I'm inclined to note a distinction I've been thinking more about in our age of democratic crises of trust. That's a distinction between, what I'd call, long versus short-chain reasoning.
An example of short-chain resasoning: mommy tells little Johnny not to touch the stove element when it's hot. Johnny being the inquisitive contrarian he is, tries it, and screams with pain, and never tries it again. A very short distance between hypothesis-evidence-conclusion.
Long-chain reasoning seems to be the stuff that befuddles our democratic discussions and opinions. Examples: climate change, vaccines, tariffs and inflation, etc., etc. Long-chain reasoning places people in the dilemma of choosing, without being able to assess the evidence themselves, the experts to trust. Institutional experts and political barkers offer themselves as trustworthy candidates.
In an era of misinfo and deep fakes, the dilemma has become even more acute. The solution would appear not to have politicians standing up and simply saying "trust the experts, I trust the science", but advancing forms of proof that can be monitored by a wider public than simply relatively closed institutions claiming special expertise. The recent pandemic offered a perfect example of communicative failure to advance such forms of public proof. Granted the time-frames for action were short with deadly consequences. Nevertheless public methods for gaining trust need to be front and centre, not an after-thought of such institutions. Media campaigns need to be proof-oriented not simply persuasion-oriented through fear, virtue signaling and condemnation.
In other words, a public evidence-based discourse and forms of collective association can hopefully counter-balance the techniques of persuasion of powerful bullies.
I may have missed something here, but if Henry Ford forced his family to drink unpasteurized milk, why didn't the son die much earlier in life instead of at age 49? Why didn't Henry Ford die too since he was also drinking unpasteurized milk (or at least be constantly ill)? Did any other members of the Ford family die from this same ailment (or were constantly sick)? Did any other employee die from drinking unpasteurized milk? I am not saying to do this (I wouldn't), but one would think that Henry Ford's family and employees (those around him) would all get sick from drinking unpasteurized milk.
Edsel wasn't killed by the milk. He was killed by stomach cancer. The disease he got from the milk sickened and weakened him when he was battling the cancer. My (very limited) understanding of the risks of drinking unpasteurized milk is that you're at modest risk of bacterial or viral infection whose consequences depend on the nature of bacteria or virus, but such infections typically do not kill healthy adults (particularly now that we have antibiotics, which weren't available for poor Edsel.)
If he died from cancer, did it just mean that he suffered more by having to fight two different ailments (cancer and bacterial infection)? Did the bacterial infection make his cancer harder to overcome, or is this speculation on my part?
It definitely weakened him and a weakened body is less able to resist cancer. So I wouldn't say the infection killed him, but I think it's more than fair to say it contributed to his death.
In selecting this passage, you seem to be implying that ignoring advice on pasteurisation led to his death, when Edsel died from cancer. It seems to me that ignoring pasteurisation exacerbated his poor health and worsened his QOL but this is different from killing him.
I didn't "imply" anything. The passage is perfectly clear. (I presume that's where you got the information?) And I wrote that it "contributed" to Edsel's death, but didn't cause it, by inflicting additional high fevers, chills, diarrhea, and weight loss at a time when his body was already battling cancer.
I note the irony in defending medical expertise by citing the medical doctor's diagnosis of Edsel's problem as stomach ulcers caused by too much stress. Indeed, stress continued to be the "expert" opinion about the cause of stomach ulcers for many decades. We now know that stomach ulcers are caused by a virus - often exacerbated by excessive stomach acid, which can in turn be caused by the very things Henry focused on: smoking and alcohol consumption. So even in this story, the "medical experts" were only right a third of the time: right about the improved safety of pasteurized milk, but wrong about (i) the diagnosis of ulcers, and (ii) the cause of ulcers. And don't get me started on what the "medical experts" have said more recently about cholesterol, oxyContin, and benzodiazepines...
