H/T Dick Puddlecote for Science Says So.
Few nowadays defer to the traditional authority figures of old – parents, priests or politicians. But many are inclined to take scientists’ word for things. If scientists say that anthropogenic climate change is happening, well, then anthropogenic climate change is happening.
The author then goes on to point out several good reasons why climate science shouldn’t be taken as gospel truth.
But increasingly, these days, I find myself asking myself why I should believe anything. Do I really need to have a well-thought-out reason for refusing to believe something? What’s wrong with simply saying: “I don’t believe them”? Why do I have to believe something just because it’s written in a book somewhere? Why can’t I just carry on believing whatever I used to believe before all these infernal busybodies showed up with their secondhand smoke and their greenhouse gases and their polyunsaturated fats and all the rest of it?
I can’t see any good reason why anyone should change their minds about anything, unless they have genuinely been persuaded.
Furthermore, these days I have the ever-stronger impression that none of these experts and scientists really have very much clue what they’re talking about. The result, in my case, is that I very often find myself reverting to opinions I had when I was aged 15, when I already had a good stock of opinions about more or less everything.
And back then, I didn’t believe the climate was changing. And I didn’t think that smoking was harmful (although I didn’t smoke). And I thought that a proper meal consisted of meat and two vegetables (e.g. ham, chips, and peas) followed by something like apple pie and custard. And so on. And those are the opinions to which I’ve been slowly gravitating back to, as if the subsequent 50 years have seen me merely projected vertically upwards before falling back down again.
And it’s my growing inclination, whenever I read or hear that some scientist has said this, or some expert has asserted that, or some pundit has declared the other, to respond, without any hesitation, or any trace of uncertainty: “I don’t believe them.”
Frank Davis 
Not only don’t believe them I want to know who is paying them to ‘prove’ whatever their sponsors want, as always, follow the money.
How can you tell their Lying……………..they opened that mouth!
My favorites:
4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.
10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street by sucking on a hose, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had and the perp had been punished enough!
Cheers Harley! No.4 has made hubby convulse with laughter.
At a certain age one has heared the words “previously they believed … now we know …” often enough, and noticed often enough that these “previously” and “now” alternate and replace each other. Just remember the content of iron in spinach.
With this experience there’s good reason to believe nothing. It will be inverted again anyway. Our Experts don’t know anything apart from making themselves important and wealthy.
I always think, that somehow science has to continue on as long as there are humans on earth, and there will continue to be lots and lots to explore without end. How ridiculous to think, that what some scientists find out today is the truth, and what they found out yesterday is not the truth anymore.
I agree totally, Frank. I am just the same. I just don’t believe them, any more than I believe adverts on the TV which extol the virtues of this cleaner or that, or claim that children in Africa have to drink filthy water out of modern plastic mugs. I don’t believe a word of their reports about what is happening in Syria.
But, even more, I absolutely refuse to accept that I should be bothered about any of it.
But what I do believe is that we elect governments to deal precisely with those sorts of things, and not to persecute the people.
1.
A Short Study on “Argumentum Ad Verecundiam”
In all of the antismoking crusades of the last few centuries, there is one common thread – incessant lying. There is no lie too big for antismoking zealots in attempting to force their deranged agenda into law. The lies are temporarily accepted through “appeal to authority” (argumentum ad verecundiam). All antismoking crusades involve lies promoted as fact through abuse of authority, e.g., abuse of monarchy (King James, King Murad), abuse of religious authority (Temperance groups), abuse of medical authority (Eugenics).
In America early last century there were all manner of claims made by both religious and medical groups about the deleterious effects of smoking. The bulk of claims were wrong, many of them just plainly made up. Yet the medically-aligned (eugenics) in particular – claiming medical authority – gained influence over the legislature and wreaked havoc with anti-alcohol/tobacco crusades, and very much supported by Temperance groups.
