The avalanche of bad science that accompanied the Covid pandemic has brought long-standing problems with biomedical journals to the fore. The issues are many and are summarised by Peter Gøtzsche in an honest account, which he calls an Odyssey. We would call it a tragedy.
We will not repeat Peter’s words as his vivid description is probably a testament to what was once a great journal. Those who have followed the antiviral series will wonder why we seem to be writing an obituary for the BMJ. In reality, the obituary has been written by the very people who run it.
From 2009, the BMJ helped us uncover and publicise the gross exaggerations, bias and manipulation surrounding neuraminidase inhibitors. It actively campaigned to get Roche to release the data. It even built a web page to allow us to shed light on the deep biases of organisations like WHO, U.S. CDC, EMA and ECDC. Soon after the campaign’s conclusion, though, things started to change, and it became increasingly difficult and finally impossible to publish anything that seemed critical of the establishment.
One of the BMJ‘s spin-offs, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine (once Carl had left as Editor-in-Chief), even allowed anonymous persons to launch personal attacks under the guise of peer reviewers with the Editor’s acquiescence.
And what should one say about the BMJ editorial decision to publish an article accusing Sunetra Gupta, Jay Bhattacharyya and Carl of causing harm by sticking to evidence on the matter of Covid? Particularly when it was written by two men with no background of work on respiratory viruses.
Or what should we think of authoritarian articles such as this one, which contains statements such as: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, several groups have been active in opposing evidence-based public health measures.” It then goes on to suggest that the Hallett Inquiry should look at Government weaknesses, which have allowed misinformation and “contrarian views” to spread.
So Gøtzsche’s arguments are authentic, and we could think of scores of similar episodes happening to us or colleagues at the hands of editors of big journals. Indeed, think of the repeated undermining by the Cochrane Editor-in-Chief of the most accessed Cochrane review of all time.
In the 1990s, journals like BMJ, JAMA and the Lancet were part of a network of research that we have described – research into their own practices and those of the journal industry.
How things have changed. This is where platforms like Substack are gradually taking over the communication role. Yes, there is no pre-publication peer review – there are readers’ comments, but peer review has never been shown to identify good quality research. It is a habit, an untested process with no clear objectives and measures so far. It may do what it says on the tin, but we do not know for sure. However, it is used by editors as a shield, a Teflon mantel, hiding the reality: subjectivity in making decisions.
At present, neither of us can be bothered to go through the pantomime described by Peter Gøtzsche. We prefer to communicate through Trust the Evidence. Why? There is no censorship, no distortions, no personal attacks, and we get direct communication and engagement with our readers.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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“The shot of the day, brought to you by Moderna” – such irony!
https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1701023674935947608
Yup, so chuffed that No-vax Djokovic keeps on sticking it to them.
LOL! That will absolutely keep me chuckling all day…
Even ITV News noticed the irony.
Bloody wonderful.
“Theodore Dalrypole: The British lack the qualities to succeed in a postindustrial age”
Excellent article. I agree totally.
When 50 per cent of Brits are told they should go to Uni after which they will get jobs in senior management and the other half are subsidised by the tax payer and told they are inadequate it is not a surprise.
Yes, it’s a very good article. I suspect most Britons have always been always best suited to trades, military, agriculture or climbing on board a ship and going exploring. Trade union barons destroyed much of that. I don’t think we’re culturally suited to jobs that require us to be obsequious. Most Britons are not good in public facing roles. I’m terrible: I really struggle with people. I wish I didn’t. If I was doing a minimum wage job, I’d much rather get on with a job in a back room somewhere, unpacking boxes or building things.
And if you’ve ever worked in a shop, you know what utter a-holes British customers can be. I worked in a book shop 20 years ago. There were days where 80 per cent or more customers were abusive to me – and before someone says that must be my fault, this was a relatively small bookshop in a Tube station and people had unrealistic ideas of what a shop that leaned towards 3 for £10 paperbacks would stock. I got called a ‘c**t’ because we didn’t stock Carol Ann Duffy poems! As it was, I’d added Dylan Thomas, William Blake and Philip Larkin books to the tiny poetry section, which almost no one ever touched. One bloke used to come into the shop, stand at the back counter (which had a ‘closed’ sign on it) and slam his fist on the counter until someone paid him attention. And the number of halfwits demanding ‘vuh la’est Jakkerlinn Wiwsunn’ book and getting angry that it was sold out began to make me lose my faith in humanity!
I understand why Baroness Thatcher ended the industrial aspect of our country, as the communist union barons were holding our country to ransom. As it stands, I believe deindustrialisation went too far. Technology would have changed a lot of factory culture anyway, but we’ve offshored too much. So, we’re stuck with a misanthropic British public that has nowhere it wants to go to work, and a benefits system that allows it.
