WITHOUT FEAR

Why do people doubt science? Because it 's been a false God, held up to be the savior of all saviors in the modern world not to be questioned and, in many ways, like the religion it warred with centuries ago that wasn't supposed to be questioned either.

In some ways scientific zealots have replaced their old religious foes.

Yet science can be--and is manipulated--by many. Hardly a month goes past that some scientific data, it turns out, is proved to have been manipulated.

Is this more a statement about humans rather than science? We don't think so. Science often turns out to be incorrect. A few decades ago science labeled cholesterol a villain. That proved wrong with time. Science despite its reverence for truth and law changes.

In the early days of the cholesterol frenzy eggs were the villain of choice. Later it became red meat. Now it's something else.

Science despite what its believers claim is subject to the same human frailties like greed and pride as any other discipline. Big pharmaceuticals is a classic example. Anyone who believes it takes three oral hypoglycemic medicines to control non-insulin diabetes is smoking the good stuff regularly on the way to their ATM.

A full 30% of the current flu vaccine making the rounds doesn't work. Why? Because the viruses are like you and me; they want to survive. But unlike you and me they're much better at mutating. 

Bacteria and viruses just bring the point home. So-called super bugs are testimony to man's folly of putting all their scientific eggs in one basket.

Screwing around with Mother Nature is never free. And that brings us to the latest popular frenzy pushed by the so-called scientific elite and MSM, climate change. Is the climate changing? Of course. Is it changing for the reasons these groups claim? Our response, not so fast.

Part of all frenzies is to force everyone on board, dissenters beware. A lot of the climate-change crowd come from the left--a fact, not a partisan statement. Dissenters absent the requisite doctorate get marginalized as ill-informed, non-experts.

So here's reminder for those on the left from one of their all-time idolized political icons, John F. Kennedy after his Bay of Pigs debacle, "How could I have been so stupid?"warning to "never trust the experts." 

Economists are supposed to be experts given all the time most spend in their econometric cellars. The air down there can get pretty thin. Maybe that's an excuse.

One answer can be gleaned from previous forecasts. Back in 1995, economist and Financial Times columnist John Kay examined the record of 34 British forecasters from 1987 to 1994, and he concluded that they were birds of a feather. They tended to make similar forecasts, and then the economy disobligingly did something else, with economic growth usually falling outside the range of all 34 forecasters.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_undercover_economist/2008/08/the_wisdom_of_crowds.html 

The Queen of England famously asked why economists failed to foresee the financial crisis in 2008. "Why did nobody notice it?" was her question when she visited the London School of Economics that year

Economists' failure to accurately predict the economy's course isn't limited to the financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Macroeconomic computer models also aren't very useful for predicting how variables such as GDP, employment, interest rates and inflation will evolve over time. 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-economic-forecasts-wrong-so-often/

Economics is often described as the ‘dismal science’. Unlike other traditional sciences, economics rarely provides a simple solution to present day issues. Furthermore economists have a poor record of predicting the future. Even notable economists such as Joe Stiglitz agree that economists only get it right at best around 3 or 4 times out of ten. However it should be acknowledged that economic forecasting is a difficult art at best – human behavior is forever changing and the economy is a complex mechanism with many working parts. Nevertheless I thought it would be entertaining to highlight some of the most wildly inaccurate forecasts in recent times. Here are some of the best… https://shaundacosta.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/when-economists-get-it-wrong-the-worst-economic-predictions-of-all-time

So how does this fit with Chairwoman Yellen's recent revelation that from here on out it all depends on the data? That should strike a cord of confidence in you as you drift off to sleep every night.

Predicting the courses of diseases or disease outbreaks isn't any better. And that includes those experts in epidemiology.

THE EBOLA epidemic that took off last year in three west African countries—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone—is finally fading. The last three weeks have each seen around 120 new cases, the lowest level since July 2014. In total, around 22,000 people are thought to have been infected, and 9,000 to have died. But predictions last year were much higher, including a worst-case scenario by America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of 1.4m cases, reported and unreported, by January 20th. How are such predictions made, and how can they go wrong?

Disease predictions come from mathematical models that group the population at risk of a disease into categories and describe how people move between them. Both the categories and the flows depend on the disease. With Ebola, there is a long lag between infection and the first symptoms, during which it is not contagious. And recovered sufferers are immune. So an Ebola model will group the “susceptible” (who have not yet had the disease), “exposed” (infected but not yet showing signs of the disease), “infectious” (ill and contagious) and “removed” (no longer infectious because they have recovered or died). Estimates for the sizes of these groups and how people move between them—including how many people catch the disease from each infectious person, how long people remain infectious and how likely they are to die—are used to build a computer model showing how the spread of the disease is likely to unfold. The CDC’s Ebola model also sub-divided infectious people into three smaller groups: isolated in hospital, partially isolated at home or elsewhere in the community, and unisolated. And its highest predictions were swollen by the assumption that for every reported case, 1.5 more went unreported.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/02/economist-explains-3

But let's now leave out the current tribe of revered MSM favorites, central bankers.

Four months ago, when unemployment stood at 7.8%, the Bank of England issued forward guidance on interest rates. Threadneedle Street said it would not even start to muse about an increase in interest rates until the jobless rate hit 7%. According to the Bank, this was likely to be in early 2016.
 
Happily, the Old Lady's forecasts have proved spectacularly wrong. The recovery in the economy since the spring has proved to be jobs rich, with the latest report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that employment was up by 250,000 in the three months to October. Unemployment fell by almost 100,000 over the same period and the average jobless rate for the three months from August to October dropped to 7.4%.

The chart below is from the Washington Post, hardly a right wing publication. It's a scribe owned outright by a well-known lefty named Warren Buffet.



We could go on, but we won't. The purpose is a quote from an article from today's "Daily Bell," about the generically modified grains Monsanto produces: "Monsanto Laments Dwindling Faith in Science."

The Bell is a libertarian site and the Post a liberal one as is Slate and CBS.

On Twitter recently, someone asked the question "Why do people doubt science?" Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article in National Geographic that implied people who are suspicious of vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), climate change, fluoridated water and various other phenomena are confused, adhere to conspiracy theories, are motivated by ideology or are misinformed as a result of access to the 'University of Google.' ... Who tweeted the question and posted the link? None other than Robert T Fraley, Monsanto's Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. 
  
Our experience in science might not invalidate yours. But in no way does yours invalidate ours.

If you allow MSM and its scientific cohorts to silence you on these issues with their marginalizing tactics, you'll be doing a grave disservice to yourself and your loved ones. 

This is about much more than truth. It's about your legal right to openly dissent without fear of any private or government retribution.