Tag: conspiracy

The intrinsic unreliability of science

More and more investigations of quasi-scientific shenanigans are demonstrating the need for more precision in the language used to describe the field that is too broadly and misleadingly known as “science”:

The problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

Their findings made the news, and quickly became a club with which to bash the social sciences. But the problem isn’t just with psychology. There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like. The Bayer researchers were drowning in bad studies, and it was to this, in part, that they attributed the mysteriously declining yields of drug pipelines. Perhaps so many of these new drugs fail to have an effect because the basic research on which their development was based isn’t valid….

Paradoxically, the situation is actually made worse by the
fact that a promising connection is often studied by several
independent teams. To see why, suppose that three groups of researchers
are studying a phenomenon, and when all the data are analyzed, one group
announces that it has discovered a connection, but the other two find
nothing of note. Assuming that all the tests involved have a high
statistical power, the lone positive finding is almost certainly the
spurious one. However, when it comes time to report these findings, what
happens? The teams that found a negative result may not even bother to
write up their non-discovery. After all, a report that a fanciful
connection probably isn’t true is not the stuff of which scientific
prizes, grant money, and tenure decisions are made.
And even if they did write it up, it probably wouldn’t be
accepted for publication. Journals are in competition with one another
for attention and “impact factor,” and are always more eager to report a
new, exciting finding than a killjoy failure to find an association. In
fact, both of these effects can be quantified. Since the majority of
all investigated hypotheses are false, if positive and negative evidence
were written up and accepted for publication in equal proportions, then
the majority of articles in scientific journals should report no
findings. When tallies are actually made, though, the precise opposite
turns out to be true: Nearly every published scientific article reports
the presence of an association. There must be massive bias at work. 
Ioannidis’s argument would be potent even if all
scientists were angels motivated by the best of intentions, but when the
human element is considered, the picture becomes truly dismal.
Scientists have long been aware of something euphemistically called the
“experimenter effect”: the curious fact that when a phenomenon is
investigated by a researcher who happens to believe in the phenomenon,
it is far more likely to be detected. Much of the effect can likely be
explained by researchers unconsciously giving hints or suggestions to
their human or animal subjects, perhaps in something as subtle as body
language or tone of voice. Even those with the best of intentions have
been caught fudging measurements, or making small errors in rounding or
in statistical analysis that happen to give a more favorable result.
Very often, this is just the result of an honest statistical error that
leads to a desirable outcome, and therefore it isn’t checked as
deliberately as it might have been had it pointed in the opposite
direction. 

But, and there is no putting it nicely, deliberate fraud
is far more widespread than the scientific establishment is generally
willing to admit.

Never confuse either scientistry or sciensophy for scientody. To paraphrase, and reject, Daniel Dennett’s contention, do not trust biologists or sociologists or climatologists, or anyone else who calls himself a scientist, simply because physicists get amazingly accurate results.

Reprehensible

If you’re ever wondering why I generally refuse to have anything to do with the so-called “non-profit” world, this scandal at the Wounded Warrior Project is a very good example of why:

Wounded Warrior Project aims to empower wounded veterans, but a recent exposé revealed that the charity spent nearly half of its funding empowering its executives instead. The board of directors responded by beginning to clean house, starting at the top.

Wounded Warrior Project has raised more than a billion dollars in donations since 2003, according to CBS News. Donors might expect their money would be used “to honor and empower Wounded Warriors,” as the nonprofit’s mission states. However, CBS revealed the charity spends between 40 to 50 percent of their money on overhead – while other veterans’ charities spend an average of 10 to 15 percent on the same expenses.

Wounded Warrior Project Chief Executive Officer Steven Nardizzi and Chief Operating Officer Al Giordano were both removed from the organization after accusations arose alleging that the charity’s donations were being misused…. Over $26 million was spent on employee conferences in 2014, compared to $1.7 million in 2010. The events were described as being lavish and boozy, such as one annual meeting held in a luxury hotel in Colorado Springs, where 500 staff members attended a four-day conference that came with a final price tag of $3 million.

The corporate world is predatory, and the mercenary class of executives are certainly in it for no one but themselves, but for sheer thievery, I think only the financial industry can even begin to compete with the non-profit world. At least the corporations have to deliver to their customers on some level, or they go out of business.

Not so the non-profit charities and foundations, which often seem to exist primarily to provide those who run them a very good living.

The fact that these con artists would rip off American military veterans, of all people, just makes them among the lowest of the very low.