In the following is considered the latest antismoking initiative – that smoking in movies should have an R-rating. It’s a WHO initiative:
http://www.who.int/tobacco/smoke_free_movies/en/
It provides an excellent example of how authority is abused to chase an ideological/financial agenda.
We know that the WHO has had this “initiative” for some time concerning smoking in movies. The goal has been to have movies with smoking scenes attract an “R” rating or to browbeat movie-makers into eliminating all smoking in movies that will screen to under-18s…… even, say, a cartoon turtle smoking.
A detail. While not disagreeing with the thrust, isn’t an appeal to authority argumentum ad auctoritatem rather than argumentum ad verecundiam? Wikipedia:
The phrase argumentum ad verecundiam is sometimes used synonymously to mean ‘argument from authority’. While it is linked, it does not have the same meaning. The Latin noun verecundia means “modesty” or “shame”. Its link to arguments from authority is that they are used to make those who lack authority feel shame about discussing issues they lack credentials of expertise in, and modestly back out of an argument. The reason it is a fallacy is that the stature of the person to whom the remark is directed is precisely the open question under debate
Frank, you have a point. A search of “appeal to authority” will yield both “verecundiam” and “auctoritate” as reasonable usages. For example,
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Appeal_to_authority.html
Now, I’m no authority on Latin (some might extend this to any language for that matter). I’d be quite happy to state it as “argumentum ad auctoritate/verecundiam”. I’d even be prepared to go as far as “argumentum ad crapum” (or maybe “dēfaecātus” or “merdas” or “stercas”??) as long as we understand what’s being got at: There are zealot nutcases fully exploiting authority to shove an agenda on everyone….. junk masqueraded as scientific and scholarly.
Alternatively, I could just make it easier and title it A Short Study in “Appeal to Authority”.
:)
2.
Stantonitis Glands is a WHO lackey, well and long connected in the GlobaLink network. If the WHO has an “initiative” (e.g., bans don’t hurt business, heart miracles, movie censorship), Stantonitis is the chief go-to dimwit to provide scientific “evidence”. You can hear Glands responding to a phone call from the WHO – “Sure, Louie…… I’ll whip up a research paper while I’m on the toilet tonight”.
So, Stantonitis, the glorified mechanic, has lent his considerable [physical and ego] weight behind the “initiative”, concocting his inimitable, fifth-rate, error-riddled, agenda-driven “research”.
For those that are familiar with research concerning perception/cognition/action, the term “cause” is rarely, if ever, used. But Glands is a mechanic – a mechanistic thinker. So, let’s see what Glands and his physicalist (mechanistic) buddies have done with this “research”.
The Surgeon-General Report (2012) declares:
The evidence is sufficient to conclude that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young people.
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/dhhss-new-betobaccofreegov-ignores-2012-surgeon-generals-report
We’re not dealing with chemical/physical reactions where the term “cause” can be imputed. We’re talking about depictions of smoking on screen. But the physicalists refer to “exposures” to depictions of smoking “causing” The Children™ to take up smoking as if …. hoobilooby rays come off the image of a cigarette (as opposed to poopinoopy rays that come off all other images) on a screen and enter the brains of The Children™, “causing” them to take up smoking. It’s a load of agenda-driven blather that is showing up how far out of their depth these bona fide imbeciles really are.
3.
But the glorified mechanic has more. This from his blog:
Smoking in PG-13 films causes 18% of new youth smoking
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/smoking-pg-13-films-causes-18-new-youth-smoking
There’s that word “cause” again. The cited article even refers to a “dose-response” of screen “exposures” to smoking uptake.
Even the CDC – naturally – has produced “research”:
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/new-study-published-cdc-more-onscreen-tobacco-use-movies-aimed-young-viewers-means-more-kids-will-st
4.
