Behavioural Science at its Worst
The claims by Government Covid adviser Susan Michie that she never advocated use of fear to influence behaviour are contradicted by her published statements and papers, says Dr David Seedhouse.
The claims by Government Covid adviser Susan Michie that she never advocated use of fear to influence behaviour are contradicted by her published statements and papers, says Dr David Seedhouse.
Government advisers now falsely claim never to have supported pandemic fear messaging. Nonsense, says Laura Dodsworth, who kept the receipts and sets the record straight.
Young people are experiencing levels of anxiety never seen before. But are we surprised when they have been bombarded with Covid fear propaganda for the last three years and continue to be told the world is going to end?
In our supposedly liberal and transparent democratic country, it seems that it was a group of remote and unnamed scientists, outside of SAGE, who effectively imposed masks on British citizens, writes Dr Gary Sidley.
Susan Michie, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and a leading participant in SAGE's SP-1 group, has been promoted to Chair of the WHO’s nudge unit.
The use of behavioural psychology in influencing public behaviour during the pandemic – a.k.a. Project Fear – must be part of the U.K. COVID-19 Inquiry, say 42% of the public, according to a new poll.
We're publishing an original piece on the Daily Sceptic today by Dr Gary Sidley, a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist, about the dubious ethics of 'nudging' the public to comply with Covid restrictions.
There's a horrifying story in the Sunday Times this morning that lays bare the terrible psychological damage wrought by the mind-benders of the SPI-B – 10% of Britons want lockdown restrictions to last forever!
We're publishing an original piece today by Dr James Moreton Wakeley, a former Parliamentary researcher, about the Government's shameful use of sophisticated psychological techniques to terrify the British public.
by Dr. James Moreton Wakeley Fear is our most powerful emotion. It triggers our deepest animal instincts and makes us act in irrational ways. We find ourselves fighting, fleeing, or hiding. We look only to our own safety, forget how to think, and become heedless of anything or anyone else. Fear is the ultimate master of the mind. Employing it as a form of influence, however softly, however subliminally, can profoundly change behaviour and cause lasting mental trauma. Enemies do it in times of war to undermine their foe’s morale and will to resist. It is the tactic used by totalitarian regimes throughout history to compel obedience. And it is the tactic that the British government, for the past year, has consciously employed to turn us into the compliant subjects of lockdown. Using such behavioural science to ‘nudge’ us into acting in certain ways is not new. As conceived by the Cameron government, harnessing ‘nudge theory’ to encourage people ‘to make better choices for themselves’ without resorting to the compulsion of law is not necessarily malign. Yet the ways in which behavioural science has been employed over the course of the past year demonstrates the deep truth of the old aphorism that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) is ...
