Belief Versus The Scientific Method

We’ve seen drlove’s sources from WingNutDaily and other such politically-centered propaganda rags. All misinformation and lies. We’ve seen Percy and others dig into his cited studies only to find they didn’t exist or said quite the opposite of how he presented them.Just a curiosity … Has drlove cited any actual scientific fact at all in any of his information? A significant fact that actually has merit and meant something? Can anyone spot one?Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

I hope this last message from you is an anomaly. It is dense with meta errors, i.e., errors about the discussion itself rather than about the topic. Your last message to Tangle had the same problem. It will make discussion with you very difficult if we have to correct not only your science but also your misstatements about your own messages.Frankly I'm a little alarmed at the error density in this last message. Previously they seemed the type of errors that can be innocently acquired because of the large amount of misinformation out there. This last message says something a little different about you, that you embrace virus-related misinformation and are seeking to actively promote it.I'm also a little alarmed that you said nothing about mask ineffectiveness. Your previous couple messages had a heavy emphasis on this, about how there are all these studies showing masks ineffective, so your abandonment of this topic is a bit concerning. About mask wearing, I'll say it again. Most of us (if not all) hate wearing masks. If you can prove masks ineffective so we can stop wearing them, everyone will thank you. So please, please, present these studies showing masks ineffective.I'm going to ignore some parts of your message where you go off track. When a discussion degenerates to the point where you have to keep reminding people of what they actually said then it's already a lost cause, and I'm hopeful we're not already to that point. You're linking to yet another WND article. Why do you persist in citing them? They're almost always transparently wrong or misleading. Also, we don't do discussion via links here where you post a link and I post a link in reply and no actual discussion takes place. Describe what the WND article said that shows "vaccines being a joke" and then provide the link as a supporting reference. This is in the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

I'll look at this WND article that you accompany with no discussion this time, but consider something first. If statistics clearly indicated that vaccines were doing more harm than good, then everyone would want to know that so that they could stop taking vaccines. That vaccines are harmful would be shouted from the rooftops at every media outlet. Yet it isn't, even though, as you seem to think, WND has laid out for us how harmful vaccines are. Why do you think everyone else isn't picking up on what WND has uncovered?One possibility is that WND is lying to you. Have you considered that possibility? It would certainly explain why what WND is saying doesn't align with what is actually happening in the real world.So with that out of the way, let's take a look at your WND article:

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Data released by the Scottish government shows people who have been vaccinated with two or three doses of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are more likely to become infected, be hospitalized or die than people who are unvaccinated.

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The Public Health Scotland data from the past four weeks showed a rate of infection of 866 per 100,000 people for the double vaccinated and 481 per 100,000 for the boosted, or triple vaccinated.

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The unvaccinated had a rate of infection of 413 per 100,000.

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The death rate of those who have had two shots is about 12 per 100,000 which is more than 50% higher than the rate for the unvaccinated, [yes, they ended a sentence with a comma]

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First, look at how the data makes no sense. For the "per 100,000" measure, it's 866 with two shots, drops to 481 with three shots just as you would expect, then drops further to 413 with no shots, which makes no sense at all. If it were true that vaccines make people more vulnerable to infection then the lowest would be no shots, higher would two shots, and the highest would be three shots, but it's not.So obviously something is wrong with the data, and the article states very clearly that there's a problem with the data, which is probably why WND didn't link to the article, since it would reveal WND as being misleading in the extreme (some would call it lying). The article is Covid Scotland: Death rate 25 times higher in double-jabbed than boosted, and about the data it says (in part, see the article for more details):

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However, PHS said it is likely that the size of the unvaccinated population is being overestimated - skewing the case rate downwards - because GP records are used to count this population.

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I'll briefly describe the biggest contributor to the inaccuracy of the count of the unvaccinated population. GP (it apparently means General Practitioner in Scotland, just as in the States) records are used to count the unvaccinated population, and anyone without a regular GP isn't counted. Complicating matters is an April 2004 law which changed the way people register for care, now registering with a practice instead of with a specific GP at that practice. So Scotland is currently hindered in accurately counting the unvaccinated, and this causes the "per 100,000" number to be severely understated.