We’ve seen the pattern again and again over the last three decades: The “smoking in movies” is a good case study in the modus operandus of the antismoking putzes. Agenda-driven nitwits, e.g., the glorified mechanic, conduct “research” (or terribly over-interpret research) that, lo and behold, supports an antismoking initiative. Within a short time, it becomes “mounting evidence”, which is then only a short hop to “the science is settled”. And it typically involves the same corrupted organizations. The Office of the Surgeon-General, long committed to the smokefree utopia and whose reports on smoking are typically crawling with long-time, high-profile antismoking activists, will make a “causal” declaration. So, too, will the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Then the plethora of antismoking organizations (cancer societies, heart foundations, lung associations) will cite the SG and CDC “declarations” as “authoritative”, i.e., logical fallacy of “appeal to authority”. Within a short time, what was initially a load of junk quickly becomes mass propagated as “fact”. It’s a closed propaganda loop run by a network of deranged nitwits and their useful idiots. It’s extraordinarily pathetic and socially destabilizing, at the very least. It’s an assault on mental and social health. It’s fraud.
“….that saw the U.S. Surgeon General release a landmark report concluding that exposure to on-screen smoking causes children to smoke. This also prompted 38 state attorney generals to write media company CEOs, in the spring of 2012, that “each time the industry releases another movie that depicts smoking, it does so with the full knowledge of the harm it will bring children who watch it.”
More “appeal to authority”:
“The U.S. Surgeon General, the nation’s doctor, has concluded there isn’t just a connection, there is a causal relationship between children’s exposure to smoking on screen and their starting to smoke. This makes the movie companies potentially culpable,” says Reverend Michael Crosby, Tobacco Program Coordinator at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility(ICCR). As of December 19, shareholder resolutions have been filed at Time Warner (Warner Bros.), CBS, and Comcast (NBC Universal) by ICCR members. As You Sow, a nonprofit organization that promotes corporate responsibility though shareholder advocacy, and members of ICCR also intend to submit resolutions to Disney, News Corp (Fox), Sony, and Viacom (Paramount) in the first quarter of 2013.
And then there are the usual suspects, e.g., the disease and dismembered body-organ groups, with further “appeal to authority”:
National medical organizations including the American Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have joined the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.N.’s World Health Organization in calling for the elimination of smoking in youth movies or the adoption of an R rating for any film that shows tobacco use.
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/media-shareholders-tell-major-studios-“quit-smoking-youth-rated-movies”
It’s a closed propaganda loop run by a network of deranged nitwits and their useful idiots.
And it must be closed down. All of these people must be thrown out of their jobs. And never allowed any position of responsibility again. Not even driving a truck.
there is a causal relationship between children’s exposure to smoking on screen and their starting to smoke.
No doubt the same applies with books. I seem to remember, from my readings of Ian Fleming, that James Bond regularly smoked cigarettes.
Bond has a number of character traits which run throughout the books, including an enjoyment of cars, a love of food and drink, and an average intake of sixty custom-made cigarettes a day.
5.
If this trash wasn’t enough, the “CDC will regularly reporting [sic] smoking in movies along with other key public health indicators”
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/cdc-will-regularly-reporting-smoking-movies-along-other-key-public-health-indicators
“This action puts the smoking that the big media companies put in their movies on the same category as other disease vectors.”
Have we got that? Smoking in movies will be in the same category as other “disease vectors”.
These miscreants are really after wholesale public smoking bans – indoor and out. They are softening up the public with the idea that children shouldn’t be “exposed” to depictions of smoking in movies because it “causes” The Children™ to take up smoking. If they can get bans/”R”-rating passed for particular movies, then the next step will be – well how much more influential are “live” smokers in “causing” The Children™ to take up smoking? Smoking should be banned everywhere for the sake of The Children™. Which gets us right back to the Godber Blueprint…. Godber’s own sentiment…. Nor should people be allowed to lead children astray by smoking in their presence.