I don't know much about the science of raw milk, TBH. But my knowledge of history goes back further than 1860. For at least 12,000 years before Louis Pasteur came along, humans were drinking raw milk. In fact, it was such an important part of the human diet in some sub-populations that these sub-populations evolved lactose tolerance into adulthood, so we could keep drinking and benefiting from raw milk. I'm sure this diet did kill people; I don't know of any studies that put a percentage on that pre-Pasteur death toll from raw milk, though. But we can be certain that it didn't take enough of a death toll such that populations that first evolved lactose tolerance weren't wiped out by populations that hadn't (and therefore didn't drink raw milk into adulthood, and therefore were healthier and didn't die from it in large numbers). We can be certain that drinking raw milk was a net benefit to human populations, otherwise lactose tolerance wouldn't have evolved at all. Moreover, with modern technology and sanitation, it is certainly possible to produce raw milk *much* more safely than in the pre-germ-theory days - and to test for pathogens before it is marketed. I understand that most European countries in fact do this, especially for cheese making. So the risks may be manageable, and certainly aren't as dire as this essay posits.
When I ran a B&B in Stratford a decade ago, one of my guests was Robert Sharp, the Ontario Court of Appeal Justice who wrote the decision on the raw milk case around that time. I humbly suggested that he got his judgment wrong. He replied, "Oh, so you are a raw milk guy?" I said, "No, I'm a freedom guy." (And by implication a non-paternalism guy.) Let's accept for the sake of argument that there are increased risks associated with drinking raw milk even when produced with modern best practices. Nevertheless, the legal prohibition is only on *selling* raw milk, not on *drinking* it; thus Ontario dairy farmers may drink milk straight from their own cows if they wish to (and many do). The raw milk case centred on how far that exemption for cow owners could be extended. My point is that we allow people to take all kinds of risks in life; what makes drinking raw milk so special that it has to be banned outright for 99.99% of the population? I think something like 10% of the people who have ever summitted Mount Everest died in the process of coming back down. Yet we don't ban climbing mountains "just because they are there." We all assess risks and benefits differently; that is part of the joy of living in a diverse and pluralistic society. The risk to happiness from living in an oppressive managerial state is much greater than the risk of death from drinking raw milk, I suggest.
I don't know what RFK really believes. Since his appointment, a battle of speech-fragments has raged on twitter over this point. I suspect he is more sane than the TDS sufferers give him credit for. But I will point out that the previous guy illegally funded gain of function research on bat viruses at a safety-challenged lab in Wuhan with connections to the People's Liberation Army, just to see what might happen. Not to mention the unspeakable things he did to lab beagles. I don't think it is all that weird to prefer RFK's mistakes, such as they are.
Yes, science evolves as research evolves, so it is constantly discovering its errors and correcting for them. That is precisely why scientist and science are superior to any priesthood promulgating dogmas. And it's why I advise respecting experts and expertise, which decidedly does not mean treating scientists like priests and scientific facts like sacred truths -- as any scientist worthy of the name would agree.
Your use of scare quotes around expert would seem to suggest that infallibility is required to be a true "expert." If that's your definition, no human ever has been, or ever will be, an expert. Which suggests your definition is silly.
As to public policy, and specifically whether pasteurization should be mandatory, that is simply not a scientific question. It is a political question -- how much risk is too much? who should bear the risk? which measures are permissible in a free society? when? etc -- that cannot and should not be settled by science.
And lastly, on RFK Jr., I've been following his career for many years. Yes, he's that bad.
Yes, Dan, science is self-correcting just like Wikipedia is self-correcting. Duh. But that is actually an argument for being skeptical about relatively new scientific "expertise," and for being skeptical about the latest thing on Wikipedia. The self-correction function of science is eternal, and has not had the fullness of time to fix current received wisdom yet. For this reason, the newer the claimed "expertise" is, and the more politically or commercially relevant it is, the more skeptical we should be of it. (Hint: global warming.) It's been my position all along. I think you should adopt it.
An historian of your evident renown should have at least a passing familiarity with the disasters in medical science over the past century. The very smartest people in the room 100 years ago were on the cutting edge of evolutionary theory, having caught a glimpse of the degree to which genes influence behaviour. But many who were dazzled by their own smarts went beyond their knowledge and capabilities, unwisely proposing simplistic methods of eliminating bad genes from the gene pool.
