A new academy to allow “the free exchange of ideas” has been set up by scientists who say they were “silenced, censored, and slandered” for questioning the handling of the pandemic. Lucy Johnston in the Express has more.
The Academy for Science and Freedom, at Washington’s Hillsdale College, is expected to be running within months, with the aim of combatting “the recent and widespread abuses of individual and academic freedom made in the name of science”.
Professors Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya who are involved in the academy were two of the three creators of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a focussed protection approach to Covid rather than blanket restrictions.
Both men faced heavy criticism for the proposal, with trolls branding them ‘alt-right’ and even ‘climate change deniers’. Harvard’s Prof Kullfdorff suggested a ‘cartel system’ had seized control of scientific debate, resulting in scientists being too scared to speak against the then-accepted narrative.
“No scientists have a monopoly on the truth”, added Prof Bhattacharya, of Stanford University.
He said: “The level of suppression of freedom of discussion has been a shock to me during the pandemic. Big tech and the government have worked together to ensure voices were suppressed. Many scientists remain silent for fear of being smeared.”
Sir Jeremy Farrar – director of the Wellcome Trust and a senior Sage member – claimed in a recent book that Government adviser Dominic Cummings “wanted to run an aggressive press campaign against those behind the Great Barrington Declaration and others opposed to blanket COVID-19 restrictions”.
Prof Bhattacharya said: “The goal was to create an illusion that the scientific community was united in its favour of lockdown policies and disagreement with this did not exist.”
“We want to create this academy of freedom of discussion in science and make sure that Science keeps its proper place in society.”
“No scientists have a monopoly on the truth and no scientist is omnipresent.”
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.
Prof Bhattacharya said: “The goal was to create an illusion that the scientific community was united in its favour of lockdown policies and disagreement with this did not exist.”
Where have I heard this before? Oh yes, thanks Obama for reminding us that all scientists agree on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
We really have entered a new Dark Ages.
An excellent development but how is it to be funded? The problem with existing agencies is their backers are nearly always the usual suspects i.e BMGF. I’d be happy to pay more for taxes and services if it was channeled into genuinely independent scientific research and regulation.
Get the existing system sorted out before mentioning more taxes.
The middle class in the UK hand over about 50% of their earning in Taxes.
Chucking Taxpayers money at problems just creates more government induced problems.
Very much with you on this one, RHS!
Agreed, but can you see that happening? If I could provide HMRC with a list of what I’m prepared to pay for and what I’m not, they would have to whistle for their Green Levy and numerous other things.
This Foundation is badly needed if we are to progress as a society but I’d hate to see it flounder due to financial problems.
As it’s a US initiative it will be expected to sink or swim on its own merits, especially as the Biden regime is so intent on stifling dissent.
More higher education facilities in the UK should be independent of government funding. Going to government with a begging bowl just invites compliance.
A GCSE in the climate is now being proposed for secondary schools I believe. How independent of government instruction do we imagine that will be?
So what’s the alternative?
I’m all for keeping government out of stuff but it has to be paid for somehow, and the private bodies interested in funding science have turned out to be interested only in increasing their own wealth and furthering dodgy agendas.
Find a Libertarian candidate to vote for.
Search for Libertarian party UK. They have basically moved into the space that classic liberalism used to occupy and where conservative government should be.
Piece in the DT today saying that admin posts in the NHS, many of them at senior level, have doubled in the last 2 years. At the same time, nurse numbers have risen by 7%. That’s where the money is going.
No doubt ‘managing ‘ waiting lists is deemed more important than actually reducing them.
Well, somebody has to write all those policies on “keeping people safe” and carry out monitoring to make sure they are being followed. Just think of it – if there was nobody to do this then there might be people in hospitals not wearing face nappies and not following assorted arcane rituals. Then where would we be, eh?
No doubt lots and lots of diversity and inclusion.
“An excellent development but how is it to be funded? “
Hillsdale College has a $900 Million endowment.
