A few weeks ago I was invited to present our work on Bayesian networks for the NHS Health and Care Analytics Conference 2023. This is a large and important conference chaired by Ben Goldacre (the author of the best seller Bad Science) – sold out with over 400 delegates and a similar number online.
The conference organisers tweeted about my presentation (screen shot below as the tweet has been deleted).
I was neither offered, nor asked for, any fee for doing this. In the last week I spent many hours preparing a presentation to ensure it properly addressed the conference theme and contained our latest research with examples of Bayesian network risk models for a range chronic diseases (diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s). The title, abstract and bio that were agreed and approved are provided at the bottom of this article. The talk was nothing to do with any work I have undertaken on Covid or the vaccines.
On Tuesday (June 20th 2023) – ironically just seconds after recording a video for Michael Shellenberger’s Censorship Files documentary – I received the following email from the person who had originally invited me to make the presentation. I have redacted the name of that person and the other recipients.
So, I was cancelled not for the content of my talk but because I had done other work raising concerns about Covid vaccine safety.
After an immediate response that I sent on June 20th stating that I intended to make this public (for which there was no response), I sent the following more formal follow-up at 9am on June 21st:
Following on from my response yesterday, I would like to know more about how the decision was made to cancel my presentation and who initiated it and approved it (including if any of the recipients of the email approved the decision). Was there any attempt by any NHS staff to reverse the decision given that it is clear that my voice has been suppressed simply for raising safety concerns in the public interest? I am asking this because it has become a matter of public interest to publish this story of censorship. I would be grateful if you could reply within 24 hours as I intend to publish this tomorrow.
I also require a copy of all the communications referred to (“the conference committee have just been alerted to”) by return under GDPR.
More than 24 hours have passed and I’ve still received no acknowledgement or reply.
Of course this is just the latest – albeit a particularly nasty – example of the censorship and cancellation I’ve suffered for the last three years.
As my colleague Dr. Martin Neil noted on Twitter:
Note that in censoring Norman they are also censoring research undertaken by young researchers who have not uttered a public word on the subject of vaccines. Also bear in mind the results of this research were largely funded by the public purse, hence the event committee is denying the NHS access to research results funded by another arm of Government. The decision is not only unethical and irrational, it is deliberately vindictive.
Some relevant information on Ben Goldacre here and here.
Here is the title, abstract and bio that were agreed:
Title: Bayesian networks: what are they and why they work when ‘big data’ methods fail
Abstract
Misunderstandings about risk, statistics and probability often lead to flawed decision-making in many critical areas such as medicine, finance, law, defence and transport. The ‘big data’ revolution was intended to at least partly address these concerns by removing reliance on subjective judgements. However, even where (relevant) big data are available there are fundamental limitations to what can be achieved through pure machine learning techniques. This talk will explain the successes and challenges in using causal probabilistic models of risk – based on a technique called Bayesian networks – in providing powerful decision-support and accurate predictions by combining minimal data with expert judgement. The talk will provide examples in chronic diseases.
The talk is targeted at anybody interested in quantifying and predicting risk.
Bio
Norman is Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London (retired as Full Professor December 2022) and a Director of Agena, a company that specialises in artificial intelligence and Bayesian probabilistic reasoning. A mathematician by training with current focus on quantifying risk and uncertainty using causal, probabilistic models that combine data and knowledge (Bayesian networks). He has published seven books and over 350 peer-reviewed articles. His works covers multiple application domains including especially health and law/forensics (he has been an expert witness in major criminal and civil cases). Since 2020 he has been active in analysing data related to Covid risk.
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Seems like a clear case of Bad Science. Somebody should write a book about it… oh, they did, and they organised the conference.
..obviously some science is so ‘bad’ it has to be censored.!!
It’s no comfort to professional people like Norman Fenton, but the only people here censoring information, and acting like they still need to control the narrative, is the committee…. they make themselves look, unscientific, petty and weak…
Ben Goldacre also wrote Bad Pharma in which he was scathing about big pharma’s methods. No doubt naively, I would have expected to see him getting directly involved in the current debate about their testing but I can’t find anything relevant. Has he published anything recently on the subject?