And it is ever thus. Smart people generally think they are smarter than they really are; they are constantly promoting, with extreme confidence, theories that are sooner or later discovered to have been delusions. I see no reason to believe we are in a new era of enlightenment, and every reason to think we have retrogressed concerningly in this regard. Socratic wisdom - epistemic modesty - is frowned upon these days. (When is the last time you saw error bars or other such qualifications in the scientific pronouncements we are asked to believe?) The reason I sometimes put "expertise" in scare quotes is precisely because people today - including very smart and knowledgeable people like you, Dan - are much too inclined to take the latest scientific conjecture as Holy Gospel. (Hint: global warming.) And so they don't question what they are told, and aren't open to questioning those they regard as experts.
The reason the expression "at the speed of science" entered the lexicon a year or two ago is instructive. Almost everything the "medical experts" confidently told us about covid and its remedies turned out within 6 months to have been a mistake. They said everyone was at risk, which is deceptive if not outright false when the old and infirm were 10,000 times more at risk than the young and healthy. (Indeed, the seasonal flu kills 5 times as many young children every year as covid did at its peak.) They said the jab juice stays in your arm and mRNA breaks down within a few days: false and false. They said two weeks of lockdowns would stop the spread; then two months; then two years: false, false, and false. They said two jabs and we'd reach herd immunity so society could open back up: big false - it doesn't even stop infection or transmission. Etc. When innocent rubes like me said, "You've been wrong about everything so far, why should we believe you now?" they came back with that nonsense about having to change their views "at the speed of science." No, the truth is that their original views were not scientific to begin - in part because they were stated with absolute confidence - which became obvious to everyone very quickly. *That's* when the science began. It began with skepticism of the Holy Covid Gospel.
The other mistake smart people make is to think that intelligence is closely associated with morality. It isn't; my conjecture is that intelligence and morality have zero correlation. The theory I subscribe to is that intelligence evolved in humans to help navigate the complexities of increasingly larger societies - more specifically to avoid being exploited by others and to aid in the exploitation of others. The smart people were able to stay one step ahead of the ones with learning and memory difficulties, and they became the rulers and the helpers to the rulers who left behind more (and smarter) offspring. If that theory is generally true, then it follows that smart scientists are just as likely to be gaming the system as they are contributing to the useful stock of knowledge. (Because self-deception is such a pronounced feature of human cognition, especially where one's own moral worth is concerned, they might not even be doing it consciously.) Historians of your evident capabilities can find ample evidence of that in the past 100 years, too. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments; the secret LSD experiments in the US military; the separated-at-birth twin studies; the hundreds of medical journal articles that have had to be retracted in recent decades do to research fraud and fabrications... There is what some have called a "crisis" in academic publishing going on. Because the smart people who publish can't be trusted even to conduct ethical research - again, especially where that research is commercially or politically relevant. (Now we have the "healthy and beautiful and any weight" nutjobs.)
Science IS skepticism. Questioning the science is doing science. Those who go too far down that road are no more a danger than those who don't go far enough. And lately, it has been the latter error that has done the greater harm - including fostering widespred distrust in scientific / medical expertise. RFK might be an over-correction, but he is certainly "directionally right" (in the words of Scott Adams).
On older science being better science because it has been tested and developed more: Yes. And I've said variations of that a thousand times.
On science getting it wrong: I could write a short book on the subject off the top of my head.
On error bars, overstatement, etc: Yes, again, as I've said a thousand times. I'm writing a book now in which hewing to what's known, no matter how complicated or dissatisfying, and no matter what the political implications, is the advice for communicating science to the public. And when did I last see error bars? That would be the last time I look in a scientific paper, where they are routine.
On intelligence and morality: Who are these people? I'd like to meet them. But I guess I don't know anyone dumb enough to believe that.
On scare quotes around "expert": If that's your reason, then stop doing that; it communicates "they pretend to be but aren't really," not what you say is the reason.
