One novel feature of the pandemic, from the standpoint of public debate, is the fact that so much name-calling, ‘fact-checking’ and censorship was aimed not just at random dissidents but at credential scientists.
Academics who’d reached esteemed positions within their field were denounced as ‘Covid deniers’, accused of spreading ‘misinformation’, and subjected to multiple forms of censorship.
Renowned scholars had warning labels attached to their tweets, and found their articles blacklisted on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. In one particularly egregious case, the Great Barrington Declaration was downranked by Google, so that when users searched for it, articles critical of the Declaration appeared above the Declaration itself.
Somehow, Big Tech firms felt they were in position to adjudicate complex scientific debates. This would be like two scientists having an argument at speaker’s corner in Hyde Park, but the groundskeeper keeps blasting an airhorn every time one of them speaks.
And it wasn’t just Big Tech that restricted one side’s freedom of speech. Academics who questioned the mainstream view on Covid faced sanctions from their universities, journals and professional associations.
In s recent paper, Yaffa Shir-Raz and colleagues analysed the tactics that were used against dissenting scientists, based on semi-structured interviews with some of the targets. Their findings have already been summarised by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, but it’s worth pulling out a few anecdotes from the paper.
One interviewee recounted that he/she was even censored on Google docs – a program for creating documents and spreadsheets (like Microsoft Office):
Google Docs started restricting and censoring my ability to share documents… This is not Twitter throwing me off like they did. This is an organisation telling me that I cannot send a private communication to a colleague or to a friend, or to a family member.
Another interviewee explained that his/her employment contract were re-written after he/she deviated from the narrative:
They offered me a new contract… we got some new terms for you, because my old contract was not restricted. The new one basically had like seven or eight restrictions of my First Amendment rights… basically I couldn’t talk to the press, I couldn’t speak in public… unless I said, these are my opinions not that of my employer… It was a relatively short conversation. I said that’s never going to happen, I’m never going to sign that thing.
A third interviewee described how he/she was cancelled by several organisations without any due process:
There was a whole series of actions taken again with no due process and no explanation… I received a notice from the [medical association] that I was being stripped from a committee position… I received a letter from a journal…where I was the Editor-in-Chief, being stripped of the editorship, again with no due process, no phone calls no, tractable explanation… I received a letter from the National Institutes of Health being stripped from a longstanding committee position.
Remember, these were all “established doctors and scientists”, not foreign spies engaged in subversion.
The point isn’t that dissenting scientists were right about everything (although they were right about a lot). It’s that we can’t have a proper debate if one side faces a barrage of name-calling, ‘fact-checking’ and censorship. Enforcing a narrative around Covid shouldn’t be the role of Big Tech companies. And it certainly shouldn’t be the role of academic institutions.
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Only 34.8°C? Just down the road in the city of Cambridge we got 38.7 back in 2019 (and 39.9 in 2022, the same day that the RAF Coningsby “record” was set). The site in the Botanical Gardens wasn’t in the city when it was established in the 1800s: the city and its office blocks gradually expanded to surround it. I wonder if that is connected with the way it shows temperature increasing over the last century?
https://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/cambridge-university-botanic-garden-records-highest-ever-uk-temperature/
The measuring station is adjacent to a road. How hot does asphalt get on a Summer’s day? What are runways, apron strips and taxi ways paved with? Another favourite location for weather monitoring stations.
The Histon Met Office station also appears to be near trees, which will restrict the free movement of cooling air
Interesting to see that SSE (which is the DNO in my area) had a plan to sell spare heat that way. It reminded me of systems that exist in some parts of Europe that can do that, and in the old days there was just a setup around Battersea Power Station in London. Any attempt to develop that idea now would be difficult in the current housing market, though.
Near where I live, there was a housing estate built on a patch of “brownfield” land on which there used to be a coal fired station, with a similar substation right next door (that feeds my place and others), but of course all the houses have gas boilers. All built about 30 years ago, and they all have individual owners, more than likely.
As the concreting over of England accelerates to accommodate the needs of more and more people, this effect will distort temperature records even further. How convenient for the climate alarmists!
Examining the Google map in more detail, the measuring point is evidently to the west of the substation site, so often upwind of it with the prevailing wind direction, but also likely to be quite different with the opposite direction, given the suburban development close to the east. The latter may well disrupt the results when there is a cold easterly wind in open country. So it’s probably less accurate when we have a cold spell, with it appearing to be warmer than most of the surrounding countryside.
Everybody knows this has been a cool summer. We had the central heating on some days in June.
However: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – Orwell, 1984
If you examine the site further on google you will find that above the east-west axis it is ringed with buildings starting on the west with NIAB, then the sub-station and then some industrial units round to the east. Also does being next to a field that presumably goes through changes through the year and is part of a research farm?
Jim Dale says “climate change” is to blame for that yacht sinking near Sicily: Global warming linked to Sicily Yacht sinking: ‘Obviously climate change!’ says Jim Dale (youtube.com)
The owner was involved in some dispute or something that someone else was involved in who has also disappeared or died or something…
The Temperature Record of Earth has been fiddled about with more times than a prostitute’s knickers. You can tell the public anything about weather, climate and temperature and how many of them are ever going to look into it, check any data, or even realise the extent of this pseudo scientific fraud being used to transform their lives away from free markets that have given them the lifestyle, health and long lifespan they currently have into some global communist hell hole where technocrats will determine the standard of living they are to have? ——I suggest very few, because climate porn is fed to them on a daily basis, and they cannot comprehend a lie so enormous.
On the topic of climabollox, this is good: RAINMASTER_ALL: SINCE RECORDS BEGAN | PUBLIC HIGHWAY (public-highway.blogspot.com)
Meanwhile the Met Office don’t mention this:
Atlantic Niña: The Atlantic is cooling at record speed and nobody knows why | New Scientist
Electroverse – Documenting Earth Changes During The Next Grand Solar Minimum
Whatever is wrong at the met office? Why are so many taxpayer funded government agencies sooo in competent. One must ask, where are our hard earned taxes going? Way past time for taxpayers to ask for accountability. You do have that right folks.