I have just read the second link above What’s Behind Ben Goldacre? – AGE OF AUTISM which is very informative but was written in 2010. Indeed what has he been up to most recently?
A real pity, and a sign of the times that deserves much public investigation and push back.
Prof Fenton: will you be making your presentation available online? It sounds very intriguing.
The Government/Authorities are terrified about the truth of the Covid Lunacy and mass medical experiment filtering through to the wider population.
So they are cancelling those who have questioned the policies.
At the same time they implore us to “trust the experts” ….. when this kind of action demonstrates that their bought and paid for “experts” are the very last people you should trust.
Hilarious.
Quackcine religious fundamentalism. No open science. No inquiry. No questions tolerated. For 200 years the sheeple have been fed the quackcine lie. The origins myth, the gospel, the divinely inspired Saint Jenner, Apostle of the Vaxx to the unquacked working tirelessly, selflessly as he accrued some £15 mn by 1823 in government funding writing letters deploring his poverty, always on the hunt for money….you know the hard working lonely ‘scientist’ and all that.
Inconvenient truth – post the smallpox stabs there were massive outbreaks, epidemics and a consistent doubling of the death rate until the slums were cleared.
Would any of the promoters of “vaccines” like to try Jenner’s small pox treatment cultured on sick calves? (See Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-and-The-Forgotten-History-FREE-Chapters-.pdf (dissolvingillusions.com) chapter 4?
More likely to be a “spell” from Hamlet’s heathland witches Song of the Witches: “Double, double toil and… | Poetry Foundation
Well you no longer have an NHS. Listen to this 3min clip of Dr Bob Gill explaining why. There’s a link to the full interview. None of this is common knowledge but explains a hell of a lot.
https://twitter.com/james_freeman__/status/1671550953433038848
Hi Mog’s just heard the clip, and yes, it does explain a hell of a lot. The change from providing health care to promotion, explains a lot about the covid reactions of government. Where the promotion turned to direction and legal enforcement, under the auspices of providing health advise and service. Very devious, very sinister, and if you think tangentially to the promotion of the BritCoin that the BOE and Treasury are in favour of, the future is potentially darker than any dystopian science fiction writer could have dreamt up in the past.
I envisage the wealth and freedoms that have taken generations to achieve will be swept away in less than one generation; this one.
Yes I totally agree. The future does look bleak and regarding the NHS I can see more and more people seeking out private doctors for GP visits and/or treatment. You might find these graphs interesting;
”Fig 11 shows the number waiting >6 weeks for a diagnostic test, and is quite extraordinary and frightening.
It looks like there was a sharp short shock to the system during the spring 2020 lockdown, which the NHS started to reverse immediately afterwards quite rapidly and effectively.
But this progress stopped in 2021, when an inexorable rise started.
The most recent data suggests a situation nearly as bad as it was in spring 2020 (number waiting >6 weeks is ~8 x pre-pandemic levels vs ~10 fold increase in spring 2020.)
What happened in 2021 to reverse the recovery?”
https://twitter.com/jengleruk/status/1672134517887229954
It would be interesting to know precisely who pulled the plug on this and why – and I mean the real reason/s why. Are they that frightened of Dr Fenton or is it just another illustration of how far and wide the tentacles of bigpharma have spread (and they’ve been spreading for at least 100 years…).
Hopefully this has come from high up the foodchain.
Maybe they’re getting a bit worried that more in even the NHS are waking up.
AS regards the NHS don’t forget that the real reason HMG backed down from mandatory jabs for all NHS employees was because they knew full well how many medics (and by that I mean those at the sharp end) would have walked – and that would have been at least 30% of them.
FWIW almost all the bureaucrats in the NHS are jabbed.
