In his Spectator column this week, Toby looks at the “head-scratcher” of how progressives seek to both politicise science and appeal to it as an objective source of justification for radical measures like lockdown and Net Zero.
Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their ‘expert’ advisers across the world have successfully promoted a series of controversial public policies by claiming they’re based on ‘the science’ rather than a particular moral or ideological vision. I’m thinking of lockdowns and Net Zero in particular. Yet at the same time, this group has engaged in behaviour that has undermined public confidence in science. Why appeal to the authority of science to win support for a series of politically contentious policies – and then diminish its authority?
Take Anthony Fauci, for instance, who recently announced he’s stepping down as Chief Medical Adviser to Joe Biden. Even though he once claimed to “represent science” in the eyes of the American people, he misled them about the likely duration of the lockdowns (“15 days to slow the spread”), overstated the efficacy of the Covid vaccines when they were first rolled out, refused to countenance the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it later emerged that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, under his leadership, had given a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, which helped fund ‘gain of function’ research at the Chinese lab) and conspired with other prominent scientists, such as Francis Collins, to besmirch the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (“There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” Collins told Fauci in an email). A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal concluded: “His legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust Government health experts in the same way again.”
Another case in point is a recent editorial in Nature Human Behaviour, one of several journals in the Nature Research stable, the world’s pre-eminent publisher of scientific research. “Although academic freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded,” it begins, and then proceeds to set out rules that future academic papers will have to comply with in addition to meeting all the usual standards for publication, e.g. peer review. It says the journal won’t publish articles that might cause “potential harms” (even “inadvertently”) to individuals or groups that are most vulnerable to “racism, sexism, ableism or homophobia”. “Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups; assumes that a human group is superior or inferior over another simply because of a social characteristic; includes hate speech or denigrating images; or promotes privileged, exclusionary perspectives raises ethics concerns that may require revisions or supersede the value of publication,” it says.
It should be obvious, says Toby, that “far from being politically neutral, these rules embody a particular ideology and in future the truthfulness of a scientific finding will be subordinate to this perspective”. Were this to be political conservatives stating that research would be rejected if it went against their views on, say, family values and religion, then “those progressive scientists applauding Nature Human Behaviour would throw up their arms in horror and point out – correctly – that these rules are at odds with one of the foundational principles of science, which is to pursue the truth, wherever it may lead”.
In the end though, Toby notes, it’s an own goal for those who want to “appeal to the authority of science to promote lockdowns and Net Zero”, as it undermines the concept of objective, politically neutral science and announces that “the only knowledge that will count as ‘scientific’ is that which promotes their agenda”.
Is it a sign of how emboldened progressives now feel that they can make science explicitly ideological yet still appeal to it as the embodiment of objectivity, or is it an indication of overreach that presages a downfall?
Worth reading in full.
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It’s becoming laughable at this point. If a news article talks about a violent attack, or about assault and rape, or about sexually abusing minors and you don’t see the name or photo of the criminal responsible for it, you can already assume his immigration status, and you’d be right 90% of the time. Terrorists are screaming out why they’re doing all these attacks, but the media is deaf. But get 10 people together that are displeased with how the government runs things and the media won’t shut up about “far right” and “white supremacy”.
How delusional do you have to be to trust the media these days?
Why can’t we just accede to his desire for martyrdom?
This one’s doing the rounds, in case you didn’t see it. I honestly thought it was AI-generated, but apparently it’s legit. The contrast with the backdrop is just seriously peculiar…How many were in attendance, I wonder?
https://twitter.com/WayneGb88/status/1755302991760937255
Absolutely grotesque.
Plod excelling at F. A.
Yes, agreed. That’s how my mind works now too. A bit like if somebody dies suddenly and unexpectedly, especially decades before the end of their expected lifespan, I always assume it’s the death jab until proven otherwise.
And I note that Afghan alkali attacker in Clapham still hasn’t been found. For somebody who’s reportedly got ”significant facial injuries”, in a city that has masses of surveillance cameras, it’s surely safe to assume he’s being helped and kept hidden by somebody he knows. Well, either that or he’s walking around freely, identifying as a Muslim woman, complete with burka and niqab.