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Recent figures from the province of Alberta show infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID all soar in the days and weeks after people receive their first vaccine dose, reports former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

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This is absurd on its face. It simply isn't possible for the vaccines to cause infections, hospitalizations and deaths. This would only be possible if the vaccines were made with dead or deactivated virus, but they're not. They're made of mRNA that causes cells to produce proteins that cause an immune response that will produce antibodies that fight the SAVS-CoV-2 virus. They contain nothing of the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus whatsoever. The vaccines have no ability to cause illness. The worst the vaccines can do is cause a feeling of slight illness as the body begins producing an immune reaction, or an allergic reaction. That's it. The vaccines cannot cause covid-19. It's just not possible.So let's look at the Alberta information (COVID-19 Alberta statistics | alberta.ca) and see what WND got wrong. Ah, it's obvious, and maybe also hints at why Alex Berenson is formerly of the New York Times instead of currently. About him Wikipedia says:

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During the coronavirus pandemic, Berenson appeared frequently in American right-wing media, spreading false claims about COVID-19 and its vaccines.[2] He spent much of the pandemic arguing that its seriousness was overblown; once COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, he made false claims about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

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Once again you've chosen a poor Internet source. You seem to have a talent for it.Berenson's report (the WND excerpt several paragraphs up contains a link to it) has images from the Alberta data. He thinks this one shows vaccines cause hospitalizations shortly after vaccination: For example, he thinks it shows that on day 0 after vaccination (in other words, on the day of vaccination) that there were 14 total hospitalizations from covid. This is not only wrong, it's impossible. Even if it were possible for the vaccines to cause covid-19 (which, again, it is not), no one is hospitalized on the day they're infected. Generally, in severe cases, it takes at least 10 days after being infected to require hospitalization.So the graph can't possibly be showing hospitalizations caused by vaccination as Berenson thinks. What is it showing then?What it's showing is the effectiveness of vaccines. On average it takes the vaccines around 14 days to cause an effective enough immune response to fight off the virus, and what you're seeing in the graph is that about two weeks after vaccination when immunization begins to really kick in the possibility of catching covid-19 and eventually being hospitalized begins to drop dramatically.Berenson also provides a graph for deaths, which he misinterprets in the same way. The reality is that it shows the same thing as the other graph, that a couple weeks after vaccination the possibility of catching covid-19 and eventually dying begins to drop dramatically. I just demonstrated that WND and Berenson and you don't understand the science. I don't think you even read Berenson's report. I think you're seeing that graph for the first time.Right-wing media has built an entire industry fabricating misinformation, and all you're doing is mining it without examining or understanding it. It only takes you a few minutes at most to find the latest misinformation at WND and type the link into a message, but it takes some real time to rebut. I'd put the ratio at at least 1 to 10, the time you put in to that WND link versus the time it took me to rebut it.That's why the forum has a rule against bare links. When you think you have something promising then read it, understand it, present it, and include the link only as a reference. The reason for this rule is to make sure people understand the arguments they're promoting and are not, in essence, asking people to read and rebut links that they haven't themselves read or understood. And here we come to the part that makes discussion difficult. You're denying saying what you just said in Message 473: Apparently you understood what "in science" meant back in Message 473, since that's exactly what you said, and now you don't. And you said "suppress voices in science and medicine," and now you're saying that "it is the suppression of voices in education, media, government and etc."Maybe you're actually two people, maybe twin brothers. Brad Love wrote Message 473, and Tad Love wrote Message 479. You guys ought to get together now and then and coordinate things, because you're contradicting the hell out of each other (and also reality).And why, if it was actually "the suppression of voices in education, media, government and etc.", do you follow it with the claim about a blackout of a medical roundtable: Your whole presentation is chaotic and irrational. In the above quote there isn't a single word that is your own, and if you can't support your positions in your own words then don't make them. If you'd like to pursue this blackout claim then describe what you're claiming in your own words and use the link as a supporting reference. You mean like Fox News? They didn't carry it, either. What outlets carry panels and roundtables hosted by congresspeople live? Do you think Fox News or anybody would give up any of their lucrative timeslots that have paid advertising to run a medical roundtable that would have people changing the channel from coast to coast? And your InfoWars link about an MSM blackout? Except for the headline, there was no mention of a blackout. Jesus, you are such a rube. Here's the link to Senator Ron Johnson's YouTube Account. It is alive and well. You're being lied to by Alex Jones. You said they were testifying, not "marching and speaking." This is you in Message 473: You're contradicting yourself yet again. This protest consisted of ordinary people, not people in science and medicine. You are continually smashing my hopes for a serious fact-based discussion into smaller and smaller pieces. One more time, science says that respiratory viruses spread when people share the same air. Obviously the less people share the same air the more difficult it is for a respiratory virus to spread. Hopefully you understand this and agree. Yes, of course, and as you just quoted me saying, the vaccines they developed continue to provide protection against all variants, though not as great. The vaccines obviously work. Estimates are that they've saved around a million lives and prevented about ten million hospitalizations (The U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Program at One Year: How Many Deaths and Hospitalizations Were Averted? | Commonwealth Fund).It is possible that we'll need periodic booster shots or new shots for the variants. It might be similar to the flu shot for which a new vaccine is developed every year. But the vaccines do work against the variants, just not as well as against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus for which they were developed. As I just said, they've saved many lives. They are very successful. You said, "How about vaccinating little children?" You can't get littler than a newborn. It's good, of course. As I described in Message 460, newborns are given the hepatitis B shot within hours of birth, and the MMR series is given around one year.Maybe there's something about your position I'm not aware of. Are you against only covid vaccines, or all vaccines? I think what you actually showed is how easy it is to fool someone about something they want to believe anyway. WND and Alex Jones really have your number. There's not a single word of your own in this. I'm not going to argue with a cut-n-paste. Please explain in your own words.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

