At Least you can Trust the Skeptics!

I study Skeptics. I study them as a social and psychological phenomenon. It’s a real hobby of mine, maybe because I’ve got an internet stalker who’s one of them; and maybe I should thank him for being such a good research subject! There’s this kind of myth, this fantasy, that Skeppers are somehow the bastions of good, honest research and the vanguard of the very best of human cognition and creation. Even some non-Skeppers believe this. “The Skeptics might be wrong, but at least you can trust them not to lie.” Er… no! Skeptometrists, and scientists in general, are just the same as anyone else; they sometimes lie, cheat, mislead, delude themselves, take short cuts, cover their tracks, lose their nerve and use dirty tricks against their enemies. In other words they’re capable of everything that they accuse “Woos” of doing. Of course not all Skeptomandoes do this, but then neither do all non-Skeps.

A good example has just emerged. The Big Pharma company Wyeth has been forced to admit that it faked research papers on its hormone-replacement therapy drugs: http://www.naturalnews.com/029160_medical_journals_ghostwriters.html . They covered up the dangers of their product, the increased risk of cancer, dementia etc.

There are other examples. I’ve written about The Houdini Code, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/05/houdini-code.html and there’s also the doubts cast over that Skeptolemicist and absolute Knight in Shining Armour of the Skeptic Movement, James Randi. His proclaimed “coup” exposing the world of psychic investigators, Project Alpha, is not what it first appears to be. Nexus magazine exposed how the actual occurrences during that attempted-hoax were not quite as Randi portrayed them as; that’s the nicest way of putting it! (Sorry, the online editions of this article have been taken down.)

Piltdown Man is probably the most famous scientific hoax in history. In 1912 some bones were supposedly found of a proto-human creature that became a sensation, but it was a fake concocted for political reasons. Germany had just won accolades for its isolation of Neanderthal Man remains and because of the rivalry between the two countries it was prestigious for Britain to discover its own hominid ancestor. The perpetrator has never been caught and is probably dead by now. It took over 40 years to expose the fraud; and in that time Piltdown Man became part of the human family, appearing in scientific journals and books. There's a memorial in the Sussex village where the "discovery" was made which has been allowed to remain standing and a pub was set up there called The Piltdown Man. (It's still called that; it hasn't changed its name!)

The most recent and topical example of this is Climategate. What happened was that a hacker managed to access the email accounts of scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change that were stored in the computers in the University of East Anglia. The emails were of private discussions between various scientists in which they blatantly and state how they know very well the Man-Made-Climate-Change Theory is incorrect, but they decide to conspire to cover that up for political and economic reasons. The control of the media by the government was sadly tight enough to prevent this story becoming the scandal it deserved to be; however it swept around the alternative media and internet like wildfire. (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/04/alternative-view-4-part-3.html) Thanks goodness for the Net! Climategate is not the first time this kind of deception has happened. I’ve written before about the Hockey-Stick Hoax, an earlier and even more blatant attempt to cover up which I write about here (I am “hagbard_celine”): http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1204 .

Science, ever since the Enlightenment and the fall of Religion, is put on one of the most massive and highest pedestals as anything since Jesus Christ. It’s as if, in our very noble and understandable reaction against Religion, have swung too far back the other way to the opposite extreme. Richard Dawkins is a good example, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html . There’s no doubt that Science is a wonderful thing, but does it really deserve all the fawning consecration that is bestowed on it? Or is it time for those who work within the establishments of Science and Reason to take a long hard look in the mirror and realize that they are not the lily-whites they’ve been led to believe they are. And as for the rest of us: we’ve got, to quote Dawkins, “to stop being so damn deferential” to Science and especially the Skeptic Movement. We have to realize that both sides in the debate are equally flawed; and then maybe we can assess all the evidence, all the pro’s and con’s, for everything and hopefully reach the truth.

(Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2010/07/big-brother-rules-go-out-window.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2010/06/rip-subway.html

Latest HPANWO TV film: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/07/dont-eat-pringles.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/07/mutilating-mother-earth.html)