Physicians must reject “Nature,” and embrace science
Back during the Spring of ’20 in the early weeks of the Virus Panic, we were sitting on the beachfront deck of some friends, looking forlornly at the ocean. I was angry that our county authorities had stupidly closed the beaches to discourage anyone coming in from out of town to spread the dreaded, always-fatal ‘Rona, because UV light and fresh salt air always make things more deadly. I did my share of ranting at this madness, and our hostess, one who is always enamored of collective do-gooding and intentions-over-results, sharply countered me with, “Well in MY family, we were raised to believe in science.” Uh huh. And in my family, headed by a surgeon, we were raised to cast chicken bones and divine entrails under a full moon, which is how I passed all of my board exams.
Patients, and those of us who actually treat them, like science. In fact, we LOVE science. It has given us the antibiotics to treat strep pharyngitis, the wondrous CT scans to rule out head bleeds, and the subtlety of small gauge dissolvable sutures to minimize facial scarring after a nasty fall. Science allows primary care types to remain overworked and underpaid even as they demonstrably extend life and expand its quality, staving off the ravages of hypertension, diabetes, and garden variety depression. We are all able to treat patients downstream of the research scientists because of their brilliant work, and because of the accepted agreement that they have been objectively working in good faith.
So what do we do with “science” when it tells us straight to our faces that it is not objectively working in good faith? Writer Andrew Follett gives us reason to wonder, stating, “Nature demands that only science compatible with an ideologically fashionable worldview be published.” This once-respected publication worries that “ … research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups.” So?? When was that ever grounds to ignore data? If a certain ethnic group is more prone to renal failure as a consequence of chronic conditions, do we falsely spread that over every demographic just to spare the feelings of some?
Said a Nature writer, “A new ultraconservative supermajority on the United States’ top court is undermining science’s role in informing public policy. . . . Scholars fear the results could be disastrous for public health, justice and democracy itself.” That statement is the very definition of subjectivity and politics, and has nothing to do with science. What the hell are they talking about?
“Science has for too long been complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society,” and the Nature editorial staff “will reject, retract, and repudiate any research that ‘promotes privileged, exclusionary perspectives.’” Oooooh, you mean like the L.A. school district nutritionist who released an insane video claiming “diet culture, fatphobia, and systems of oppression have created false hierarchies of food and it shows up everywhere.” To wit, this idiot is pushing eating habits that promote any number of chronic ailments, in the name of fighting “oppression.” You can just picture the nodding heads over at Nature at her bravery, knowing that they won’t be the ones paying for all the pediatric metformin and knee replacements in their thirties.
We’ve seen this cynical virtue-outraging before – remember the usual do-gooder outrage over Charles Murray’s 1994 “The Bell Curve”?
“Perhaps the most disturbing feature of Nature’s new editorial guidelines is the broadened definition of research-related ‘harm,’ which researchers must prevent, to now include negative social consequences for studied groups.” The author correctly considers the grotesque abuses by the Nazis, and the Soviets, both of which used reimagined social constructs as the rationale to brutalize and murder millions for the “greater good.”
Follett quotes chemistry professor Anna Krylov, late of the USSR: “Science was not spared from this strict ideological control … Entire disciplines were declared ideologically impure, reactionary, and hostile to the cause of working-class dominance and the World Revolution.” The dominant ideology stamped out inconvenient scientific inquiry.
The author wonders, “If even the most benevolent of intentions can have such profoundly negative gatekeeping effects on science, what barriers and costs are this radically expansive and ideologically shaped definition of ‘harm’ going to impose on the average researcher?” Oh, we have some good data on that. The negligently homicidal Anthony Fauci’s network of principle investigators have been documented to be on the take, pushing pricy if questionable (AZT), and lucrative if harmful (Remdesivir) treatments, with rewards doled up and down the chain, even as the FDA fast-tracked profitable suggestions. Prof. Krylov: “The USSR, is no longer on the map …
But I find myself experiencing its legacy some thousands of miles to the west, as if I am living in an Orwellian twilight zone. I witness ever-increasing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship. Just as in Soviet times, the censorship is being justified by the greater good.”
How can any physician who practiced in the past two years dispute this? We were subjected to, and enforced, inane, insane, cruel, and sometimes criminal abuses against this society. The gang at Nature certainly must have applauded the medical commissariat nodding blithely along to masking children at no risk, locking down a fearful society, insisting upon pointless mass masking, and promoting unethical, harmful vaccine mandates. Do we not remember the mass censorship of anyone questioning the non-scientific dogma that censored anyone using the words “hydroxychloroquine” or “ivermectin,” or anyone even suggesting that not every single damn human needed the mRNA jab, censorship that recalled Galileo recanting objective scientific proofs in the face of torture? Nature has unmasked itself to be an ideological, corrupt instrument, no more moral or trustworthy than the hacks at the AMA or The Lancet, no more interested in the truth and actual science than the bought-and-paid-for NIH and CDC.
Author Follett sums it exactly right: “The real harm won’t come from allowing free inquiry; it will come from sanitizing science.” If our profession is to have any worth at all, it must unanimously embrace this statement.
The new “Science” is Darwinism at work.
Well Said. Now how many will LIVE IT.
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