Just when you think we’ve reached the thick end of the mental cesspit that is antismoking, the effluent of neurosis/bigotry gets thicker still….. the neurosis/bigotry bandwagon – the hysteria – gets further out of control. Check out this blather-fest:
Warning: Some Oscar® Nominated Films May Cause Kids to Smoke
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/warning-some-oscarr-nominated-films-may-cause-kids-to-smoke-1759222.htm
The Michigan Department of Community Health distributes a brochure in its offices across the state which instructs everyone to “not smoke where children can see you.”
6.
But this one really shoves the hysteria along – get ready:
Smoking in movies kills
The most effective, least intrusive way to cut tobacco exposure would be to rate future movies with smoking in them R. Producers would simply reserve the smoking for their R-rated films, the way they now routinely regulate other content. Movies rated G, PG, and PG-13 would be smoke-free, cutting teens’ risk from on-screen smoking in half. Hollywood’s rating system doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. Yet the R’s result will rank among the most important public health advances of our time. One letter can now save thousands of lives.
http://www.leaderherald.com/page/content.detail/id/554196/Smoking-in-movies-kills.html?nav=5008
There we have it! It began not long ago with some amby-pamby, agenda-driven “research” and we’re already at “smoking in movies kills” and that an “R”-rating for smoking in films “will rank among the most important public health advances of our time” (every antismoking measure is heralded by the antismokers as the most important health advances of out time). Antismoking zealots are dangerous nutcases. For each level of appeasement, the fanatical nitwits sink into further derangement – and society with them. This insanity…. this deteriorating circumstance…. needs to be pointed out to the public over and over again. This current case study also provides an insight into how ambient tobacco smoke was turned into something on a par with a bio-weapon like, say, sarin gas, not to mention numerous claims about active smoking.
Aside from thanks for all the well-wishes (last thread), on tonight’s topic I, of course, agree. That applies, too, on the most personal level, I doubt almost all the standard medical advice, especially when it comes to the so-called “preventive” pharmaceuticals– which have mostly been shown to be 99% unnecessary and to prevent nothing while causing side effects. I simply pretend it’s still 1969 and none of this crap has been invented and recall that people– including the elders in family– survived and thrived very nicely without them. I stopped believing dietary advice on the day they told me that frying my hamburgers was going to kill me. I’ve stopped believing– and going to– doctors because for years now they’ve initially told me that any symptom that’s befallen me has been caused by my smoking until they discover that, oops, it was a virus or a gene or the result of an old fracture or the side effect of one of their @!# drugs.
As for the rest: the only thing I do believe (or don’t doubt) is that the world is getting crazier and the lunatics are in charge.
That is the point we really ought to make a topic here! WHY are they in charge? WHERE did they come from? “My mother-in-law is a smoker, and when she hugs my daughter, I’m certain that the third-hand smoke will rub off and she’ll get cancer and dies before reaching adulthood! Where’s my lawyer?? Help me please, somebody!”
WHAT is going on?
Poor education, children should be taught critical thinking or else they’ll fall prey to every conman around.
I taught my children how to deconstruct a TV advert before they were school age or they would have pestered me for all manner of junk.
In the U.S Clinton installed most of the cronies as political appointments then his last day in Office signed an executive order making all his appointees in these positions thru out the government to be regular federal employees thereby keeping the incoming president from removing them from there positions thereby keeping the Nazis in place,then enters Obama………..CDC Friedeman,HHS Sebelius, SG Regina Benjamin Mississippi Doc in charge of smokefree initiatives………..the list just goes on and on…………..
Maybe they are all aliens sent to destroy us from within!
Illegal Aliens maybe Cherie………………….
‘Maybe they are all aliens sent to destroy us from within!’
Yeah, clingons…
Very apt name!
It’s worse than that, Frank. ‘They’ are deliberately setting out to deceive us, as demonstrated by your recent post on the secondhand smoke myth and Climategate and handing the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU to trick the people of the Continent into believing that a 20 year-old organisation is responsible for nearly 70 years of relative peace. The rise of atheism is engineered, as well as mass immigration, so that our loosely Judeo-Christian culture and laws are being ridiculed and dismantled to our destruction.