He's said some true stuff. For example, he's right that fighting covid-19 might require periodic shots just like the flu. And while I don't think the data is in yet and I reserve the right to change my mind, I do agree with him that partial lockdowns don't work well enough to justify them.But he upped the error rate quite a bit in his last couple messages, and he seems quite determined in defending his positions using unvetted information, to an extent that calls into question the possibility of productive discussion.--Percy

I'm seeing no attempt at discussion. I'm thinking he didn't come in here for a discussion but to force more wedges into our social divides and rub more salt in our open wounds. Sounds familiar. Something about blind nazis stumbling over acorns or something.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.

The few times he accidently said anything true is insignificant compared to the bullshit he spread here as a dis-information troll. He's failed to make any discernable attempts at honest discussion and repeats things that have already been to shown to be false. He repeatedly says that studies report the exact opposite of the actual conclusions.Your rebuttals have been brilliant, but I really think you are misreading his character.

I really think that all of you still fail to understand the threat.Since the 1950s the Christian Cult of Willful Ignorance and Avoidance has had the sole goal of creating a society where SOURCE trumps content, BELIEF trumps evidence and FANTASY trumps reality.They have succeeded in creating a massive segment of the US population that is totally divorced from evidence-based reasoning and where WHO says it determines what is true and what is false. They have no base to stand on and nothing stops them from believing two mutually exclusive points of view simultaneously.Alternate facts are real.Belief determines factuality.

Yeah, that does seem to be a trend we've seen with the rise of TV conmen since the 50s, but really that seems like the MO of religion, forever and always. Religion can only thrive on ignorance. Only two? In my experience they believe in multiple mutually exclusive points of view simultaneously. (And without suffering any visible sign of cognitive dissonance whatsoever.)

Not all religion and not always. A great example is the under the Muslim Iberian Caliphs when education, learning, science, acceptance of other races, religions, nationalities was the norm.

In the 100 or so years of their reign there were about a dozen caliphs and it was not all peace and prosperity. There was a hell of a lot of warfare.There have been quite a few enlightened religious individuals in our history who encouraged education, until the ignorant realize what's happening and shit all over everything.

That was a period where a lot of science evolved from astrology, alchemy and biology to astronomy, chemistry and medicine.A flowering of intellect in the desert of religion. And it wasn't the religion that was tolerant but the strongmen, the warlords. When the religion re-gained its full influence the tolerance stopped.Such a waste. Secular enlightenment could have exploded onto the scene from here rather than waiting another 500 years for it to explode in Europe.400 years of secular science has brought us to the moon. Imagine where we could have been with 900.