That’s one way to shut him down

Apparently Marco Rubio didn’t know when to quit, so the GOPe decided to call time on his campaign in order to clear the way for Ted Cruz in Florida:

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has carried on at least two extramarital affairs since he entered politics.

GotNews.com can confirm through lobbyist sources in DC and Tallahassee that at least one DC-based lobbyist has had an extramarital affair with the first-term U.S. Senator. Still another Florida-based lobbyist has been IDed as carrying on an affair.

The first woman was Amber Stoner, a 36-year-old woman who worked for Rubio when he was head of the Florida Republican Party…. The second woman is Dana Hudson, a blonde lobbyist based in the Beltway.

If there are similar revelations about John Kasich, or if he quits the race before Friday, that should suffice to confirm that the GOPe has been doing the math and they know they have to stop Trump in Florida and Ohio or they’re done.

Assuming this is indeed her, doesn’t Miss Hudson look rather like the taller half of Garfunkel and Oates?

Let that be a lesson to all you young would-be politicians out there. When the elders of the party take you out for dinner, and suggest that maybe it is time for you to consider getting out of the race for the good of the party, that’s just their way of being polite. What they really mean is that it is time to get out of the race… if you’re smart enough know what is good for you.

Seriously, does no one watch The Godfather anymore?

Hillary hides in the closet

It’s hardly a secret that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. I remember an interview that Hannity and Colmes did with Gennifer Flowers during the Lewinsky scandal when she quite flatly stated that Hillary was of a Sapphic orientation – hardly a surprise when you consider Hillary’s alma mater – and I have never seen a show go faster to a commercial before or since.

But it is apparent that people in Arkansas who are aware of her orientation are considerably less afraid of the the Clinton machine than they were, as more and more people are speaking openly to the press about what everyone in Little Rock circles has known for decades. Such as, for example, another Arkansas woman who had an affair with Bill Clinton:

The twice-divorced 77-year-old took to social media in recent weeks to post an extraordinary warning that if she dies by ‘suicide’ no-one should believe it.

When Daily Mail Online visited Miller at her Arkansas home she insisted she had been stalked, spied upon and plagued by anonymous phone calls since word of her memoir leaked out.

‘She doesn’t care what I say about Bill, that’s old news,’ Miller told Daily Mail Online. ‘But I think she wonders what Bill told me. I think she wonders how much I know about her that came from Bill.

‘With the election coming up she can’t afford any sort of loose end. She’s the closest thing you can imagine to Al Capone. I don’t think she is going to rest until she puts me to rest.’

And what of those accusations so insulting or damaging that a potential Presidential candidate would unleash her operatives to intimidate or even bump off an elderly lady?

‘Hillary is a lesbian,’ Miller claims, reigniting a lingering but unsubstantiated rumor that has dogged the former First Lady for years.

Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone might still believe that Hillary is straight. One look at those pantsuits she favors would be sufficient evidence to convict in any court of law.

On loyalties, divided and whole

What is reprehensible is not the suggestion that Jews living in America might have divided loyalties. That is arguably the best case scenario. What is reprehensible, and quite possibly anti-semitic, is the idea that a Jew living in America cannot possibly have divided loyalties:

Congress is rarely called upon to dispel conspiracy theories. But it needs to teach the Pentagon to separate fact from fiction, because American Jews are routinely denied security clearances based on nothing more than a fear that they are Israeli spies.

Consider Gershon Pincus, a 62-year-old dentist and lifelong New Yorker who sought a way to serve as he approached retirement. He found a position at a naval dental clinic in upstate Saratoga Springs, and started work in July 2014.

All was going well until this past September, when Pincus was informed that he wasn’t eligible for a security clearance. The rejection was accompanied by a Statement of Reasons that concluded “foreign contacts and interests may be a security concern due to divided loyalties.”

Incredibly, the totality of the concern about Pincus was his contact with his 89-year-old mother and his middle-aged brother and sister, who had moved to Israel as adults.

The charge of “divided loyalties” has a particularly repugnant resonance to American Jews. It’s usually whispered behind closed doors, and so it’s doubly disconcerting when it is the reason given for official government action.

It is perfectly reasonable to suspect a Jew with family ties to Israel of being less than entirely loyal to the United States; I have met very, very few American Jews who have declared that they would be willing to wage war against Israel on America’s behalf. Yes, Israel is a nominal ally at present, but then, America has waged war against former allies and made allies of former enemies throughout the course of its history. And Israeli forces have killed more American soldiers than most Arab or Eastern Bloc militaries.

