Andrew Winter: Sorry for the late reply. I was on the road.

First, I AGREE with everything you write about our broken intellectual community and how it does research today. I have written about this repeatedly here at BtB.

Second, as Edward noted, my essay was specifically commenting on the broken nature of modern science reporting. Journalists are supposed to be skeptical and question the claims made in press releases. Almost none do nowadays. If they did, the problems you outline within the science community would be more effectively addressed, because someone would be challenging them. Sadly, almost no one is (except for me and a few faint voices elsewhere),

However, Robert’s post is about how the reporting of science is also broken. Rather than reportingwhat is, we get many articles telling uswhat might be. We do not make good decisions about life, livelihoods, or politics from what might be. Our decisions are better when they are made with confidence about how the world is.

Instead, we get reports of science that give us “may,” “might,” or “could.” These are uncertainty words. News has become entertainment, sometimes in the Stephen King sense. We are entertained by reports of possibilities or wishful thinking. Max got it right. The news has become fiction. Gone are the days when Walter Cronkite would tell us at the end of his reports, “And that’s the way it is.” He was replaced by Dan Rather, who felt he had to make up news in order to make his political enemies look bad (even before Obama said to punish his enemies and reward his friends).

So now we are stuck with broken reporting of broken science.

From Robert‘s post: “Their interest isn’t in reporting news, scoops of real discoveries, but of pushing narratives.”

Isn’t the news supposed to present us with the facts (who, what, where, when, why, how), and we use our ability of how to think in order to come to our own conclusions? But now, we are told what to think (Orange Man bad, Democrats God, global warming man-made, climate change deadly). If we are told what to think, then isn’t it most likely that we are not being told alternate facts that would cause us to question the narratives? Thus, reality has become malleable: a man can be a woman and vice versa. Delusions have become the new reality, the new normal. And we know it to be true, because The New Science™ says it could be that it might maybe be true.

Not sure when I stumbled across that. Middle-school age, I think. It makes great reading, but not such a great theory, imho. Just a gut feeling, but if the Earth’s orbit had changed during semi-historical time, our calendar would be very different.

The next year I saw this one.
https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a When I read it there was a complete breakdown of the % of non reproducible articles by Discipline with Psychology “studies” showing a whopping 9-% PLUS of studies that could not be reproduced. Here is the actual citation.
Baker, M. 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature 533, 452–454 (2016).
https://doi.org/10.1038/533452a
You have to pay to view it now, it looks like. Dayam I wish I had save that actual page. There is a way to do it too.

What I gleaned from this was the NATURE was OUTTING themselves. They make their bread and butter with SCIENCE articles. They were confronted with the uncomfortable fact that a LOT of what they were pushing was not reproducible. The very FIRST criteria of anything purporting to be a SCIRNTIFIC study is that any reader anywhere, if they have the resources can REPLICATE that study. ON average around 75% of what NATURE was publishing as not replicable. OUCH.

The whole topic, over the last few years has drawn in the usual politically minded cover stories, some even denying that the problem is real. Here are some other links of interest.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/replication-crisis. Pretty much lays out the issue up to 2023. regarding psychology and behavioral studies.

Vox has a fairly detailed overview, which I now have a hard time finding sources for.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics

For those who don’t want to bother digging, well there is always Wikipedia, Not the best source but a wonderful place to start any digging, (Which is how ALL encyclopedias should be viewed.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

This Wikipedia article points back to the first article of 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Findings_Are_False

Now! Yippee Tai KAIYAY! There is now an entirely new field of study called Metascience. This my first read of this. I hadn’t seen it until I started going back through my bookmarks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience
Absolutely amazing that this issue was identified as early as 1966. Good Gawd I was eleven years old, and listening to my Farther speak to his friends in the evenings about The Velikovsky Affair. Dr Velikovsky challenged a huge portion of what academia accepted as “essential truths” about ancient history from the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great all the way back to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Many volumes. But really great reads.

For all of you that may be alarmed or worried about this entire mess, Be GLAD, there is now a “MOVEMENT” to combat this. Join UP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science

It is important. The pull quote that really stands in the way is this from the last article there.

“The conflict that led to the Open Science movement is between the desire of scientists to have access to shared resources versus the desire of individual entities to profit when other entities take part of their resources.[15]”

“entities” can be individuals. Tesla vs Edison is a tremendous example. Another one is the very long drawn out patent battle between the Wright Brothers and Glenn Hammond Curtiss, (Wright vs Curtiss) over just exactly what constituted the Wright patent on three aixs control of aircraft in flight.
The Wright Brothers believed they owned the rights to anything that controlled the Roll Access, while Curtis invented the Aileron, whereas the Wright Bros. used wing warping. Curtis was sued over his Aileron as a patent infringement. So the conflict is REAL. And one’s “inventions” due to ones own research should be protected intelluctual property, should it not?

So some company produces research that leads to a possible treatment of a disease. They patent a product that sells HUGE based on the SCIENTIFIC reseach that led to that product. It is very easy to imagine the ENGINE of defenses that the company will throw at anyone who can establish that the original SCIENTIFIC research just go it wrong.

This whole replication crisis is at the heart of every article I read in Behing the Black like this one. So I thought I’d present the foundation of the problem as a backdrop.

https://www.nature.com/collections/prbfkwmwvz
That led me backwards to this one, which at that time I was able to read.

Then there was this one

As a business with their fingers in many pies, they are highly concerned with slavery and the gender pay gap, and issue yearly corporate reports congratulating themselves.

Who here actually ever goes to space.com?

The truth is people love lies, it’s called fiction.
The make-believe world of movies, TV, video games, books all made up in an imaginary world of an author.
And we all crave it.

You can go to Wikipedia under the topic of “false flags” and read about the big lies that cost millions of lives.

Here is an hour and a half cato institute presentation with three guests on the topic of lies in 2021.
Although this rabbit hole has excellent points, you’ll enjoy it for the fictional presentation on Trump and Covid… Much of which has been proven to be a lie as they debated how to hold Trump responsible while not violating his right to lie. (keep your masks on at all times… Except while you’re eating because everyone knows you can’t catch Covid while you’re eating)
https://www.cato.org/events/right-lie-presidents-other-liars-first-amendment

I wonder if comets can have phosphorus…

I find a great filter for BS is to completely disregard anything with a headline ending with a “?” , the answer is inevitably “no”

Fantasy as news. An interesting idea. Apparently, it sells.

The Degrassi video reminds me of Riley Gaines and PhD anthropologist Gabby Yearwood.

Many moons ago, I had a double college major of Spanish and Archaeology. I eventually learned that I could not pay a mortgage, or any other significant expense, pursuing a degree in archaeology. I was able to participate in two excavations. One was on the San Francisco Peninsula; the other was a Mayan City in Belize. Every professor, teacher, even a visiting lecturer knew that the skeletons revealed all kinds of information. Especially the gender. That a PhD anthropologist would adopt the woke insanity is, well, sad, and highly laughable.

One of my favorite professors had a great way of explaining things. He would say:

“This (XYZ) we know.”

“This thing (XYZ) we THINK we know.”

“This other thing (XYZ)….we have no idea what this is.”

https://youtube.com/shorts/80rKfhdcGn4?si=L9kLbcqgR7JWg06A

Stupid and getting stupider.