Yes, I agree that drlove reeks of eau de YEC. Trying to have any kind of discussion with him is exactly like trying it with a YEC: utterly futile as he uses the same rhetorical tactics as YECs do. Hence Tangle's repeated question to him about the age of the earth, which drlove avoids in typical YEC fashion. Which is exactly Robert Altemeyer's observation in his The Authoritarians (page 73):

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Chapter Three
How Authoritarian Followers Think

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We meet again. If you are keeping track of my promises, as we roll along together on the internet, I said in the Introduction that we would figure out why authoritarian followers think in the bizarre and perplexing way they so often do. The key to the puzzle springs from Chapter 2's observation that, first and foremost, followers have mainly copied the beliefs of the authorities in their lives. They have not developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thus almost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuff that contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistent notions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a high RWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideas rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.

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So can everybody, of course, and my wife loves to catch inconsistencies in my reasoning when we’re having a friendly discussion about one of my personal failures. But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. These seven deadly shortfalls of authoritarian thinking eminently qualify them to follow a wouldbe dictator. As Hitler is reported to have said,“What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.”

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Page 80:

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2. Highly Compartmentalized Minds

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As I said earlier, authoritarians’ ideas are poorly integrated with one another. It’s as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called up and used when the authoritarian wishes, even though another of his ideas--stored in a different file-- basically contradicts it. We all have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may say they are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech, but another file holds, “My country, love it or leave it.” The ideas were copied from trusted sources, often as sayings, but the authoritarian has never “merged files” to see how well they all fit together.

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It’s easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just present slogans and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans and bromides that invoke opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian follower is likely to agree with all of them. Thus I asked both students and their parents to respond to, “When it comes to love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other.” Soon afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched “Birds of a feather flock together when it comes to love.” High RWAs typically agreed with both statements, even though they responded to the two items within a minute of each other. But that’s the point: they don’t seem to scan for self-consistency as much as most people do. Similarly they tended to agree with “A government should allow total freedom of expression, even it if threatens law and order” and “A government should only allow freedom of expression so long as it does not threaten law and order.” And “Parents should first of all be gentle and tender with their children,” and “Parents should first of all be firm and uncompromising with their children; spare the rod and spoil the child.”

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And be sure to check out his Chapter Four on page 106, Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism.

Doesn't really affect the authoritarian points, but Hitler may never have said that. The wording that is usually attributed to Hitler is, "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think," and while I can't prove he didn't say it, I can't find anything affirming that he did, like a time or place or letter of origin, etc.--Percy

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This is absurd on its face. It simply isn't possible for the vaccines to cause infections, hospitalizations and deaths. This would only be possible if the vaccines were made with dead or deactivated virus, but they're not.

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Raw statement with no support. The long term effects are not known. The actual causes of all the deaths since the vaccines started is not known. Most are listed as something else or unrelated. If a vaccine (regardless of what it was made from) triggered some things that made people sick or killed them, then it is possible they cause hospitalization etc.Dr Malone and many others have ridiculous years of science with them and under their belt. So we have the situation where science is not one one side of the argument here in any way.Those who pretend it is are guilty of helping foster the loss of freedom and quality of life from the covid tyranny.The issue is not 'my' science. The issue is anybody's science. Both sides claim science. Obviously both cannot be right. Would you not expect real science to be clear? On every aspect of the tyranny and agenda associated with covid polar opposite opinions from men of science. Why believe them?

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Right-wing media has built an entire industry fabricating misinformation

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That is ignorant. Have you science to back up your bald claim?

The age of the earth is probably somewhere close to the one Usher calculated, give or take a few hundred years. Global warming is a religious con job, whether or not climate is changing. The theory of evolution is a religious crock. But this thread is not about all that. It is about belief and the scientific method. If the scientific method were anything but belief based, why would we have both sides on the medical science issue unable to provide science for their case?
How could a company convicted of fraud and a multitude of court cases showing a long history of lying and hurting people be responsible for testing a product? How could they be allowed to not reveal the results of studies etc? How could anyone claim that was science?