This is/was a major factor which lifted the West above the rest of the World in terms of fairness and freedom, but as Lenin said, “Our programme necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.”. As Yuri Bezmenov explains at the end of this video, our religion is being destroyed as part of the social engineering to weaken our country ripe for a takeover (EU/UN rather than USSR now). Sorry, but I cannot paste the URL without the video appearing!
Former Chancellor of Germany Retains Wit and Smoking Habit at 95
In his supposed dotage in this country of rules, Mr. Schmidt enjoys a rare impunity. A heavy smoker, he does as no other mortal may: puff away anywhere, on television, at meetings, even, according to German journalists who have witnessed it, in Washington. When the European Union threatened earlier this year to ban menthol cigarettes, Mr. Schmidt’s friend Peer Steinbrück reported that the old chancellor had stockpiled 200 cartons of his favored Reynos — enough to feed his two-to three-pack-a-day habit for two or three years.
I googled Reyno. F
…ound this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7NTWT6hCrs
Gangnam style (x 116)
mERRY cHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE AND, i BELIEVE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HARLEY. :)
Well thanks Gary however it was a month ago and Im 55 years young now!
Magnetico, don’t you realize that the greatest increase in smoking occurred just after the great movie expansion period of 1900 to 1914? All those children who flocked to the movie theaters of the early 1900s and spent untold hours watching smoking on their early TV sets were brainwashed by it and then took up smoking in the teens and twenties of the 20th century! A clear and unarguably causal relationship, wouldn’t you say?
::note to self: get busy rewriting history to get those TVs in folks’ homes by 1900 or so. Also: change the production date of “Gone With The Wind” to 1899.::
– MJM
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!
An expert like Doll?
The 2004 summary of Doll’s doctor study has another chart on page 3.
Click to access bmj.38142.554479.AE.full.pdf
If we look at IHD(heart attack) deaths per 1,000 per year, we find:
never-smokers = 6.19 and current smokers = 10.01.
That is said to prove that smoking ’causes’ heart attacks because smokers are 1.6 times more likely to die from a heart attack.
However, let us look at the bottom of that chart.
We find that, for external causes, the never smoker death rate is 0.71 and the current smoker rate is 1.13.
That shows that current smokers are 1.6 times as likely to die of external causes.
Does that prove that smoking ’causes’ death from plane crashes, floods, or falling down a flight of stairs?
The same can be said for:
cause unknown = smokers 1.5 times the never-smoker rate of death
other medical causes = smokers 1.5 times the never-smoker rate of death
Does that ‘prove’ that smoking ’causes’ unknown deaths or death from medical malfeasance?
Such claims would be considered totally stupid.
If we look at the rate per total deaths per year per 1,000.
We find that heart attack deaths were 31% of the never-smoker total and only 28% of the current smoker total.
Smokers had a lesser chance of dying from a heart attack than never-smokers!!!
Smoking lowers the probability that when you die it will be from a heart attack.
Merry Christmas to you and yours and God bless everyone.
I enjoy playing detective when looking at such stuff!!!!
Am always looking for the absent numbers or the slanted presentation of the ones that are there.
You like me know they lie its just finding out how they LIED!
Gary, these figures could well be explained by the fact that smokers tend to display certain personality traits. It’s common knowledge that smokers tend to be more social and gregarious, and those traits are bound to extend beyond social situations. Smokers will be greater risk-takers than non-smokers. so will obviously put themselves in life-threatening situations to a greater extent. So their mortality rate will, by extension, be higher. Those figures you quote don’t surprise me at all.
Gutfeld: Laws created based on cluelessness, confusion?
