Science Guardian

This blog is designed to be a guide to better science and social perspective in public policy through a continuing series of posts highlighting error and clarifying confusion in certain scientific fields where paradigms are sustained beyond their shelf life and supported only by politics and propaganda, such as cancer and HIV/AIDS, and it includes a set of links to relevant other sites, which blogroll is lower down in the sidebar on the right.

Valuing documentation and eye witness personal testimony above all, we measure truth only by the professional and scholarly literature in peer reviewed journals (adjusted for incompetence and bias), well researched books, and the investigative reporting and skeptical reviews of well informed original thinkers among academics, philosophers, researchers, scholars, authors, and journalists well recognized as exemplary by the discerning but all too often scorned, shortchanged or damned by publicly irresponsible scientists and other authorities living off the status quo, and their zealous but underinformed followers.
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HONOR ROLL OF INDEPENDENT TRUTHSEEKERS

Jad Adams, James Blodgett, Marcus Cohen, David Crowe, Celia Farber,
Michael Fumento, Bob Herbert, Neville Hodgkinson, James P. Hogan, Christopher Hitchens,
Robert Houston, Eric Johnson, Claus Jensen, John Lauritsen, Anthony Liversidge,
Gordon Moran, Gary Null, Toby Ord, Dennis Overbye, Luis Sancho,
Liam Scheff, Jim Tankersley, Gary Taubes, John Tierney, Walter Wagner.
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In this way we hope to combat the overwhelming influence of unthinking conformists to the status quo and other running dog lackeys of those in power and high position who mislead us in science and society, consciously or not, namely underinformed and self serving politicians, politically compliant media editors, underresearched and lickspittle science reporters, highhanded but ignorant publishers, inexcusably fellow traveling pharma activists and other invested parties, and their vast misguided lay congregation of patients, doctors, politicians, officials, charity workers, foundation staff, philanthropists, celebrities, bloggers and other well intentioned members of the confused but trusting general public, who may naively assume that leading scientists and other gurus are not subject, like the rest of us, to the laws of human nature, by which personal rewards and group goals can only too often trump professional conscience and the public interest.

The overriding purpose is to combat group think and the political and social propaganda of government agencies and other large social systems, public and corporate, which induce conformist group think and unthinking social compliance, somewtimes with blatant error, by comparing current established beliefs and claims in science and elsewhere with the scholarly professional and research literature, and especially to defend the values of science and good scientists in the paradigm wars of HIV/AIDS, cancer, evolution, global warming, nutrition, particle physics, economics, religious belief and any other disputes over replacing doubtful ideas against conformity, prejudice, subjectivity and self-interest, standing up for free speech and publication against the tendency of the authorities to repress revolutionary ideas, and mining corrective truths buried in the professional journals and commonly overlooked by harried hacks.

We ourselves try to review novel claims without the usual instinctive social prejudice against modern Galileos, courageous whistleblowers, distinguished mavericks, past or future Nobelists, and any other publicly damned and insulted but in fact often highly respectable heretics, that is, well informed and independent minds who may question scripture.

In this way the blog aims at balanced and objective commentary on the rival claims of paradigm promoters, defenders of the status quo and informed dissidents in any field, judging truth as objectively as we can with reason and evidence and by referencing specialist journals and books generally overlooked by overworked and time constrained media reporters and commentators, let alone busy professionals (how many doctors even know how to operate PubMed?), though not without applying a filter of common sense to those sources and carefully deconstructing the peer-reviewed scientific and medical record to set aside the influence of power politics, venal interests, data management, misinterpretation, religious fervor and the many other human follies (see below) which bias scientists and other professionals, consciously or not.

We also review science and other academic and lay events in New York City (talks, panels, conferences, documentaries) and from time to time note exceptional proven personal technology (ie gadgets relevant to information gathering and entertainment display which in our testing experience of at least several months have served much better than the better advertised popular choice).

RELEVANT QUOTATIONS:
This is my battle with John Maddox [editor of Nature] and with people who are actually fabricating the data [Ascher et al in Nature, March 11, 1993]. They claim to have such a group that had not used any drugs. When I analyzed the data, it turned out that there was not a single person in their paper that was drug-free. I submitted a critique to Maddox, but his response was, I could no longer respond. I was censored. – Peter Duesberg (left), interview with Bob Guccione, Spin magazine, September, 1993.