I’m work-from-home person as a result of the lockdown world. My social skills are worse than ever, because I almost never see anyone. I’m unfailingly polite to shop staff, because I’ve been on their end of dealing with customers, but practically get verbal diarrhoea because they’re the only people other than my parents I ever talk to face to face! And my real enjoyment comes from backbreaking work in my garden. Psychologically, physical work is good for us and we don’t do that anymore. Men and boys play computer games in their spare time and women and girls have been told childrearing is slavery.
We’re a messed up country.
I enjoy public facing jobs because I enjoy selling. I have worked many years in financial services and done bar work all my life. There is a secret – acknowledge that selling to the public, and everyone’s a salesman, involves a bit of acting.
Whenever I went to see clients I would tell the office staff as I left – right, I’m off to see my public. It’s all about changing mind-set. Ordinarily I am a shy person.
Agreed, an excellent article.
“Drivers ‘should be fined for going just one mph over the speed limit’”
Perhaps we should also fine local and central government officials for going £1 over budget..?
Ignorance about instrument accuracy is common among that lot. The only thing that is 100% accurate is their bank account.
“‘It would be helpful if you were to do some proper research’
Brave words, when five minute of ‘proper research’ would show this is the second biggest lie ever told. Anyone noticed that even when sceptical arguments are put forwards the argument is how we afford Nett Zero, not why do we need to do Nett Zero.?
“Headteacher at girls’ school says pupils should use AI to do homework”
Perhaps AI will tell the girls that they shouldn’t be wasting their time, learning inside the imposition of the Prussian Education Model and should instead be putting their efforts into developing themselves via the Trivium.
I remember the days – not that long ago – when we were warned against using Wikipedia as a reliable source. And now a Head is suggesting using a secondary source that uses Wiki (among others) as its primary. How times change, eh? Reminds me of a quote from The Machine Stops by EM Forster (1909):
“Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine — the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.
I had to look that up; interesting; thanks.
I confess I was ignorant of this myself until earlier this year when a reference set me scurrying off to Google to find out more, as you have done today. The concept from classical times, that you first teach someone how to learn, and then let them learn about everything and anything that interests them is just wonderful. I did wonder about all those 17th and 18th century inverntor/discoverer polymaths like Benjamin Frankiln and how he could be interested in so many things. Now I know. Every day is a school day, and when you have the entirity of human knowledge at your finger tips, literally with the internet, who knows where you will go next.
The entirety of human knowledge minus those parts that Google and others have got around to censoring due to them being “wrongthink”
Why would ULEZ vans not be fined for breaches of poarking rules.
In my town up to 6 rubbish (oooopos, recycling ones, diesel) park on double yellow lines around a busy junction every Monday while staff have a breAK. This has been reported to the enforcement people. Nothing happens.
However, a neighbour and me were penalised after parking on a single yellow line only 100 yards (oooops again, 90 metres) away. We were caught because a long standing restriction was changes without notice to residentas, a time notice was removed and instead there is one at the entrance toi the town – who studies these changes?
How come the local tax payers are penalised whereas council employees or contractors have carte blanche (oooh, how racist is that).
Get your own wheel clamps and clamp them while they’re busy checking their phones! I think they’d soon get the message.
Just a big ”F*ck you!” statement from Novak at the US Open. Huge congrats to him, he deserves it. If this doesn’t sock it to the totalitarian Clown World government I don’t know what does. And the event was mainly sponsored by Moderna, apparently, so a bonus ”up yours!” it is. Amazing how we unjabbed are all still living, breathing and injury/illness-free isn’t it? LOL
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1701019102389944608
And a reminder of just how the unjabbed were abused and vilified by the authoritarian governments and elites ( and our fellow citizens, most shamefully of all ), as well as the absolutely horrendous way the gestapo thugs, posing as police, went after law-abiding, freedom-defending civilians. But we, the non-compliant, as perfectly illustrated by Novax Djokovic, came out triumphant. Nobody regrets not taking it.
https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/happy-do-not-comply-day
Most shameful of all is family. I have a sibling who still refuses to talk to me.
And what is their reasoning behind that? Do you think it’s to do with the fact that you are alive and well, despite making a different decision to them, which then makes them feel rather stupid and ashamed to have swallowed the garbage narrative, but they’re too proud to apologise for their behaviour and reflect that they treated you badly, admitting that they were in the wrong?
I’m only going off somebody I personally know who I think meets this analysis. I’ve basically demonstrated to them how naive and foolish they were but they’re too stubborn to even do any self-reflection and admit they were wrong.
I would say most families have someone like that, mine certainly does!