On "the latest conjecture": The basic principle behind global warming dates from the late 19th century while the evidence supporting the theory is now a medium-sized mountain, complete with an extensive array of accurate predictions, the gold standard of reliable science. If that isn't sufficient to give you modest confidence it is true, I very much doubt anything ever could. Which is to say, your belief isn't skepticism, it is wilful rejection.
Dan, if you have said all of this 1,000 times before, then you should be on my side berating the health authoritarians during covid for causing people to mistrust medical science so much that they go to RFK for insights.
The point that there is zero correlation - or maybe even a negative correlation - between intelligence and morality is important. (Intelligence is a power, and we know that power corrupts...) For if it is true, then those who may appear to be scientific "experts" are as likely to be charlatans as politicians and used car salesmen are. We should show them, as a class, no deference, but rather question everything. That's what "nullius in verba" - the motto of the Royal Society - means.
As for climate science, you are plainly wrong. (Let me show you the ways.) The public policy debate today has nothing whatsoever to do with what was known about the physics of the CO2 molecule - the "basic principle" as you put it - in the 19th century. The debate is about the "feedbacks" that are conjectured to amplify what everyone understands to be the very modest and beneficial warming that CO2 does cause directly. If you haven't even got this far in your understanding of climate science, you aren't worth paying attention to on the subject. So it isn't surprising that the climate models which consistently and uniformly "run hot" strike you as making "accurate predictions." They don't.
It was known already in the 19th century that the incremental warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere falls exponentially with its rise in concentration. It is actually an open question how close we currently are to the "saturation point," where any additional CO2 will have effectively zero impact on temperature.
Maybe history can be our guide on this question? As an historian, you should know how little - approximately zero - correlation there is between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperatures over geological time. CO2 was 16-20 times the current concentration during the greatest explosion of life the planet has ever experienced, during the Cambrian. Much of that life was oceanic shellfish - and mark this, the oceans were not boiling nor were they so acidic the shells dissolved. The Cambrian (among other periods) provides compelling evidence that CO2 is not a significant driver of climate and that concentrations as much as 20 times that of today are beneficial to life. Maybe try reading that other Ottawa historian, John Robson, for some insights on this.
Finally, need I remind you that science advances by falsification? There may well be a medium-sized mountain of evidence "supporting" global warming - in the sense of "being consistent with" the conjecture. After all, there are endless $billions in research money available to search for confirmation, and we are still rebounding from the Little Ice Age so it is out there to be cherry-picked. (Besides, *everything* is consistent with global warming, even snow in a desert that has never experienced snow before in the historical record.) But science doesn't advance by searching for confirmation of a conjecture; it advances by resisting falsification, or being revised as a consequence of falsification. So far, not one scientist has ever been bold enough to claim to have an experiment that would provide observations that will tell us whether the current warming is natural or anthropogenic, or in what proportion. There is a 100% universal consensus among climate scientists that the global warming conjecture is unfalsifiable by current scientific methods. That's why it remains, technically, a conjecture - not the hypothesis of an experiment, and certainly nowhere remotely close to a scientific theory. Just a conjecture. In that, it differs marked from evolution, gravity, etc.
(I put "expertise" in scare quotes when I mean "apparent or putative expertise." That is a perfectly legitimate use of scare quotes; I would say their standard use.)
By the way, there are thousands of other examples I could have drawn from to illustrate the severe problems with medical expertise in the modern age. How about "recovered memories" of childhood sexual abuse that were quite the rage 30 years ago? Consigned to the dustbin of history. Too many examples. Just way too many.
I don't think drinking raw milk or cutting floride out of drinking water is going to cause people to start dropping dead, or lose every tooth in their heads. To me it's about the danger of despising experts, not learning from history and giving respect to junk science and magical thinking like cavemen. By the way, the mongolians and other raw milk drinkers would have breast-fed their children for years. We don't. I would seriously not advise giving raw milk to infants and children. I hope it doesn't take a severe illness or death to tarnish RFK's false sheen.