It is known that Israel spies on the USA; indeed, Israel would be criminally remiss if it did not do so. But it is no more in the American national interest to permit Israel to spy than it is to permit China, Russia, or Germany to do so.

For most Americans, the issue isn’t whether Jews have divided loyalties or not, it is whether they have any loyalty to the USA at all, given how Jewish opinion leaders such as Spengler and the Learned Elders of Wye quite openly demonstrate that they, at least, do not.

Of course, this isn’t a matter of concern that is limited to Jews. The same problem applies to Chinese citizens resident in the USA as well as many other nations. The idea that any individual can legitimately possess dual citizenships or undivided loyalties to more than one nation is a pernicious and dyscivic notion, and I expect that as the pendulum returns to historical normality and long-suppressed nationalism rises around the world, the nonsensical concept will eventually be erased from the law.

The cure for school shootings

It’s interesting to see how the media has repeatedly attempted to nonsensically blame guns for school shootings while ignoring the fact that most of the shooters have been mentally unstable and on antidepressants. But the truth usually comes out eventually, and in this case, it’s ugly:

Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, the biggest ever review has found, as pharmaceutical companies were accused of failing to report side-effects and even deaths linked to the drugs.

An analysis of 70 trials of the most common antidepressants – involving more than 18,000 people – found they doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under 18s. Although a similarly stark link was not seen in adults, the authors said misreporting of trial data could have led to a ‘serious under-estimation of the harms.’

For years families have claimed that antidepressant medication drove their loved ones to commit suicide, but have been continually dismissed by medical companies and doctors who claimed a link was unproven.

The review – the biggest oif its kind into the effects of the drugs – was carried out by the Nordic Cochrane Centre and analysed by University College London (UCL) who today endorse the findings in an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

After comparing clinical trial information to actual patient reports the scientists found pharmaceutical companies had regularly misclassified deaths and suicidal events in people taking anti-depressants to “favour their products”.

“It is absolutely horrendous that they have such disregard for human lives.” Professor Peter Gotzsche, Nordic Cochrane Centre

Yes, it is. And to think that some people think that we should defer to scientists and allow them to run society as they think it should be ordered when they are observably some of the most coldly self-serving people on the planet.

Needless to say, this isn’t the only “unproven link” that will be proven one day, or the only one that will show the average grant-chasing scientist to be less trustworthy than your average used car salesman. I mean, look at this!

So far this month there have been at least 35 inquests with deaths linked to antidepressants. Last year there were more than 450. “I can say, hand on heart, that I don’t remember reading a report of an inquest where a suicide verdict was applied to a child who had never been on any psychiatric medication,” he said.

An avalanche of defaults

The mainstream economists are just beginning to catch up with The Return of the Great Depression, published in 2009.

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.

“The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up,” said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

“Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem, too. Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” he said.

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something,” he told The Telegraph on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.”

The next task awaiting the global authorities is how to manage debt
write-offs – and therefore a massive reordering of winners and losers in
society – without setting off a political storm.

What is interesting to consider is if there is a connection between the nonsensical climate change propaganda and the coming avalanche of debt-defaults. If I were a member of the global elite who a) genuinely believed that resources like fossil fuels are limited, b) was in a position to decide how society’s winners and losers would be reordered, and c) did not subscribe to Christian morality and lacked a moral conscience, I would use the financial apocalypse and subsequent reordering to make sure that I, and my allies, held all the title to the resources necessary to ensure our control of them.

This would permit the construction of a global feudalism and extend the time in which the dwindling resources could be utilized, and would permit aristocratic resource-holders to retain a small First World technological society while the resourceless commoners are reduced to Third World technostasis.

That doesn’t even rise to the level of science fiction, of course, economics being a science only in the ancient sense of a field of knowledge, but even as pure economic imagination, it’s coherent and perhaps even worrisome in light of the present circumstances.

When the coverup fails

The SJWs of science fiction fandom have done their level best to denigrate, discredit and disqualify Daniel’s historic five-part expose on predatory child abuse in science fiction over the last five decades. They want to bury their sordid past, and hide their filthy present, because they know that their embrace of criminal deviancy will cause even the liberal mainstream to turn against them if it ever comes to light.

