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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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A couple of points.

  1. This puts to lie “trust the experts.” If the experts are willing to lie even if for supposedly noble reasons, then you cannot trust what they are telling you is accurate. No, you need to trust that what they are telling you is for the common good but why would those so called experts be more of an expert of what is the common good compared to you? It also wouldn’t be entirely surprising if they believed that the common good is consistent with what they do (eg I am trying to prevent a future pandemic and therefore what I do is good and anything that gets in the way is bad). But that’s largely self deceit.

  2. If we know what the institutional pressures are within this area, then it is entirely reasonable to assume publications would skew towards not a lab leak. The fact that people publish evidence supporting not a leak is consistent with the incentive structure people in this field clearly possess. It is akin to being SHOCKED that Phillip Morris’s research indicated no cancer due to smoking. That doesn’t mean they are wrong, but we aren’t looking at honest open science.

It is akin to being SHOCKED that Phillip Morris’s research indicated no cancer due to smoking. That doesn’t mean they are wrong, but we aren’t looking at honest open science.

I really think there should be a nice, pithy word that describes this kind of behavior - where you aren't strictly lying, but are using and presenting facts in a deceptive way in order to trick people.

Intellectual dishonesty?

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