Settled Science

Science promoters reassure us of the safety of the peer review process. Most people imagine peer review consists of teams of scientists performing experiments to verify claims made in published studies. In reality, peer review often consists of little more than proofreading, and vast numbers of allegedly peer-reviewed studies have been demonstrated to be fraudulent. The editor of one of Britain’s top medical journals opined that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue”.

Oops.

Nobody has ever seen a black hole, but you wouldn’t know that from the certainty with which this theoretical construct was discussed by science teachers in my youth. The existence of black holes was posited as early as 1784 and the modern concept formalized by 1958. The idea became a staple of science fiction and a basic assumption for working scientists. Now, Laura Mersini-Houghton, a physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, has demonstrated mathematically that black holes are an impossibility, instantly rendering well-known terms like “event horizon” and “singularity” meaningless.

Oops.

In 2021, scientists estimated the age of the universe at a rather precise 13.797 billion years. This morning I read that they are revising that estimate, almost doubling it to 26.7 billion. A few very distant stars now appear too ancient to fit the 2021 timeframe for the expanding universe.

Oops.

In so-called science that is a little more down to earth, I’ve always had reservations about the value of psychiatry and its claims to be scientific, but these were based largely on observation and anecdotal evidence: I’d never seen it help anyone, and I’d definitely seen it do damage. Now, psychiatrist Paul Minot frankly acknowledges he is participating in “the biggest intellectual scam of this era”, that his profession is a pseudoscience, a fraud, stunningly corrupt, and that 20 years of peak psychiatry has resulted in a 30% increase of suicide in the United States. Year after year, the industry prescribes antidepressants to millions, and even The New York Times concedes we have no idea whether they actually work, though we do know they can trigger psychotic episodes.

Oops.

When teens raised in Christian families go away to university and throw out their Bibles after the first semester, they are not waking up to reality. Rather, they are placing their faith in the opinions of learned men and women who know less about reality than their parents. Far from being taught to think critically, they are being programmed to stop thinking entirely and simply accept the conventional wisdom as it comes to them, never stopping to note that the conventional wisdom changes with the regularity of David Bowie’s hair color in the early seventies.

Every time you hear the phrase “settled science”, you know you are being lied to. Real science is never settled.