Anne, see my subsequent reply to Dan on this point about distrust of experts. It is pretty clear that a great deal of the skepticism toward medical experts that people have today is well-advised, and derives from so much proven-false expertise recently. E.g. whether or not ivermectin works against covid, calling it "horse dewormer" is like saying you are drinking fire retardant when you have a glass of water. Bullshit like that sows mistrust so fast it isn't even funny - and it is establishment bullshit like that that drives people into RFK's orbit. The *very few* medical professionals who called out the covid bullshit - outdoor masking, plastic barriers at the check-outs, lockdowns, etc. - were severely punished for it. You only punish people for blasphemy, not for debating the science. That's when I knew the medical authorities were reciting the Holy Covid Gospel, not science.
We are coming from such different universes I hardly know how to respond. My education is in science, I’ve worked in research, blah-blah. I’ll say one thing then I won’t respond to you anymore: hindsight is 20/20 and it’s bloody easy to be an armchair critic. You’re lucky you didn’t have to make minute-to-minute decisions for a novel virus we had no natural immunity to, with crucial information being blocked by China, a rapidly changing situation, and hospitals not able to handle the sick and dying. Nobody lied. They did the best they could and they’re my hero’s, as are all the people who work their butts off to improve our lives, with little to no thanks from the ignorant and ungrateful.
I'm not relying on hindsight, Anne. I was emailing almost daily and writing op-eds throughout the age of covid, calling out the establishment bullshit in real time. I will confidently put my record up against the record of any provincial or federal Chief Medical Officer of Health. I made FAR fewer mistakes - in large part because I was much more humble in my prognostications and conclusions.
As for "Nobody lied." Hahahaha!
(1) Deborah Birx has since admitted that she knew from the get-go that the mRNA jabs did not stop infection or transmission. Those weren't even end-points the clinical trials tested for! She has admitted the medical authoritarians only claimed it would protect people from infection and transmission in order to boost compliance - until it was so obvious they could not maintain the lie anymore.
(2) Emails acquired through freedom of information have proven that some of the authors of that early publication coordinated by Fauci claiming that SAR-COV-2 could not have been a lab leak did not actually believe that conclusion. I said at the time that nobody could possibly know this early on that it couldn't have been created in a lab.
(3) They lied about the health risks of taking ivermectin, claiming that "overdoses" were a real risk.
(4) They lied about the efficacy of mask-wearing. Decades of studies prior to covid showed that those ridiculous face diapers everyone was wearing in the age of covid have no value in preventing infection from respiratory viruses - particularly in non-clinical settings. That was in fact Fauci's initial position on "60 Minutes." So he told the truth, and then he lied, and lied, and lied.
Need I go on?
Anne, you need to engage your skeptical scientific side.
We're largely scientifically ignorant. I wonder how many people could describe the.scientific method? Including nurses and a few.doctors. "The Road to Wellville" is an excellent book and movie that delves into the whole problem back when Henry Ford was getting started. We're also spoiled by the incredible success of modern medicine.. The Edsel was un ugly car. My own take is that if Henry Ford hadn't developed mass production cars would have remained too expensive for most people and the USA would've developed cheap, efficient and environmentally far superior rail system and people would walk and bike a lot more and be healthier and happier for it. George Jr said one true thing in his life and it's that America is addicted to oil.
Very much agree, but I think we need to engage with these people more. Dismissing them as kooks and hand-waving only feeds into the "what are you hiding, big pharma?" conspiracy thinking. I don't think you could persuade a Ford (or Musk) but it can help peel off or prevent people from joining such a movement. If one side is making persuasive (but wrong) arguments, and the other side is just calling it stupid, an independent thinking person isn't necessarily going to join with the scientific side.
FWIW, I saw RFK Jr. speak as a young man when he was just an animal rights enviro liberal lawyer and he was super captivating! So sad to see him go down this road.
Who are "these people" to whom you refer? My comment here (and elsewhere) is about the likes of Ford, Musk, RFK Jr. etc. It is NOT about people who may share some of their thinking. I have never been dismissive of whole categories of people, in part because you're right that while it may feel good it is quite counter-productive.
100% of the things Homo sapiens do to nature is bad for nature and causes ill health to us. Some of the things that give us ill health prevent a few deaths.
