jab 5-11 yr olds then.
Funny how monkey pox has come about after the vaccines…..
Monkey Pox, another disease with
curioustransparrent timing coincidence:.
https://georgewebb.substack.com/p/a-pox-upon-your-lab-monkeys
A pox on your pox!
It’s all my fault! I did say that Covid II was boring, no plot or character development from Covid I … but if they released a prequel I might be interested. How much further back in time can we get? Interesting development, but I’ll pass thankyou.
Can one get asymptomatic mankeypox?
{Asking for a friend.}
Here we go with the “super-spreader” bollocks once again!
I can’t keep up.
Update: The image at the head of this article, showing a human hand with vesicles, is strikingly similar, if not identical to an image reproduced from an Australian textbook, where the affliction is Shingles.