Science Guardian

Paradigms and power in science and society

I am Nicolaus Copernicus, and I approve of this blog

I am Richard Feynman and I approve of this blogQualified outsiders and maverick insiders are very often right about the need to replace received wisdom in science and society. This site exists to back the best of them in their uphill assault on the massively entrenched edifice of resistance to and prejudice against reviewing, let alone revising, ruling ideas.

In support of such dissenters and other courageous heretics in a world of organized group think, we search for paradigms and other established beliefs which may be maintained only by the power and politics of the status quo, comparing mainstream wisdom in science and society with academic research and the published experimental and investigative record.

We especially defend and support the funding of honest, accomplished, independent minded and often heroic scientists and other original thinkers in their right to free speech and publication against the censorship, mudslinging, false arguments, ad hominem propaganda, overwhelming group prejudice and internal science politics of the paradigm wars of cancer, AIDS, evolution, global warming, cosmology, particle physics, macroeconomics, health and medicine, diet and nutrition.
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HONOR ROLL OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTHSEEKERS

Henry Bauer, Harvey Bialy, Giordano Bruno, Erwin Chargaff, Nicolaus Copernicus,
Marie Curie, Rebecca Culshaw, Freeman Dyson, Peter Duesberg, Albert Einstein,
Richard Feynman, Galileo Galilei, James Hansen, Michio Kaku, Adrian Kent,
Ernst Krebs, Serge Lang, Mark Leggett, Richard Lindzen, Lynn Margulis,
Marco Mamone Capria, Peter Medawar, Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling, Eric Penrose.
Rainer Plaga, David Rasnick, Carl Sagan, Otto Rossler, Fred Singer, James Watson.
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Many people would die rather than think – in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell.

Skepticism is dangerous. That’s exactly its function, in my view. – Carl Sagan

It is really important to underscore that everything we’re talking about tonight could be utter nonsense. – Brian Greene (NYU panel on Hidden Dimensions June 5 2010, World Science Festival)

No snowflake in a snowstorm ever feels responsible. - Voltaire

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. – Bertrand Russell (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9)

(Click for more Unusual Quotations on Science and Belief)

I am Albert Einstein, and I heartily approve of this blog, insofar as it seems to believe both in science and the importance of intellectual imagination, uncompromised by out of date emotions such as the impulse toward conventional religious beliefs, national aggression as a part of patriotism, and so on. As I once remarked, the further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. Certainly the application of the impulse toward blind faith in science whereby authority is treated as some kind of church is to be deplored. As I have also said, the only thing ever interfered with my learning was my education.My name as you already perceive without a doubt is George Bernard Shaw, and I certainly approve of this blog, in that its guiding spirit appears to be blasphemous in regard to the High Church doctrines of science, and it flouts the censorship of the powers that be, and as I have famously remarked, all great truths begin as blasphemy, and the first duty of the truthteller is to fight censorship, and while I notice that its seriousness of purpose is often alleviated by a satirical irony which sometimes borders on the facetious, this is all to the good, for as I have also famously remarked, if you wish to be a dissenter, make certain that you frame your ideas in jest, otherwise they will seek to kill you. My own method was always to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine)
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« The Times talks – but only in the Business Media section – to remove the sting in Harper’s tale
Duesberg on the coming bird flu global catastrophe: don’t bet on it »

Surgeon Don Miller writes of Duesberg as modern Copernicus

A ten cannon salute on LewRockwell.com may be the best short guide to the HIV?AIDS mess

Is Lew Rockwell some kind of magnet for minds tough enough to handle the HIV?AIDS paradigm controversy objectively, rather than go into hysterics over the very idea that conventional wisdom is wrong?

On February 23 a solid piece written by a surgeon, Donald Miller was posted at A Modern-Day Copernicus:

Peter H. Duesberg. Miller is a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is Donald Miller.

Apparently Miller was converted by David Rasnick in a talk that colleague of Duesberg’s gave to the 2003 meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. He then read Harvey Bialy’s irrefutable guide to the politics and science of HIV?AIDS and cancer, where Duesberg has also upturned a popular but sterile paradigm, Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg (2004).

Not only has Miller prepared what now may be the best short guide to Duesberg’s overwhelming challenge to and expose of HIV?AIDS and cancer genetics as scientifically unfounded, but he is refreshingly different from most writers of such guides: he is willing to say plainly that Duesberg is right and the “germ theory of HIV/AIDS is wrong”.

Read A Modern-Day Copernicus:

Peter H. Duesberg if you are trying to catch up with this issue rapidly, and you don’t have the Harpers Farber piece handy.

Miller has also written on evidence based medicine, in Miller DW and Miller CG. On Evidence, Medical and Legal. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2005 (Fall);10(3):70-75, which concludes that “Medicine needs to develop a better understanding of the nature of evidence and of evidential proof, by emulating law’s approach to evidence. Law in turn needs a better understanding of the shortcomings of medicine’s approach to evidence.”

This and his reliable handling of the Duesberg affair suggests that his April 2, 2004 paper on “Afraid of Radiation? Low Doses are Good for You” might be worth reading by skeptics on that topic to see if there is anything to it after all. PDFs of both articles are at the Donald Miller site.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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