Ultimately our healthcare system is expert at preventing us from dying at two costs:
1-Decimation of all ecosystems
2-Fattened and depressed humans
We have accepted ourselves as farming animals, we've accepted that we're being farmed for the profit of the elites.
You think yourself a great thinker, but you are a superficial thinker.
We are in an era of complacency when foolish men welding the power that comes with exaggerated reputations of success gain trust from ignorant masses. Their opponents who have facts and sound judgment are too slow to recognize how to break their grip on power. They underestimate the gullibility of the masses and are helpless as the masses frustrated they aren't benefitting from the complacency they see trust the foolish men who claim to have the secrets to success.
Renaldy, I won't dispute your contention that one side in the recent election was comprised of "foolish men wielding power that comes with exaggerated reputations of success" - other than to note that the team also contained women (e.g. Tulsi Gabbard and Susan Wiles). But if you think their opponents came to the fight equipped with "facts and sound judgment," you are utterly delusional. Kamala contradicted herself so often - e.g. on defunding police, fracking, open borders, etc. - she doesn't even believe her own facts or trust her own judgment.
I'm inclined to note a distinction I've been thinking more about in our age of democratic crises of trust. That's a distinction between, what I'd call, long versus short-chain reasoning.
An example of short-chain resasoning: mommy tells little Johnny not to touch the stove element when it's hot. Johnny being the inquisitive contrarian he is, tries it, and screams with pain, and never tries it again. A very short distance between hypothesis-evidence-conclusion.
Long-chain reasoning seems to be the stuff that befuddles our democratic discussions and opinions. Examples: climate change, vaccines, tariffs and inflation, etc., etc. Long-chain reasoning places people in the dilemma of choosing, without being able to assess the evidence themselves, the experts to trust. Institutional experts and political barkers offer themselves as trustworthy candidates.
In an era of misinfo and deep fakes, the dilemma has become even more acute. The solution would appear not to have politicians standing up and simply saying "trust the experts, I trust the science", but advancing forms of proof that can be monitored by a wider public than simply relatively closed institutions claiming special expertise. The recent pandemic offered a perfect example of communicative failure to advance such forms of public proof. Granted the time-frames for action were short with deadly consequences. Nevertheless public methods for gaining trust need to be front and centre, not an after-thought of such institutions. Media campaigns need to be proof-oriented not simply persuasion-oriented through fear, virtue signaling and condemnation.
In other words, a public evidence-based discourse and forms of collective association can hopefully counter-balance the techniques of persuasion of powerful bullies.
Anyhoo, just a thought : )
I may have missed something here, but if Henry Ford forced his family to drink unpasteurized milk, why didn't the son die much earlier in life instead of at age 49? Why didn't Henry Ford die too since he was also drinking unpasteurized milk (or at least be constantly ill)? Did any other members of the Ford family die from this same ailment (or were constantly sick)? Did any other employee die from drinking unpasteurized milk? I am not saying to do this (I wouldn't), but one would think that Henry Ford's family and employees (those around him) would all get sick from drinking unpasteurized milk.
Edsel wasn't killed by the milk. He was killed by stomach cancer. The disease he got from the milk sickened and weakened him when he was battling the cancer. My (very limited) understanding of the risks of drinking unpasteurized milk is that you're at modest risk of bacterial or viral infection whose consequences depend on the nature of bacteria or virus, but such infections typically do not kill healthy adults (particularly now that we have antibiotics, which weren't available for poor Edsel.)
If he died from cancer, did it just mean that he suffered more by having to fight two different ailments (cancer and bacterial infection)? Did the bacterial infection make his cancer harder to overcome, or is this speculation on my part?
It definitely weakened him and a weakened body is less able to resist cancer. So I wouldn't say the infection killed him, but I think it's more than fair to say it contributed to his death.
*bacteria
In selecting this passage, you seem to be implying that ignoring advice on pasteurisation led to his death, when Edsel died from cancer. It seems to me that ignoring pasteurisation exacerbated his poor health and worsened his QOL but this is different from killing him.
I didn't "imply" anything. The passage is perfectly clear. (I presume that's where you got the information?) And I wrote that it "contributed" to Edsel's death, but didn't cause it, by inflicting additional high fevers, chills, diarrhea, and weight loss at a time when his body was already battling cancer.