Yes, it’s everywhere, Dings. The f**kers certainly did their job in dividing us. However, I’ve also heard of cases where families have got back together and healed the divide due to more information leaking out. We are gaining numbers that is for sure and I really don’t think we will be so easy to lock down, mask up or socially distance again. We will win this war.
I have no idea why, TBH. Right at the start I was asked for my opinion (having worked in and around health care for 30 odd years); I did the research and gave it, but it was ignored. That’s it, last time I heard anything back. I still send regular ‘contentious’ emails though, as I do to another sib who also ignored me but still communicates!! Nowt so queer as folk.
The trial of the leaders of the peaceful Truckers’ Convoy protest has begun. They face the possibility of prison.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/xqSU9g3D3Nhw/
Given what’s happened with the Jan 6th guys in the US I wouldn’t put it past Turdeau at all. These truckers and their supporters made an absolute fool of him and we all know what an out and out spiteful psychopath he is. He’s got plenty of form. Just look also at what that poor Pastor Artur has been through. Canada is another country gone to the dogs with a joke of a judicial system.
It must be an AI bot..surely, like us, he must have died from the coof by now??
LOL!
It’s also gratifying that it’s in America..where he was banned for two years…and after winning the Australian open as well…..what a slap around the head for those muppets!!
Definitely the GOAT…..
“Two transgender cyclists hammer female competition at Illinois races”
…they’re still pretty piss poor men then:
Williamson competed in both men’s and women’s categories at the Sky Express Winter Criterium in March 2020, where she won first place racing against women but didn’t place in the men’s race comprised of 40 cyclists.
Transgender cyclists triumph again.
Another victory for Norm Hiccup …
https://youtu.be/ipvesqJP1e4?si=SfSuYJNQ_bkzBmhW
“Net Zero and ageing populations risk higher taxes”. Fine, because only one of those is inevitable and a morally necessary source of expenditure- as opposed to a childish fantasy anti-human authoritarian anti-scientific vampiric death cult designed to destroy society, end private ownership, impoverish the citizenry, enslave whole populations and make the lives of men “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Trick will be to find any politician who can work out which is which.
Same Berkoff who sued Julie Burchill for calling him “hideously ugly”? Or another one?
As if the Climate Cult weren’t already scary enough….I was looking at an article about a US company called Make Sunsets ….
https://makesunsets.com/
….in relation to geo engineering ..and ‘cooling the earth’….(sigh).. when I found this.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/01/1069283/researchers-launched-a-solar-geoengineering-test-flight-in-the-uk-last-fall/
Last September, researchers in the UK launched a high-altitude weather balloon that released a few hundred grams of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, a potential scientific first in the solar geo engineering field, MIT Technology Review has learned.
..we are fricking doomed!!
‘Fake Sunsets’ would be a better name for that company. These people are insane. They honestly think that they can engineer the ‘cooling’ of a gigantic celestial body, the mechanisms and workings of which are still largely a mystery. Interfering with things that are beyond their myopic, ego-raddled minds. They think only of the desired effect and not the consequences which pretty much sums up globalistic psychopathic thinking.
Bill Gates and other billionaires are investing in this insanity. Bill Gates, perhaps inspired by an episode of The Simpsons, has also invested in nuclear power.
https://time.com/6258126/solar-geoengineering-billionaries-george-soros/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LbxDZRgA4
A link to the Ron DeSantis press conference with Dr Ladapo. The headline writers of the New York post need to check their dictionaries for the definition of rant.
https://thefloridachannel.org/videos/9-7-23-governors-press-conference/
Anything the MSM disagrees with is defined as a ‘rant’ to make a reader imagine the words yelled in an unhinged manner.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/andrew-castle/caller-challenges-andrew-castle-on-net-zero/
The caller Daniel is the one who needs to do more research. Muppet.
“Owning a big dog generates twice as much carbon dioxide a year as driving an average car, writes Sean Thomas in the Spectator.”
Seems like we all need to get a big dog. Some more plant food added to the atmosphere is just what we need.
If that POS entitled toxic male Sean Thomas fell into the sea, along with my dog..I know which one is worth saving….and it isn’t him….what a load of bo**ocks…
…..what a jumped-up reptile….
Although I do believe they are coming for our pets one way or the other…remember they did try to claim family pets were spreading Convid..and I have seen more articles recently about pets being bad for the planet….I suppose if farmers have to give up cows, sheep and pigs..the next logical step is the family pet….I mean ffs anything that gives us joy has got to go hasn’t it??
So along with my heating, my wood burner, my car and my meaty fricken dinner ….. they can well and truly piss off if they think they’ll get any of them….including my dog…….!!
Anyone see ukcolumnnews today and, at 43-50 mins, the piece on “Dr” Mary Bowman of Chicago?
Frightening to think that such people work in the health service and want to control library content – and, apparently, already do control education.