Honest inquiry after truth, which is the noblest calling of the noblest men. - Arthur Schopenhauer

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. – James Watson (right)

Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment. – Thomas Mann

There are only two things, science and opinion; the former yields knowledge, the latter ignorance. – Hippocrates, Law (5th-6th Century BC)

Experimental evidence is strongly in favor of my argument that the chemical purity of the air is of no importance. – L. Erskine Hill, Lecturer on Physiology at London Hospital, in “Impure Air Not Unhealthful If Stirred and Cooked”, New York Times, Sept 22, 1912.

Click the following link for many more Unusual Quotations on Science and Belief

More Unusual Quotations on Science and Belief

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HOW TO PRINT OUT A SINGLE POST Display a single POST (not page) and its comments for printout by clicking on its headline (printout won't include the imaginary remarks appended to images which are briefly visible if the cursor is placed over them, repeat if necessary). Then the post can be printed out without the right hand index and blog roll, or the bottom blue section (this one)(unfortunately this does not work yet with Pages, only Posts). All posts guaranteed fact checked according to reference level cited, usually original journal studies.

MASTER LIST OF SOURCES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL BIAS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND INTELLECTUAL DEBATE

Since bias in scientific reporting and other conscious or inadvertent prejudice in favor of ideas that reward selfish and group interests rather the public generally arises from human nature, we herewith provide a Master List of Sources of Human Bias ie sources of the personal and very human frailties that distort science and society in the 21st Century and prevent proper attention to the published literature of science and other fields, and its clear evidence, for example, that a reigning paradigm such as HIV=AIDS is a grand and egregious error:

Master List of Sources of Human Bias

Activism, arrogance, apophenia, authority wielding, acquiescence to authority, avarice, availability heuristic, affect heuristic, ad hominem bias, anchoring effect, Backscratching, bootlicking, browbeating, bullying, bureaucratic bumbling and self preservation, bystander effect, Careerism, closemindedness, censoring, censoriousness, clubbiness, club membership, coercion, collegiality, competitiveness, confabulation, confidence tricks, conformity, confirmation bias, consistency bias, convention, cooking the books, competing for credit, corruption of power, cowardice, credulity, crowd psychology, currying favor, cv expansion, consensus pressure, conditioning, conjunction fallacy, control seeking, Deceit, discovery bias, defensiveness, Dunning-Kruger effect, delusions of grandeur, gratitude, discretion, dissembling, dogmatism, dreams of glory, Embarrassment, empire building, envy, experimental bias, endowment effect, embodied cognition, expectation framing, False hope, fanciful theorizing, family loyalty, fashion, fear and loathing, fear mongering, flag waving, flocking, fondness for the status quo, friendship, following orders, Group loyalty, grant seeking, groupthink, group survival, Herd instinct, hindsight bias, homophobia, hubris, human error, hypocrisy, haste, Inattention blindness, iatrogenic ignorance, ideology, indoctrination, illogic, instigating panic, institutional affiliation, intimidation, irrationality, insanity, Job seeking, job retention, just world prejudice, Kowtowing to seniority and power, Lack of controls, labeling, laziness, lickspittle press instincts, loyalty to superiors, lying, lynch mob mentality, Maintaining parents, wives, mistresses and offspring, masochism, media stenography, mental inertia, mentor allegiance, misdirection, misunderstanding, Naivete, narcissism, Nobel hunting, normalcy bias, Obedience, obeisance, officiousness, opportunism, overclaiming, operant conditioning, Panic, priming, publication bias, paradigm protection, patron pandering, peer pressure, perks, preconceptions, presentation bias, privileges, prizes, piety, politicking, political pressures, popularity, power seeking, pseudoscience, prejudice, preserving face, prevarication, pride, protectionism, Ptolemaic rationalizing, public relations, PubMed illiteracy, pusillanimity, psychopathy, Racism, rage, rationalization, religion, religious instinct, respectability, reputation enhancing, resistance to change, rivalry, ruthless ambition, Ringelmann social loafing, representativeness heuristic, Sadism, selective reporting, scheming for advancement, self-deception, self-interest, self-justification, self-preservation, self-promotion, scientific illiteracy, shame, sloth, slow wittedness, smug orthodoxy, social ambition, sociopathy, social belonging, status seeking, sheer stupidity, sunk cost fallacy, straw man fallacy, subjective validation, self serving, self validating bias, situation psychology, Terrorizing, Texas sharpshooter fallacy, thievery, timidity, toadying, trickery, tribalism, ‘truthiness’, Unthinking acquiescence, unchecked error copying, uninformed certainty, underresearch, unconscious misperception, Vanity, venality, veneration, virus hunting, Witch hunting, wishful thinking, worship of authority, Youthful naivete, and Zeal in the service of the establishment and the status quo.