I note the irony in defending medical expertise by citing the medical doctor's diagnosis of Edsel's problem as stomach ulcers caused by too much stress. Indeed, stress continued to be the "expert" opinion about the cause of stomach ulcers for many decades. We now know that stomach ulcers are caused by a virus - often exacerbated by excessive stomach acid, which can in turn be caused by the very things Henry focused on: smoking and alcohol consumption. So even in this story, the "medical experts" were only right a third of the time: right about the improved safety of pasteurized milk, but wrong about (i) the diagnosis of ulcers, and (ii) the cause of ulcers. And don't get me started on what the "medical experts" have said more recently about cholesterol, oxyContin, and benzodiazepines...
I don't know much about the science of raw milk, TBH. But my knowledge of history goes back further than 1860. For at least 12,000 years before Louis Pasteur came along, humans were drinking raw milk. In fact, it was such an important part of the human diet in some sub-populations that these sub-populations evolved lactose tolerance into adulthood, so we could keep drinking and benefiting from raw milk. I'm sure this diet did kill people; I don't know of any studies that put a percentage on that pre-Pasteur death toll from raw milk, though. But we can be certain that it didn't take enough of a death toll such that populations that first evolved lactose tolerance weren't wiped out by populations that hadn't (and therefore didn't drink raw milk into adulthood, and therefore were healthier and didn't die from it in large numbers). We can be certain that drinking raw milk was a net benefit to human populations, otherwise lactose tolerance wouldn't have evolved at all. Moreover, with modern technology and sanitation, it is certainly possible to produce raw milk *much* more safely than in the pre-germ-theory days - and to test for pathogens before it is marketed. I understand that most European countries in fact do this, especially for cheese making. So the risks may be manageable, and certainly aren't as dire as this essay posits.
When I ran a B&B in Stratford a decade ago, one of my guests was Robert Sharp, the Ontario Court of Appeal Justice who wrote the decision on the raw milk case around that time. I humbly suggested that he got his judgment wrong. He replied, "Oh, so you are a raw milk guy?" I said, "No, I'm a freedom guy." (And by implication a non-paternalism guy.) Let's accept for the sake of argument that there are increased risks associated with drinking raw milk even when produced with modern best practices. Nevertheless, the legal prohibition is only on *selling* raw milk, not on *drinking* it; thus Ontario dairy farmers may drink milk straight from their own cows if they wish to (and many do). The raw milk case centred on how far that exemption for cow owners could be extended. My point is that we allow people to take all kinds of risks in life; what makes drinking raw milk so special that it has to be banned outright for 99.99% of the population? I think something like 10% of the people who have ever summitted Mount Everest died in the process of coming back down. Yet we don't ban climbing mountains "just because they are there." We all assess risks and benefits differently; that is part of the joy of living in a diverse and pluralistic society. The risk to happiness from living in an oppressive managerial state is much greater than the risk of death from drinking raw milk, I suggest.
I don't know what RFK really believes. Since his appointment, a battle of speech-fragments has raged on twitter over this point. I suspect he is more sane than the TDS sufferers give him credit for. But I will point out that the previous guy illegally funded gain of function research on bat viruses at a safety-challenged lab in Wuhan with connections to the People's Liberation Army, just to see what might happen. Not to mention the unspeakable things he did to lab beagles. I don't think it is all that weird to prefer RFK's mistakes, such as they are.
Yes, science evolves as research evolves, so it is constantly discovering its errors and correcting for them. That is precisely why scientist and science are superior to any priesthood promulgating dogmas. And it's why I advise respecting experts and expertise, which decidedly does not mean treating scientists like priests and scientific facts like sacred truths -- as any scientist worthy of the name would agree.
Your use of scare quotes around expert would seem to suggest that infallibility is required to be a true "expert." If that's your definition, no human ever has been, or ever will be, an expert. Which suggests your definition is silly.
As to public policy, and specifically whether pasteurization should be mandatory, that is simply not a scientific question. It is a political question -- how much risk is too much? who should bear the risk? which measures are permissible in a free society? when? etc -- that cannot and should not be settled by science.