  • “[Day] is just writing stuff to fill his slate and then cackle both evilly and ineffectively.” – Chris S.
  • “RE: Castalia House’s new thing. It’s a reactionary tactic called Amplification, where they use the language of progressive politics to either accuse progressives of doing something horrible, or to claim that the horrible thing they do must be accepted by progressives or they’re being discriminatory.” – Lorcan Nagle
  • I haven’t stopped laughing at the weaksauce effort there yet. Even if I ignore the clearly incredibly out of context quotes as well as the utterly inaccurate paraphrasing of what people said, there’s still a great deal of it that seems to have come from an alternate universe.” – snowcrash 
  • “I hate to give Castalia House credit for anything, but their usage of Search Engine Optimization tactics ain’t bad. Using science fiction and the Clarke miniseries as a traffic driver, there may be new eyeballs that are exposed to his words. Of course, there could also end up being lots of traffic driven to CH for the words “rape” and “pedophilia“. I’ll bet he thinks of that as a victory condition, too, right up to the point where the authorities start asking questions.” – Glenn Hauman
  • “This blatant attempt to play “gotcha” with SF’s history of dealing with sexual abuse committed within its own community is a particularly vile and disgusting example of hypocrisy.” – McJulie
  • “That’s kind of wild misreading of what Delany said.” – Aaron

As Daniel noted, these responses are not atypical, they represent the longtime position of the SF fandom community to protect the predators in its midst.

Of all 200+ comments in the threads at File770, not one fan raised the question of what should be done about the problem. If the “Safe Space as Rape Room” series hasn’t demonstrated that there is a code of silence regarding pedophilia in science fiction, the feral reaction of the fans to this “old news” certainly does.

Notably, of the above selections, three of the pedo-apologists comprise File 770’s Top 5 “most prolific” commenters of 2015: JJ, Peace Is My Middle Name, Aaron.

So if you had any doubts that these are the thoughts of core fans, those doubts should now be gone.

And, as we know, SJWs always lie. They cannot hide the truth, especially not while there are still witnesses able to call them out and expose their attempts to retroactively spin their Narrative.

Excellent, if emetic article: I am Breen’s daughter Moira Greyland, and I am glad to answer questions, though I cannot promise they will be less emetic than the article itself.

Seriously, this is very upsetting subject matter. I cried when I read your article, though I’ve been steeped in this material for awhile. Reading my father’s words is most upsetting.

I wish I knew a little less.

Another survivor is equally forthright:

Speak up:

For all the rape culture stuff that gets tossed around you can really reduce it to one word and that is: Silence.

People who rape count on you being too shocked, too thrown off, and feeling too guilty and complicit for not doing something right away to speak up. Don’t let them get away with that. Speak up. Find help. Do whatever it takes to snap back to reality. I don’t care who you are or how you vote, that’s the single best thing you can do for yourself or anyone else.

They are speaking up. We are willing to stand up, speak out, and support them, those individuals who have survived far worse from SF fandom than anything we have ever experienced at their nasty little hands.

For those who wish to question our motivations, we have but one response: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

And there is no friend more loyal than a Rabid Puppy.

Flying in the face of reality

I have no doubt that the Germans are going to go full-Nazi as soon as they overthrow their traitorous political class and their corporate PC lobby.

The involvement by foreigners flies in the face of Germany’s PC lobby which has ruthlessly called critics of Merkel’s migration programme ‘Nazi’ or ‘racist’.

Take 59-year-old Akif Pirincci, an outspoken Right-winger and German writer of Turkish origin, who has warned that Christian Germany is becoming Islamic. His books, one of which is called Germany Gone Mad, were best-sellers until last autumn, when big publishers and bookshops chose not to distribute them any more. It is the first time since the Nazi era that such censorship has occurred.

In another controversy, Catholic journalist Matthias Matussek lost his job at the respected German newspaper Die Welt after he posted his views on November’s massacre in Paris on his personal Facebook page, saying mildly: ‘I think that the terror in Paris will move our (German) debate about open borders and … young Muslim men in our country in an entirely new and fresh direction.’

Despite the censorship, unpalatable truths have still slipped out. Last month, the interior ministry in the large south-west state of Baden-Wurttemberg published figures on criminal offences committed by asylum seekers between January and November 2015.

They made alarming reading. Asylum seekers represent one per cent of the population of the state but were involved in five per cent (27,255) of all registered crimes, among them 1,000 cases of grievous bodily harm, 22 of attempted murder, and 700 of domestic burglary. The highest number of offenders were Syrians, committing 5,576 of the offences.

Andre Schulz, head of Germany’s criminal police association, said recently that in his experience 10 per cent of the migrants would turn to criminality, including theft, sexual assault or drug dealing.

‘The policy has been to leave the German population in the dark …ordinary citizens are being played for fools,’ he declared.

