Following the Science: What Science?

Last Updated on November 13, 2021 8:37 pm by Editor

It was just going to be a matter of time before this manufactured health crisis we are facing unravels…and peters out.  That is, if big pharma, government overreach and the mainstream media will let it be so.

Twenty-one months into the crisis, the fracture points of this crisis are beginning to appear.  In the imagery of Star Trek, hull breach is imminent.   

From the very beginning of this health crisis, it was mooted that it was going to be like the common flu; more precisely, a bad case of the common flu.  Many have forgotten that.  Logically, therefore we should expect c-19 cases to escalate during the winter season, that is, right about now!

Early on in the crisis, the “media-nights” (a.k.a mainstream media) stepped in and since then we have been getting a blow by-blow account of every infection, death and recovery. The fear engendered by this hype has partly fuelled the crisis. Equally, we have been noticing the concealment of vital information that implicates big pharma and government overreach.  

Crisis Process

The world has gone through several stages in dealing with this pandemic: disbelief, denial, attribution, coping, analysis, innovation and adaptation.  Some of these are happening at same time.

For example, although analysis and innovation are in full swing, there is still debate as to the cause of the virus. The PCR test for the virus has become the standard and has expanded our vocabulary by such terms as “false positives” and “false negatives”.

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As we were in the process of writing this article, the Epoch Times was reporting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had confirmed Thursday that it was recalling some 2 million Ellume at-home COVID-19 testing kits because they can produce “false positives” due to a manufacturing defect.  

Whether this report can be taken at face value or treated as part of the stratagem to promote government controlled testing remains to be seen. Everything has to be taken “with a pinch of salt” as we say in Barbados. 

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Then came the lockdowns which are part of the coping mechanisms. Many have forgotten that lockdowns were adopted in the west largely because the D-G of the WHO, after praising Xia Jinping for his country’s handling of the virus outbreak in China, promptly proceeded to recommend the same in the west.

Since then, the Ayatollahs waiting in the wing have had a field day. Churches in Canada and other countries have been banned from having services and the Australian government easily wins the record for the toughest lockdowns.  Perhaps there should be no surprise in the case of Australia. It is not generally known that Australia started out as  British penal colony. 

And how can we forget New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who won an Emmy for his brilliant “management” of the pandemic, that is, for turning old people’s homes into neo-Nazi style death camps?

Given that it is the USA we are talking about here, we still cannot understand how the families of those who lost loved ones have not brought a class-action suit against Governor Cuomo.  

Meanwhile, government officials like Nancy Pelosi, several US governors and our own PM were seen at some point violating the “mask mandate”.  The wearing of masks is being touted as a means of preventing the contraction of this disease yet, as someone has said, “wearing a mask is like throwing grains of rice at a wire mesh fence”.  

In the midst of  all of this, there is an unrecognized miracle.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lying, conniving US expert on infectious diseases is still not in prison! Either America is truly a unique country or something has gone terribly wrong there. 

Following the Science

Meantime, this Dr. Fauci continues to tout “follow the science” a  mantra which is parroted by those near and far including here in Barbados.

Science? What science? Science used to mean an adoption of certain objective principles of investigation that helped an investigator determine whether A causes B. The determination of causation was – and still is to the best of my knowledge- the ultimate goal of scientific enquiry.

Clearly if one can establish that A causes B, or for that matter that both A and C cause B to happen, one is in a better position to prevent B from happening or find a remedy for B if it does happen.

To a scientist, “cause” means something like this: A can be taken to be the cause of the result B (1) if every time A occurs B occurs (2) if A always occurs before B and (3) if there are no other obvious factors (like C) that might cause B.

Just remember that in science, we avoid using the expression: ‘Prove that A causes B” because it is extremely difficult to “prove” anything.

That simplified description of causation embodies three basic conditions or criteria that must be met for one to prove, or rather say with some degree of confidence, that A causes B.   In some fields,  like the medical field, there are additional criteria that must be met.

The three criteria are (1) concomitance (2) temporal precedence and (3)  elimination of other causes

The criterion of concomitance means that whenever B occurs A must also occur AND that when A varies or changes, so does B.  If B occurs but A is “not around” or B does not respond to changes in A, then one cannot assert that B is caused by A.

Let’s illustrate. If you say that washing your hair causes a cold, then anytime you catch a cold it should have been that you washed your  hair.  The more often you wash your  hair, the more frequently you should catch a cold. That is concomitance.

The second criterion- temporal precedence – means is that if you say that A causes B then every time B occurs then A must occur PRIOR to B. If B sometimes occurs before A then one cannot argue that A causes B.  I leave you to apply this to the running example we are using.

The third criteria of causation is that any other possible cause of B must be ruled out. For example, it there is another factor called C that is present when you catch a cold, then you cannot argue that A alone is the cause of B. That’s commonsense. Unfortunately, commonsense has become an endangered species.

Although we have deliberately simplified the discussion here, it must be noted that some of the points raised above are important, not only in scientific research, but in other fields such as law.

For example, if you claim that other driver’s negligence is what caused the accident, then a clever lawyer might show that your brakes were faulty and that in fact that was what “caused” the accident. Which of the three criteria of causation is that?

Now you know why when the police are called to the scene of an accident they measure skid marks and ask you to test your brakes: if your vehicle is in a state to do so, that is!

Real Science

The accepted scientific way or methodology to establish causation is to conduct carefully controlled experiments that meet the three criteria discussed earlier as well as more sophisticated conditions.  Scientific experiments are generally designed to answer some critical question of interest such as: do masks prevent the contraction of covid-19?  How well does vaccine A or B treat or prevent the disease? Can vaccines cause unwanted even dangerous symptoms?

The manner in which an experiment (or any research for the matter) is conducted can either make or break the research in terms of its validity  and (most importantly) the level of confidence we can place in the results. 

In part 2 of this article we will examine some of the research about covid-19 paying particular attention to the emerging findings on vaccine trials and approvals.  Space permitting, we shall also critically assess the practices of authorities in dealing with the pandemic in the light of what is “known” about the disease. 

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Aldon D. Tull is retired educator who holds the Master of Science in International Marketing from Strathclyde University, Scotland and the Doctor of Education from Sheffield University, England.  He can be reached at 246-228-3720 or on Whatsapp at 246-846-3191.