Playground bullies will be playground bullies, up until the day they meet a circumstance or person who exposes their shtick for what it is. Our 1970’s pretend ‘skeptics’ have reached just such a fateful day in fecklessness.
Such is the fitting outcome of having appointed mommy-bloggers, photographers, internet fraudsters, and stage magicians as the arbiters of all that is scientific.
As a writer, I often face the significant challenge in communication of maintaining a balance between clarity and impact. Especially when addressing audiences with varying levels of comprehension, if my language is too mild or diplomatic, it risks being overlooked or misunderstood by those who may not easily grasp finer points of subtlety. Conversely, a more confrontational or direct style (which is my habit) can capture attention and convey my message more forcefully. But it may also appear to be arrogant or off-putting to socially sensitive readers.
Fortunately, I do not seek celebrity, nor do I seek approval from self-styled elites.
Ultimately, the key is to know your audience and adjust your communication style accordingly to ensure your message is not just heard, but also comprehended and seriously considered. Finally, it is crucial to differentiate between the meaningless pontification of opinion and the frank assessment of critical social problems, including criminal governance and its egregious enabling behavior. The latter is the context of this article.
Circus of Useful Idiots – How to Be a Clown of Science
Covid taught us a key lesson solicited from the work of Hungarian-British polymath Michael Polanyi.
Those who crow about ‘following the science’ before the fact, are not the same people who end up ‘delivering the science’ when it is finally desperately needed. Science, as such, is the captive property of agents and syndicates.
Wikipedia, laboring under the tyrannical efforts of photographer Susan Gerbic to promote Polanyi ‘agency and syndicate’ answers on all matters, maintains a list of celebrity and well-known skeptics. This list comprises 81 individuals who are questionably identified as ‘scientific skeptics’. Among these, a dozen or so are recognized as scientists, while the remainder includes a mix of celebrities, stage magicians, physicians, authors, and aspiring philosophers. These accompany a tailing of those who insisted their name be inserted (Gerbic inserting her own name of course) into the branded ranks of science! (ironic Tevyean emphasis). Of course, we have examined such hypocrisy in detail, in the past.
A list of the deadbeats who failed us miserably over the last two decades: Wikipedia: List of scientific skeptics
I critique, nay, mock the dysethics of this entire group through a liberal interpretation of the purported words of Christ from Matthew 7 (NIV):
Watch out for false skeptics. They come to you in scientific clothing, but inwardly they are but mere true believers. You will be able recognize them by means of their lack of effectiveness and results under pressure.
Does a scientist derive inference from merely sitting in a classroom? or from appealing to their fellows as to what is most socially acceptable to publish?
Moreover, those who are true skeptics go and look and stand in the gap on behalf of the innocent. Those who are not, hide in their parent’s basement or art studio promulgating memorized phrases and correct answers. A true believer will not look, nor will a pretender produce sound science under extreme and emergent accountability.
Thus, by their lack in effectiveness and results under pressure you will recognize them.
Despite their domination and self-promotion in Wikipedia, magazines, and books from the 1970s to the 1990s, this group has proven to be less effective and impactful when confronted with the more complex social challenges of the past two decades (UAP, what they religiously call the ‘supernatural’, food and medicine, ancient human history, etc.).
Their performance during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was particularly disappointing, marked by a stark display of fecklessness and incompetence. These boastful ‘skeptics’ failed us miserably, with over a million Americans dying (to the date of this article). They failed to leverage their coveted celebrity roles to pose the right questions or raise concerns over non-skeptical actions of panic, irrational virtue posturing, and social coercion during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Their lying to us about the quality and health of glyphosate-genetically modified food and the horrid impact vaccines have had on our (and my) children has caused harm and immeasurable suffering in the American population. A population which is just beginning to wake up over these issues.
They were too terrified to raise critical questions about climate science, a pseudo-science which is crumbling fast under the 30,000 to 1 impossible (thermodynamics) ocean and SST heat increases of the last year alone. They remained in abject silence as electric vehicles were rolled out as a panacea to climate change, fully oblivious the fact that (across the entire World aside from France) these vehicles produce up to 40% more carbon than do petrol powered vehicles. They failed the public miserably on the UFO/UAP issue, actively promoting disinformation and leaving the public vulnerable to a government which has finally blinked, and said, ‘well there might be something to this after all…’.
When it really counted, these cowards lied to us – causing an egregious level of human suffering.
We at The Ethical Skeptic have known about this lying and sponsored agency role on the part of fake skeptics for decades. It has taken time to document their shtick, and demonstrate just why and how it is deceiving. They’ve had their collective asses handed to them, and for good reason. Contrary to their boasting, they do not represent science nor scientific thinking in the least.
