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I just want to clarify for my own understanding - are you making an argument that this individual, that has been tested for and is known to have the polio virus

• lurquer 4y ago
  (Meanwhile, on other threads, there are discussions about the lamentable fraud that may have tainted Alzheimer/“brain plaque” research for the past 20 years, another thread about recent studies showing seratonin may have squat to do with depression, and you can always count on occasional thread regarding the Theranos debacle that deluded some very educated people. Greater harm, it seems, comes from lack of skepticism than too much of it.)
  • mrguyorama 4y ago
    Except unlike that Alzheimers research, vaccines work. They often work astonishingly well. If you want to pretend viruses don't exist, you need to provide alternative reasons for why these vaccines work so well, and especially now that we have shown mRNA vaccines work, this alternative explanation also has to work in cases where only a tiny subset of that virus exists in the vaccine. Quite simply, not understanding something, or not liking the consequences of it, is not skepticism, it's ignorance. Skepticism requires having good reasons to reject good models/research/outcomes etc. In the Alzheimers case, the reason for skepticism, which many people in the field had, was difficulty reproducing results, and lack of positive outcomes from therapies using that working hypothesis. Blind skepticism makes you beyond stupid, and eventually turns you into an idiot who watches Alex Jones and thinks your own son is a crisis actor
    • cies 4y ago
      I'm not saying viruses do not exist. I'm saying that they are merely a theory that is not proven with the same scientific rigor that bacteria infections have been proven. In fact I find the science on the existence of viruses rather thin. https://rumble.com/v13jt4t-science-pseudoscience-and-the-germ-theory-of-disease-dr.-jordan-grant-2022-.html https://rumble.com/v13jt4t-science-pseudoscience-and-the-ger... > especially now that we have shown mRNA vaccines work Right, they dropped from 100% effective to 30% effective in the first weeks, then requiring boosters. They totally lied/oversold them. And everyone got "it" anyway. How does that mean "they work"?
      • aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
        You realize that viruses are visible via electron microscopy?
        • cies 4y ago
          Are they? EM changes the sample, it can destroy cells. Also they do not look at truly isolated samples of viruses: they look at concoctions of monkey kidney cells, bovine fetal serum and more with the supposed virus in there. When looking at a concoction like that, what certainty you have you see the virus and not another small biological particle (like exosomes, or dead cell debris)? Last thing, it seems that with many of these EM photos of viruses, is that the control group was omitted. You also need to bring a concoction that does not have supposed virus in there and somehow show that does not contain the visual element that ARE seen in the sample with supposed virus. Virologists disagree and are okay with going ahead without control groups in these cases.
          • tekknik 4y ago
            > When looking at a concoction like that, what certainty you have you see the virus and not another small biological particle (like exosomes, or dead cell debris)? Because a virus looks nothing like cells that would make up any of those organs. When you examine enough samples and suddenly see some cells that don’t look like they belong that’s a pretty good indicator of a foreign body.
  • _wqdq 4y ago
    I have followed that thread, and the Alzeimer "story" with great interest over the couple years I've been aware of it - in no way was my comment above meant to be a reflection on the possibility of a "taint" or lack-of scientific rigor (to bring in another example - the lack of repeatability in, oh, nearly every(?) social psychology experiment, etc. etc.) in the scientific and medical-science fields. The rise in administration at academic levels at the expense of science, the growing discontent in scientific funding being tied to results rather than curiousity, all very important - and very important to keep a skeptical mind about it all! Absolutely, that, to me, is the core of the scientific excercise. I only meant that, in this particular case of polio detection, the cause and origin of the case is fairly cut-and-dry (there are other articles that have been published about it that give additional information), and introducing skepticism of the manner I responded to initially is likely to do more harm than good. Disinformation often begins with a distortion of a grain of truth, and the effects of that public skepticism and, dare I say it, ignorance (ironically?) breeds the environment that causes the reemergence of, for example, polio, amongst a public that is just being "skeptical" of vaccines.
    • lurquer 4y ago
      I hear you. In regard to Polio vaccines, there is some head-scratching to be done if you go down that rabbit-hole. It’s all ancient history now, but the numbers of polio cases was dropping even before the vaccine roll-out. I don’t know enough about it to comment beyond that. But, I do know human nature: polio outbreaks were terrifying to parents, and there would be every reason not to be a bit skeptical when a solution to the problem was found… that is, it wasn’t a time for clear thinking in the midst of the panic. It’s precisely times like that when people are prone to overlook things. For instance, imagine the chaos that could ensue if a disease that was overwhelmingly trivial and asymptomatic was advertised as possibly being 10 or 20 percent lethal? Heck, I bet folks would be so scared that they’d shut down entire countries, weld people into their apartments, gulp down horse de-wormer, mandate experimental drugs, etc. Of course, I exaggerate. I doubt something like that could happen in modern times. But, if it did, the skeptics back when it was going on and even after the panic had died down, would most likely be pilloried and accused of being unthinking idiots. Just saying.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • nemothekid 4y ago
    There's a super strange trend I've been seeing, since COVID, where science is no longer allowed to be wrong. Even though the very discipline is about making hypothesis and proving them wrong; I'm seeing a lot of arguments that kind of boil down to "Science is a liar sometimes"[1]. Do you have the same opinion on particle physics? Scientists have spent the better part of 80 years on an obviously wrong standard model - has that caused you to doubt Maxwell's equations or how the circuits in your computer works? More seriously, "lack of skepticism" is bunk when the "skeptics" don't provide equal or greater research and reasoning. People have started to think of themselves as nobel laureates because they can say "no, I don't think so", and have 0 data to back them up. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ
    • triyambakam 4y ago
      This reminds me of weird it is to hear about the "scientific consensus" - it is such an oxymoron and meant to mean "anyone who disagrees is crazy"
• scifibestfi 4y ago
  I would have completely agreed with this until Covid, when many (not all) virologists completely threw scientific rigor out the window. It will take generations to rebuild the trust they burned.
  • erulabs 4y ago
    I would be cautious of making group generalizations like that. If a couple idiots who call themselves physicists publish a terrible paper -- that doesn't indict all of psychics. Covid made every amateur virologist and wanna-be-scientist come out of the woodwork. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
    • jefftk 4y ago
      Why would a terrible paper by physicists indict all of psychics?
      • chihuahua 4y ago
        because of autocorrect
    • scifibestfi 4y ago
      That's why I said "not all". But it was enough of them, and enough of them in positions of authority, that it damaged the entire field.