The same process is at work in the USA. It’s a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one; Germany is getting hit harder and faster. This is why establishing new, Alt Right institutions is an urgent necessity. And they are being developed; I have spoken to three separate groups that are in the process of doing this, so be ready to support them and use them and police them as they begin to appear this year.

Because, like the snakes they are, the SJWs are going to throw everything they have into trying to strangle them in their cradles.

SJWs, exposed

The SJW calling himself Hawk S. Rabidus made a risibly false claim.

Nobody else is organizing or manipulating things on Goodreads (or the Hugos) using concerted action. There is no cabal.

There most certainly is, as in both cases, the emergent behavior of the various individuals who share an interest in pushing social justice is observably manifest. In the case of the Hugos, the editors at Tor Books have been engaging in concerted action for decades. They have, by their own admission, decided when new awards will be created, when they will win those awards, and when they will step back and permit others to win them. In the case of Goodreads, it is a group of petty SJWs and SJW librarians who have collectively sought to lower the ratings of right wing authors. Thanks to Sean O’Hara, we were able to put together the list of all 100 or so, including moderators like rivka, and librarians like banillah, Bryan Young, davidofterra, and Getty Hesse.

 SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police
by Vox Day, Milo Yiannopoulos (Foreword)
Getty Hesse’s review
Jan 04, 16

did not like it

I’m putting this review up because the book desperately needs a lower rating. One does not need to read this book. The very blurb is resplendent with contradictions.

SJWs subject the world to “their intolerant thought and speech policing,” and yet the VERY NEXT SENTENCE speaks of “the SJW agenda of diversity, tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality.” Tolerance cannot be intolerant. Vox Day is saying here that something is not itself. And he doesn’t even suggest that their “agenda” is something else masquerading as “diversity,tolerance, inclusiveness, and equality,” oh no, rather these things contradict “both science and observable reality.” I’m not even going to bother to explain why that statement is incredibly idiotic. Anyone with half a brain cell should be able to figure it out.

And, for the record, Vox Day is not “the most hated man in science fiction.” He’s the most laughed at.

If SJWs could do logic, they wouldn’t be SJWs. Forgive the digression, but Getty Hesse’s pseudo-dialectic makes my teeth itch. It’s true that X cannot be Not X, but Y most certainly can be. In much the same way Tom Brady is not the New England Patriots playbook, SJWs are not the professed SJW agenda. As usual, both Vox’s First Law and the First Law of SJW can be seen here.

What is interesting about Goodreads is that it provides an excellent way of publicly identifying where people stand on the socio-political spectrum. Aside from the amusement that this latest showdown has provided, it has sparked some very interesting discussions in our tech circle, including some things we’re going to discuss in our next Brainstorm, where we will talk about the planned fork of Wikipedia and the shape of its eventual replacement.

More importantly, this has finally allowed me to answer the core question with which I have been wrestling: do we create something that is a right-wing alternative to Wikipedia or do we shoot to replace it entirely with something better that the left can be safely permitted to use without converging it like they always do?

Speaking of things that provoke laughter, Rolf Nelson received an email from The Goodreads Team explaining why they would not be removing an obviously fake review in which it was apparent that the reviewer could not possibly have read the book.

Goodreads policy allows users to rate a book as soon as it is listed on the site. We do not dictate on what basis Goodreads members form their personal opinions about a book, so we have no rules about reading the full text of a book before rating and reviewing it. We recognize that not everyone will agree with this policy, but it is one that has worked well for the Goodreads community over time.

Users are entitled to express their honest opinions about the book,
even if others feel them to be misguided or wrong. We don’t evaluate a
reader’s opinions based on how, when, or why they made a judgement about
the work that they read. Given the subjective nature of reviews, it’s
hard to designate one review as “wrong” and another “right.” Even if we
could, it would be impractical to manually verify the authenticity of
every statement made in a Goodreads review, and we have to be consistent
in how we apply our policies.  

That would explain why they were able to ban me in good conscience: they have no need to be consistent about how they apply their unviolated non-policies.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that Goodreads’ policy permits the review of books one hasn’t read, as it even permits the review of books that don’t exist. Two Goodreads librarians have one-starred a book that I supposedly wrote for Ben Bella that was never signed to a contract, that I never wrote, and Ben Bella never published. It’s nice that ignoring reality has worked well for the Goodreads community over time, but history is quite clear on the way that reality tends to impose itself in the end.

One more tangent, if you don’t mind. Ben Bella graciously returned to me the audiobook rights to The Irrational Atheist and we expect it to be available on Audible from Castalia House sometime in the February-March timeframe.