The two ‘here’ buttons within the article… in relation to Goldacre …are very illuminating, as are the comments under the 2nd ‘here’ in the age of autism article…
….I would say they are all ‘infected’ with big Pharma money…
“FWIW almost all the bureaucrats in the NHS are jabbed.”
Thanks very much for that snippet. A bright piece of news. Marvellous.
Meanwhile…in Australia…the medical folk went along with it all, went along with the mandates…
Unbloodybelievable…these people have absolutely no clue about ‘voluntary informed consent’ – they weren’t even able to defend their own freedom to be informed and consent to any medical intervention!
And the rot starts at the top – see my notification/complaint to the (very conflicted) regulator of health practitioners here, AHPRA, re Paul Kelly, the Chief Medical Officer, violating the requirement for voluntary informed consent by recommending Covid-19 vaccination mandates: https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/notification-to-ahpra-re-medical-practitioner-paul-kelly.pdf
Keep talking, Dr Fenton, and don’t bloody stop.
We’ll get the bastards.
This article also appears in today’s TCW so a good level of exposure will go a long way. Hopefully.
A few other points: The NHS is not just censoring Dr Fenton as a person, it is censoring a small part of civilization’s knowledge and expertise. Additionally, his research was largely funded by government and yet that resultant knowledge is being censored by government. Taxpayers and waste, fraud, and abuse watchdogs surely should protest the NHS’s actions here.
So – an expert on quantifying risk and uncertainty using causal, probabilistic models that combine data and knowledge is censored because – data. Aside from the nasty, vindictive, pharma-driven nature of this utterly cowardly act, the fundamental illogicality is breathtaking.
Decisions like this are being made at a supra-national level.
Ben Goldacre is part of the Praetorian Guard which has protected the vaccine industry from scrutiny for years, see for example: What’s behind Ben Goldacre?, as referenced in Norman Fenton’s article above.
Bill Gates basically runs the WHO and international vaccination policy via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi Alliance, plus CEPI, and Anthony Fauci of course, has been running the show in the NIAID/NIH in the US since the mid-80s.
Other members of the vaccine protection racket include Paul Offit, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Arthur Caplan and David Gorski, who’ve been working for years to suppress questioning of vaccination policy and practice.
The Vaccine Confidence Project is a major culprit in all this, established by anthropologist Heidi Larson in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – its role is to quash ‘vaccine hesitancy’. It’s in bed with the vaccine industry of course… See my BMJ rapid response referring to the Vaccine Confidence Project and conflicts of interest, published in February 2019: ‘Pharma-led chorus’ dominates the public narrative on vaccination.
Another organisation funded by ‘philanthropists’ to protect the vaccine industry is the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, headquartered in London, its primary aim is to shut down ‘anti-vaxxers’.
This ‘anti-vax’ labelling – IT HAS TO STOP!!! These are medical interventions, an ever-increasing number of which are being foisted upon billions of people around the world.
We must demand scrutiny of vaccination schedules which are steeped in conflicts of interest, we must demand examination of the burgeoning vaccine load being imposed upon children and adults.
I remember hearing Heidi Larson on Radio 4 a couple of years ago saying that the Queen and Prince Philip might have to be used as role models to encourage the population to get vaccinated and sure enough it came to pass. (In spite of Ainsworths having 2 royal warrants: the Queen’s and The Prince of Wales’s)
I think in her profile she says she worked for Apple and Xerox (PR rather than anthropology) and she is married to Peter Piot who is heavily interested in Ebola and is also at London School Of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Oh yes, The Firm was wheeled out for the marketing campaign – wonder if they have any pharmaceutical investments?
Quoting from an article published in February 2021:
Don’t be selfish – get a COVID shot, says UK’s Queen Elizabeth
Obviously their conference is/was of little use or import if they can casually remove important speakers.
Just proving they are a political sham.
What a surprise, autocrats who lied are scared of facing the truth
If your side or opinion is indefensible and will not stand up to scrutiny and debate then censor other opinons?