Cees Mul, frequent reader and commenter of this site, has a spare ticket for Battle For Science Tuesday February 10 in Apeldoorn. It starts at 6pm.
Battle For Science is a conference organized by Lighthouse with an incredible line-up. Look up https://www.lighthousetv.nl/battleforscience for more information. The inspiration was the movie An Inconvenient Study, created by medical journalist Del Bigtree, who will also be in attendance. See https://www.aninconvenientstudy.com or watch it with Dutch subtitles, intro by Flavio (and commercials) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGnZWgY2KMY or below:
Battle For Science
The title of the event may give the impression of a multidisciplinary view: I am thinking of philosophers of science who unravel the concept of truth and the guidelines for integrity, sociologists who investigate group mechanisms, communication scientists who explain information flows and lawyers who clarify mandate, liability and constitutional guidelines.
And of course civil servants who flawlessly indicate what is going wrong within their institute: labor relations, data operations, etc. (just kidding 😅).
Judging by the line-up, it will be something different: a medical testimony about the defects during the corona period.
Personally, I had secretly hoped for more attention to the role of the media - but that will be my professional deformation. In my opinion, scientific work only acquires social value and only becomes relevant when it finds its way into the public space. This requires communication channels and these days these are the major media.
Whether it concerns climatology, public health, energy, (geo)political relations or migration: the media not only determine how we think about it, but also what is talked about. The big underlying one'Fight for science'As far as I am concerned, it is not actually about viruses or vaccines, although Covid has mercilessly exposed what is wrong. Unwelcome, policy-contrary knowledge does not reach the public because mediaphalen. Fundamentally different views are framed as 'dangerous'. This way, the policy can continue along the chosen path.
The corona debacle is the ideal empirical illustration of this media failure skillfully abused by the tightly coordinated behavioral units. This corona-specific illustration will undoubtedly be extensively discussed by the participants Battle for Science, given that three quarters have a medical/biological background.
It is expected that the doctors will emphasize how wrong the policy has been. The data crunchers (Meester and De Hond) will demonstrate how strong or weak the correlations are between remedies and failures and how unscientific assumptions have influenced policy (aerosols come to mind).
Perhaps Marcel Crok and Del Bigtree can say something about how it is possible that all that knowledge did not result in pressure on politics, exerted by the population who should wonder how policy can be reconciled with the available knowledge. I firmly believe that the media has dropped the ball there - anyone who has read my articles knows that this is a common thread throughout this blog site.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to February 9th. I'm going. Nice to see those international heroes live!
Virusvaria subscriber Cees Mul is also going on Tuesday, February 10. And he has one card left. Leave a comment if you are interested, one of these days we will draw lots and announce who the lucky one is.
Hi Anton, I would like to win that ticket! Greetings, Renske
I'm interested
Already been to the raffle? Otherwise I'd be happy to participate, greetings Gerard
Congratulations Gerard 🙂
I will send Cees your email address, he will contact you. Have fun on the 10th!
Fate has determined that Gerard is the lucky one. Sorry Renske and Richard! Maybe I'll see you on Monday the 9th.
Just watched “An Inconvenient Studyâ€. At 1:19:00 Bigtree says:
"Can we say that Henry Ford's research proves that vaccines are the cause of the chronic disease epidemic? No, we cannot. A retrospective study does not prove causality."
This reminded me of “misconception 1†in the virusvaria article on Rothman ( https://virusvaria.nl/zes-hardnekkige-misvattingen-in-wetenschappelijk-onderzoek-kenneth-j-rothman/ ), but even more so to Judea Pearl, especially since the document mentions that various variables were controlled for ( https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/06/gray-pearl-book-of-why.html ):
“At the same time, statisticians greatly underrate controlling in the sense that they are loath to talk about causality at all, even if the controlling has been done correctly.â€
Indeed. With good decency it can no longer be denied. But even purely as a 'signal' it is brushed aside and any transparency is voted down by those accomplices to the double accounting (I mean those at the institutes vs. those in the newspaper).
Perhaps you are also familiar with the Bradford Hill criteria? I'll have to put those in a separate article, they're tucked away now in a previous article.
I certainly know those criteria. Pearl discusses this in detail in his “The book of why.â€
At 35:18 researcher Peter Aaby says: “What came out of this was that your risk of death was 2.3 times higher if you were vaccinated against DTP. […study appears on screen: https://findresearcher.sdu.dk/ws/files/202484426/MF_DTP3.pdf ] Bigtree: “After looking at this study, it was clear that the vaccine did provide protection against the diseases for which they were vaccinated. The children did not die from diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.â€
The study says nothing about causes of death or disease history and therefore not about the effectiveness of the DTP vaccine.
"There's just one problem. When they looked at it, they were dying five [Aaby: 2.3!] times faster from all these other complications. So it was clear that while it protected against these diseases, it weakened their immune system for all kinds of other problems."
Bigtree once again emphasizes the so-called protection of the DTP vaccine.
“One of the other scientists who contributed to this research gave a TED lecture about this [mentioned study again in the picture].†Researcher Christine Stabell Benn: “Despite protection against three fatal diseases, the introduction of DTP [slide featuring Mogensen et al, EBioMedicine 2017] was associated with increased mortality.â€
In the study mentioned in the slide ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5360569/ ) staat: “Though protective against the target diseases, DTP may increase susceptibility to unrelated infections (Aaby et al., 2003b, Aaby et al., 2004a, Aaby et al., 2012) (Appendix A).â€
Appendix A contains absolutely nothing about the protection offered by the DTP vaccine and I highly doubt whether it can be found in the other references.
RFK Jr. writes in an article ( https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/dtp-vaccine-increases-mortality-in-young-infants-5-to-10-fold-compared-to-unvaccinated-infants/ ) over Mogensen, 2017: “The data suggest that, while the vaccine protects against infection from those three bacteria, it makes children more susceptible to dying from other causes.â€
As mentioned, the data do not suggest that the DTP vaccine provides the protection it is intended to provide.
It appears that Bigtree, like RFK Jr., is selling the notion that vaccines are dangerous, but also effective, without substantiating it.
Remarkably yes. It might be strategic sugar coating?
Saying twice that a study *clearly* shows that the DTP vaccination is effective, while the study in question (Bigtree shows the wrong one) only contains a line that 3 other studies show this, is simply lying.
I would say Bigtree is a gatekeeper, but you have the opportunity to ask him about his documentary.
Unfortunately I didn't speak to Del Bigtree. He was the star of the evening, the one who called for sensible action ('battle'): talk to each other, identify the problems, share substantiated criticisms.
Also positive: Maurice explicitly mentioned the media failure as an important factor in the derailment.
Furthermore, everyone was unanimous: it is doom and gloom in institutionalized science; innovation must come from outside. All the assembled pros and doctors on stage seemed to agree.
I would like a card like that for tonight
Unfortunately: the ticket has already been given and tonight is sold out.