Here’s another depressing travesty of justice. Another non-accidental ‘error’ by the Home Office ( as if we were born yesterday! ) to add to the extensive list. But I’m sure he’s seen the error of his ways and is now a totally reformed character, so that’s okay then;
”A terrorist who murdered three people was allowed to stay in the country after a series of “woeful” Home Office errors.
Khairi Saadallah murdered James Furlong, 36, Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, and David Wails, 49, in Forbury Gardens, Reading, on Saturday June 20, 2020.
Now, an inquest has heard how Saadallah had wrongly been granted five years’ humanitarian leave to remain by the Home Office.
The department made a series of “woeful” errors in handling the case, which included allowing him to stay in the country even though he had served five prison sentences for violent offences.
The inquest was told that the Home Office had no record of Saadallah’s arrival in Britain on a multiple-entry tourist visa with his father in March 2012 and again in September 2012, reports The Times.
The department also had no record of his failure to depart by the visa expiry date on September 28 before he claimed asylum on October 16.
Six years later, Saadallah was still in the country. This is despite exhausting all his appeals, after launching a new legal challenge to his deportation.
He argued that Libya had become unsafe in the meantime due to a new round of conflict in the country. He was eventually granted five years’ leave to remain on a humanitarian protection basis and withdrew his legal appeal.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/reading-terrorist-khairi-saadallah-home-office-failings
I do not blame the trash that are coming here. I do however blame the trash that brought the trash here. —-Government. hand wringing parasite globalists that will facilitate our cultural destruction so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the One World Government people at the UN and WEF
When the mistakes always go one way, maybe they’re not mistakes.
Or they only turn into mistakes when they happen to become public.
I remember that (I was in the Forbury earlier that day and the police blocked all of the area for days). But this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill islamist terror attack. The victims were all gay and I strongly suspect this was someone having seriously violent second thoughts about “experiences he had shared with them”, ie, that the motivation was rather personal than religious. That’s obviously not an excuse. But still a different kind of murderous delusion.
Self hating projection.
Jealousy would be another conjecture. Or some drug-fuelled tete-a-tete somebody really didn’t want to remember when he became sober again. As far as I can recall, nothing about the motive for the murder was ever published. This happened on a sunny day right in the center of a popular public park which suggests that it was rather a targetted than a random attack.
We’re already being set up for the Afghan chemical attacker being declared to have “mental health problems” as justification for his murderous attack.
A fellow Afghan appeared on the news pleading for the Afghan community not to assist him because he “needs medical attention and may have mental health issues.”
I knew people could sleepwalk but I never knew a whole continent could. ——-But in the last 20 years or so I have realised that Europe is SLEEPWALKING
How perfectly horrendous everything is: these obviously terrorist Muslim attacks, the cancer epidemic (as in Dr Dalgliesh’s article), the wars. All extremely depressing but only to be expected in the spiritual war we are in, essentially waged against us by the devil. We need to (re)turn to God.
I don’t really agree with this statement. But it’s certainly a lot better than many others. Defeatism always ends in defeat.
I don’t mean to sound defeatist – sorry! I resist at every opportunity: masks, lockdowns, jabs, and now in our area, Lower Traffic Neighbourhoods – a couple of other guys and I, all in our 70s or more, are standing at the very badly signed barriers warning motorists of the fines they can expect if they drive thorugh). We do what we can! And fight on!
You didn’t. That was the part of the statement I liked — it offered a positive perspective instead of the more common “We are doomed!” mongering. I’ve been raised by pretty religious parents and used to call myself a Christian during most of my lifetime. I’ve started to reconsider that due to too many bad experiences with organised (protestant) churches.
So I expect you disagreed with what I said about returning to God? I’m sorry you have had bad experiences with churches. We were blessed with ours, which although it closed initially during lockdowns did manage to stay open in one way by having ‘support groups’ where we all had lunch together, pray together, etc. And now we have a large percentage (of a very small church) who are on board with everything and still tolerate those in the church who aren’t on board (as they tolerate us in spite of disagreeing with us). I hope and pray that should there be another lockdown or other measures, we’d stay open. There’s no perfect church because there’s no perfect human being (Jesus being the only one!).