Interestingly, Wikipedia describes them as “conservative” (true) but I’ve not seen it describe most other US colleges as “liberal” (which most are). Right wing journalists are always described as such in Wikipedia, left wing journalists are usually just described as journalists. All part of the move to portray anything right wing or conservative as extreme, and the left as the norm.
Sadly, as much I despise them, antifa have a point. Our government is being more controlled by the technocrats as time goes on. In other words, fascism.
A scholar and journalist in global affairs (I forget his name at the moment) points out that Putin has put great energy into breaking the link between the two so the state is dominant over commerce.
This might seem very left wing but without a state we can’t have democracy. If the technocrats are buried deep within it, we eventually reach peak fascism, precisely what Schwab’s Great Reset is all about.
Science is a tool to ensure the harmonious progression of society. ‘The Science’ is the imposition of science to the exclusion of all else.
We have been convinced to replace religion with science. I’m not religious but I recognise the immense benefit people derive from it. I have never met someone of faith who objects to science but there is a sneering condemnation of religion from many who believe in science, not necessarily scientists.
In fact many scientist are religious because they understand how little science can explain. They understand how gravity works, they just can’t figure out why.
Democracy is a placebo.
As Iain Davis points out in a very long, but worthwhile read:
We don’t have personal sovereignty
We don’t even have National sovereignty
Only the global central bankers have sovereignty
All roads lead to the BIS
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-5/
Sounds encouraging.
Well, it’s a nice concept, but it will be David vs Goliath unless it develops a global network and gets some serious backing.
The war on science takes place not between scientists but in the media with the politicians, the lawyers, the billionaires, the financiers and the media prostitutes centre stage.
In the media, there is zero punishment for being wrong, merely serious punishment for having integrity when dissenting. Enormous numbers of lying prostitutes should face life bans from working in the media, but they won’t, because the media now serves the elite, not the people.
And the pollsters are there to prime the majority into accepting and believing the outcome of rigged votes.
Rowlatt.
Amongst many others.
David won!!
I think this is a really positive move and am saddened by the negativity in the comments I’ve read so far, apart from Jane G.
There is a constant whinging on here about the people with money having all the power, only if we let them and we aren’t going to overcome them by whinging and giving up at the start.
Of course it’s positive, Catee, but we need to be realistic about the challenges we face. Otherwise we’ll get disappointed at every turn!
Meantime, put our money where our mouths are and support the right developments.
I agree with Catee and I agree with MAk.
The problem is that much of the reality in which we live is horrifying, and the challenges can be overwhelming.
I looked in on Larry Johnson’s blog a short while ago, as I do each day. He has a street scene from Philadelphia – summer of 2021; not so far from Hillsdale College, a couple of hours down the road. The link is here, for anyone who can bear it.
Proud to Be An American in Philadelphia (sonar21.com)
I wanted to believe that it was fake – that such utter degradation could not exist; so I’ve been checking, and there are other videos showing the same scenes.
So that’s part of our world: streets of the wretched; along with desperate and innocent people confined in apartment blocks “for their protection” and going out of their minds; little children being injected with experimental concoctions by neatly-dressed parents who live in comfortable homes.
We have governments that either perpetrate the horrors, or don’t have them on their agenda; and a media that routinely lies, distorts and suppresses the voices of those who are trying to be reasonable.
We receive daily invitations to hate others; to sneer at them and condemn them; to ridicule them or dismiss them as lost causes.
The best I can come up with is that every act of human decency and kindness, under the circumstances, is a little victory. Perhaps it’s true that it’s always darkest before the dawn.
P.S. I note that the article has been corrected. Hillsdale College is in fact in Michigan, which has plenty of problems of its own but is not a couple of hours from Philadelphia.
David was victorious and the Philistine Goliath hit the dust.
NB The “war on science” is between scientists, they’re not innocent civilians in this conflict.
If it’s owt like “climate science” it won’t matter, the GWPF, SEPP etc just raise the noise level a bit, but the narrative moves on regardless.