Specifically,
- They failed to observe and listen
- They panicked
- They chatter-boxed memorized phrases, as if spells or prayers
- They indoctrinated armies of useful idiots to conduct harm and disinformation
- Censorship, threats, mocking, and gaslighting were their favored scientific method
- They failed to monitor objectively and faithfully over time
- They failed to comprehend what is unknown first
- They failed to ask the right questions, in the right order
- They pushed debunking charades over applied deductive logic
- They failed in their ability to conduct true analysis
- They failed to hold government and media accountable
- They failed to stand up for the innocent or those at risk
- Personal celebrity-seeking became their (and our) downfall
- Showing as having been arrogant bullies all along, not skeptics:
lacking of competency in self-assessment
lacking in ability to evaluate soundness
lacking in ability assess hazard and risk
lacking in ability to comprehend a competent critical path of logical calculus
lacking in ability to detect linear-inductive study (confirmation bias)
lacking in understanding of the null versus omega hypothesis
lacking the courage to dissent against appeals to authority and pluralistic ignorance
When push came to shove, they failed to rise to the challenge at hand.
Such is the fitting outcome of having appointed mommy-bloggers, photographers, internet fraudsters, and stage magicians as the arbiters of all that is scientific. This represents a profound lapse in judgment. It exemplifies the dismal failure of the Shermer-Novella-Randi brand of skepticism that originated in the 1970s – a now obsolete philosophy that let us down precisely when it was needed most.
LLL
The Ethical Skeptic, “’Scientific Skeptics’ Failed Us When it Counted Most”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 27 Jan 2024; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/?p=80124
I accidentally came across this site. I googled ” fallacy vs. sophistry” and found something helpful on the “The Sophistry Fallacy” page.Since I found that helpful, I searched “Shermer” and though my search yielded only one result, I was pleased by the concluding, “It exemplifies the dismal failure of the Shermer-Novella-Randi brand of skepticism that originated in the 1970s – a now obsolete philosophy that let us down precisely when it was needed most.” Shermer seems to me a little better than a bald-faced propagandist. Apparently, Antony Flew’s “Invisible Gardener” didn’t sufficiently caricature theistic belief, so Shermer lauds Sagan’s “Invisible… Read more »
I’ve never found any soundness to Shermer or Sagan’s argument “Here is what a God is…”, and “There is no such thing…” or especially “and here is what He thinks about you…” (fallacy of the silent ‘p’) No, that is not how this works. These are both straw man arguments. Neither the Atheist nor Theists gets to define ‘God’ to their liking. The actual point should be “One cannot conclude or research about anything, which has no definition to begin with.” I don’t have an opinion on God. All I know is that man is very limited in his ability… Read more »
I will never forget what happened in the last few years. Never. The travesties hit so close to home (it is not “just” stuff like UAP etc. anymore) that even “normal” people began to feel the heavy hands of the artificial demiurge meddling with their lives and minds. It becomes more obvious every day.
“Skepticism” is finally rejected by many people – but not by enough. It still has its hordes of minions to wreak havoc, and needs to be shown for what it is.
ES, as a fellow aspie, “independent truth-seeker” (I disdain seemingly euphemistic terms like this btw) and long time supporter of monetary and banking reform, I came across your website seven to eight years ago and it is one of the very few places that I’m in concordance with mostly everything. The “scientific skeptic” community (along with it’s significantly overlapping disparate cohorts old and new: “science communicators,” “freethinkers,” (some appeal to definition term this one, well beyond the collectivist ideological groupthink exhibited), “rationalists” (and this one too), “independent fact-checkers,” “academic industrial complexes,” “evidence based policy decision makers,” “disinformation analysts,” and “pseudoscience… Read more »
Thanks so much RRA! Glad to have you as a long-time reader.
I anticipated that eventually someday pseudo-skepticism would deploy its deception far past the stooge-poses of Flat Earth, Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot – and this shtick would serve to harm a lot of people. Indeed it did.
They are control freaks, with enormous celebrity wanna-be ego’s.
TES
Yep, especially in the case of Aspartame and other food additives. Used to drink such sweetened fruit squash eleven to twelve years ago daily for a number of years. Fortunately the dosage threshold was lower compared with diet soda for the likelihood of multifarious adverse effects to occur – didn’t suffer any problems other than weight gain, but I abstained from consuming it once I learned the terrifying truth. My perception of the world completely altered forever and since then I have learned a lot more about the operational framework of society and it’s contrived compartmentalized facets than from any… Read more »
“I the last days will come many false teachers, leading astray those who know not [God, Science, Both] Matthew 24: 11-13
Folks get led-astray by arguments which support their own preconceived notions, so “many false teachers” might offer individual paths into misunderstanding for disparate groups of notion-holders, eh?
Same as “Just as in the Days of Noah, they ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage…” It is a distinction without a difference. Material which is undeniably useless, coming from a mind bearing an ethic of usefulness – suggesting that the material has been compromised/neutered of its original content. Like having the description of a suspect be: “Humanoid of smaller-medium to large build, with hair on their head and carrying an object.” Either the author was a moron – or they were warning the reader that something deeper was at play in the re-writing and… Read more »
I remember the name Susan Gerbic! I listened to some of those skeptics podcasts until they went insane during covid.