Special note: Of course we recognize that if the purpose of the blog is to change human nature we are fated to have very little effect. On the other hand we believe that enlightening others by substituting credible research for various specious memes rampant in the too credulous minds of the good hearted may help steer human resources in the right direction, or at the very least result (following the example of many that we criticize) in a large amount of ready money deposited in our outstretched hand or in our bank account by those who wish to maintain the status quo (please phone 212 534 7371 or email financialsupport@scienceguardian.com for the bank or Paypal account number).

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What are titled Pages unfortunately will not display or print out without the right hand index appearing, for some reason which we still have to fathom. All advice welcome (calling all Wordpress experts). We are anxious to solve this embarrassment.

CONTRIBUTIONS
All $$$ contributions and informative text contributions and inside tips welcome and appreciated, with privacy and/or anonymity guaranteed (pseudonyms if convenient).

Thank you to our supporters and patrons, since we prefer to avoid ads which will compromise our integrity (and because if Google Ads are used they will tend to be ads for precisely what we disapprove of in our text) and blog host resources alone are insufficient to fight the propaganda and disinformation of megabillion dollar medico-scientific empires based on scientific fiction.

As noted above, however, any large organization such as CERN or the NIH which wishes to be relieved of close examination and review please contact the founder and publisher for the bank account number in which to deposit a very large sum of money to enable this privileged exception to the tenacious investigative coverage otherwise conducted at this site on behalf of the public interest, meaning in particular the wives, mothers and children whose health and welfare is at stake and who represent the future of the nation.

Please also feel free to contribute posts or comment supportively or critically, since this site is dedicated to the correction of claims, and is not a personal platform for the benefit of the ego and political aims of the founder and publisher

We are grateful for any appreciation in email or Comments.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. - Voltaire.

GUIDELINES FOR TIPS AND COMMENTS

Friends, greetings. Welcome to all, without bias,
We hope that you will, with an open mind, try us.
But with all due respect, we give you due warning,
This space is not for establishment fawning.
Nor is conspiracy theory the lesson we teach,
And paranoids, please, use Hyde Park to preach.
It is factual review that we welcome here,
From any damned heretic who can think without fear.

The question we raise is, is science still reliable,
When billions pour in, or is it all much too buyable?
We invite in all comers intent on defending
Good science with a standard of truth that's unbending.
Let's set aside politics, power games and prizes,
And expose quiet backscratching in all its disguises,
Let's reject venality, vanity, and PC censors,
And free up pure science from social consensus.

Together we'll review all conventional belief
Without regard as to who’ll come to grief,
In the light of good studies in peer reviewed science,
On these references we’ll place our reliance.
Tho' we know very well they can also be twisted,
By the factors above that we sorrowfully listed,
For all human endeavor is subject to bias,
But if you seek objectivity, we hope you will try us.

Open invitation to all skeptical realists interested in correcting scientific and social error, including ours:

Please join us in defending science and sense against corrupting human frailties and motivations, as listed above. If you wish to add your own post, please submit to editor AT ((the email sign)) scienceguardian.com (we do not edit meaning or content except for sense and typos).

All material copyright Science Guardian and New AIDS Review 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 (Anthony Liversidge, Founder and Managing Editor, writing under the nom de plume Truthseeker). Copyright shared with anyone else posting.

HOW TO CONTACT SCIENCE GUARDIAN
Please send public or confidential, signed, pseudonymous or anonymous contributions, tips, complaints, appreciation and insults to anthony AT ((the email sign)) scienceguardian.com, or post in Comments. Please email with "URGENT AAAAAA URGENT" as the heading if you have difficulty in viewing, signing up, posting or getting an answer, or call 212 534 7371 in New York for advice, or a chat, or to offer tips or large amounts of money at any time.