December 20, 2013 / Written By Greg Gutfeld / Fox News
The New York City Council just voted to ban electronic cigarettes from indoor public spaces. These smokes heat up liquid nicotine and emit a harmless water vapor. It affects no one but the smoker. You ban this, you should ban tea pots and clouds.
A dope’s emotional discomfort is now more important than actual medical facts? I’d say this is nuts, but someone might be allergic. – Greg Gutfeld
So, you want to know the reason for the ban? City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, quote, “Because many of the e-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and can lead to confusion or confrontation.”
So let me get this straight: Laws are being created based on the cluelessness and confusion of stupid people. A dope’s emotional discomfort is now more important than actual medical facts? I’d say this is nuts, but someone might be allergic.
You realize, you can apply this illogic to any behavior.
Talking loudly to your wife? Maybe you’re threatening her. Let’s regulate voices.
Someone sees you running? Maybe you mugged someone. No more jogging.
A woman’s breastfeeding? No, that baby’s attacking her. Wrestle it to the ground.
Look, in New York City, we’ve got thugs knocking people out, we have drunks mowing others down, we have psychos pushing women in front of subways and this is what these morons concentrate on, this?
New York, you had a great run, but now it’s over. The Big Apple is now run by the worms. Which maybe an insult to actual worms. I’m very sorry, worms.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/the-five/article/2013/12/20/gutfeld-laws-created-based-cluelessness-confusion
“I Don’t Believe Them”
NHS will offer heart ‘wonder drug’ to all
24 June 2007
“MILLIONS of people are to be prescribed cholesterol-busting drugs on the NHS in Britain’s biggest mass medication programme for adults.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/style/living/Health/article67029.ece
Millions of patients may be on statins needlessly – Today
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10535238/Millions-of-patients-may-be-on-statins-needlessly.html
Rose can you find the info on where the UK government purchased all those drugs and from which pharma group………….
I don’t think I can, Harley, but I did find that they had been overspending.
NHS overspends on statins – 2008
“Statins – cholesterol-lowering drugs – are described by many as a breakthrough in the treatment of life-threatening conditions. But it has emerged that doctors waste tens of millions of pounds on buying unnecessarily expensive versions of the drug – and the Politics Show can now reveal which NHS Trusts are the worst offenders. ”
“The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) is urging GPs to switch patients from the expensive, branded versions to the cheaper generics when it is medically appropriate.
For example, a brand-name version of Atorvastatin costs £18.03 for a month’s supply.
A generic version of Simvastatin, which many doctors say will do the same job for the majority of patients, costs £1.39.
Despite that, using the Freedom of Information Act, the Politics Show has found that many primary care trusts in England are still prescribing a high percentage of the more expensive statins – wasting as much as £70m a year.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/7192271.stm
Odd that this sudden wave of statin prescribing coincided with the Smoking Ban that was in itself supposed to cut heart attacks.
Nothing like hedging your bets I suppose.
Bingo Rose and what better way than to wait 2 years after saturating the market with statins and then run a shs heart attack reduction study……………..check the dates it fits for when the nurse ami study was done by Jill Pell!
Exactly what I was talking about above, Rose. Though I have what they call perfect blood pressure, I supposedly have high allegedy “bad” cholesterol and despite the fact that I have high allegedly “good:” cholesterol, and the blood reports read Low Risk, they all want me on statins which I refuse. So I had that artery scan and, lo! was told my arteries were “unimaginably” clean. Unimaginable,of course, because I smoke.
Gary, I always like your stuff but you’re wrong here. Smokers fall down stairs because they’re lighting cigarettes and not looking where they’re going. They die in plane crashes when it’s revealed they’re in possession of matches or a lighter and naturally suspected of being either terrorists or smokers (basically the same thing) and consequently gang-jumped by the entire crew including the pilot and co who were so outraged and alarmed, they forgot to turn on the auto-pilot. And they die in floods because their own smoking–which involved the exhalation of CO2– has caused global warming.