Another institution that the MSM will add to its smear list.
As long as they don’t share anything online……. think of the harm it could do
Correction: Hillsdale College is in Michigan.
Anybody find it weird that such a thing is necessary?
Great news – can anyone apply?
‘Lockdowns’ had absolutely nothing to do with science; they were a political decision taken for reasons that are still unclear, even to those of us who have been looking closely at this issue for two years. Science was coopted, abused and bought to create a veneer of scientific justification. I’d like esteemed and good faith actors like Bhattacharya to address the elephant in the room.
When all the new censorship laws are in place. no-one will ever hear about it.
the only problem is will this new potential academy be heard in the future? the MSM won’t cover them, nor will the tech companies and MSM tabloids etc, the average person did not hear about the great Barrington declaration so I assume it will be worse in the future with suppression of unwanted news by the state etc.
3 minutes from preparation to job done!!
Everything else you have read, or heard, is totally irrelevant – how simple is that?
Covid Crusher: Mix one heaped teaspoon of Iodine table salt in a mug of warm clean water, cup a hand and sniff or snort the entire mugful up your nose, spitting out anything which comes down into your mouth. If sore, then you have a virus, so continue morning noon and night, or more often if you want, until the soreness goes away (2-3 minutes) then blow out your nose and flush away, washing your hands afterwards, until when you do my simple cure, you don’t have any soreness at all, when you flush – job done. Also swallow a couple of mouthfuls of salt water and if you have burning in your lungs, salt killing virus and pneumonia, there too.
My simple salt water cure, kills all Coronaviruses and viruses, as soon as you think you have an infection, or while self isolating, before the viruses mutate into the disease in your head and body, for which there is no cure – that is, after you have been out shopping, or mixing with people with potentially, Omicron or Delta viruses, or any other virus.
It washes behind the eyes, the brain bulb, brain stem (Long Covid), The Escutcheon Tubes to the inner ears and the top of the throat which is at a point roughly level with half way up your ears and not where your mouth is and down the back of your throat, when sore.
I have been doing this simple cure for over 28.5 years and I am and others, never sick from viruses and there is no reason why any of you should be either – when your only alternative are those vaccines!!
I do my simple preparation, after I have been out and about, or come into contact with people who have been vaccinated – it has kept me safe – and I hope it keeps me safe for the foreseeable future as Graphene Oxide is in the very air we breathe, outside, as well, but now from the vaccinated!!
Simply put, if the inside of your nose is dry and crusty, you are OK, if your nose is runny, you really need to do a salt water sniffle as quickly as possible and monitor the results, to see if further salt water sniffles are necessary, but later on in that evening – so far – I remain immune from potential Covid infections, doing just this.
No vaccines for me – ever – pass on my free cure and have those pass it on too
“Science” which silences dissent and prevents debate isn’t science; it’s dogma and propaganda.
The British Government didn’t “follow the science.” It complied with the dogma and issued propaganda.
These guys were almost made to look like out casts from the scientific community because they said and promoted what their colleagues who shared their views were afraid to say, because of government stupidity and big pharma’s agenda to take advantage of Covid to make loads of money. And it seemed the government were set on crippling our economy without evaluating the effect of their imposition of lockdowns against the limited value in the way they did it. Some government edicts seemed in place just to make life unnecessarily unpleasant and what they did to the hospitality industry even when there was data to show it was not a significant source of Covid infection was criminal.
All power to their new project I hope it can be a success and also open up the real scientific facts about CO2 and global warming which are nothing like the biased information being promoted by the government and main-stream media in the same way they did with Covid. I also hope they can be on the lookout for the next big thing that these people use with the objective of ruining our lives and work against it.
If you want to understand the some of the ways big pharma work to sell their product at massive profits, read the article under the news heading in this issue of DS; about Dr Pierre Kory and his revelations about the biased testing done to undermine the use of Ivermetcin against Covid, which has undermined its use and he claims this could have cost many lives.
I’m sure he must have said ”omniscient”!