And lastly, on RFK Jr., I've been following his career for many years. Yes, he's that bad.
Yes, Dan, science is self-correcting just like Wikipedia is self-correcting. Duh. But that is actually an argument for being skeptical about relatively new scientific "expertise," and for being skeptical about the latest thing on Wikipedia. The self-correction function of science is eternal, and has not had the fullness of time to fix current received wisdom yet. For this reason, the newer the claimed "expertise" is, and the more politically or commercially relevant it is, the more skeptical we should be of it. (Hint: global warming.) It's been my position all along. I think you should adopt it.
An historian of your evident renown should have at least a passing familiarity with the disasters in medical science over the past century. The very smartest people in the room 100 years ago were on the cutting edge of evolutionary theory, having caught a glimpse of the degree to which genes influence behaviour. But many who were dazzled by their own smarts went beyond their knowledge and capabilities, unwisely proposing simplistic methods of eliminating bad genes from the gene pool.
And it is ever thus. Smart people generally think they are smarter than they really are; they are constantly promoting, with extreme confidence, theories that are sooner or later discovered to have been delusions. I see no reason to believe we are in a new era of enlightenment, and every reason to think we have retrogressed concerningly in this regard. Socratic wisdom - epistemic modesty - is frowned upon these days. (When is the last time you saw error bars or other such qualifications in the scientific pronouncements we are asked to believe?) The reason I sometimes put "expertise" in scare quotes is precisely because people today - including very smart and knowledgeable people like you, Dan - are much too inclined to take the latest scientific conjecture as Holy Gospel. (Hint: global warming.) And so they don't question what they are told, and aren't open to questioning those they regard as experts.
The reason the expression "at the speed of science" entered the lexicon a year or two ago is instructive. Almost everything the "medical experts" confidently told us about covid and its remedies turned out within 6 months to have been a mistake. They said everyone was at risk, which is deceptive if not outright false when the old and infirm were 10,000 times more at risk than the young and healthy. (Indeed, the seasonal flu kills 5 times as many young children every year as covid did at its peak.) They said the jab juice stays in your arm and mRNA breaks down within a few days: false and false. They said two weeks of lockdowns would stop the spread; then two months; then two years: false, false, and false. They said two jabs and we'd reach herd immunity so society could open back up: big false - it doesn't even stop infection or transmission. Etc. When innocent rubes like me said, "You've been wrong about everything so far, why should we believe you now?" they came back with that nonsense about having to change their views "at the speed of science." No, the truth is that their original views were not scientific to begin - in part because they were stated with absolute confidence - which became obvious to everyone very quickly. *That's* when the science began. It began with skepticism of the Holy Covid Gospel.
The other mistake smart people make is to think that intelligence is closely associated with morality. It isn't; my conjecture is that intelligence and morality have zero correlation. The theory I subscribe to is that intelligence evolved in humans to help navigate the complexities of increasingly larger societies - more specifically to avoid being exploited by others and to aid in the exploitation of others. The smart people were able to stay one step ahead of the ones with learning and memory difficulties, and they became the rulers and the helpers to the rulers who left behind more (and smarter) offspring. If that theory is generally true, then it follows that smart scientists are just as likely to be gaming the system as they are contributing to the useful stock of knowledge. (Because self-deception is such a pronounced feature of human cognition, especially where one's own moral worth is concerned, they might not even be doing it consciously.) Historians of your evident capabilities can find ample evidence of that in the past 100 years, too. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments; the secret LSD experiments in the US military; the separated-at-birth twin studies; the hundreds of medical journal articles that have had to be retracted in recent decades do to research fraud and fabrications... There is what some have called a "crisis" in academic publishing going on. Because the smart people who publish can't be trusted even to conduct ethical research - again, especially where that research is commercially or politically relevant. (Now we have the "healthy and beautiful and any weight" nutjobs.)
Science IS skepticism. Questioning the science is doing science. Those who go too far down that road are no more a danger than those who don't go far enough. And lately, it has been the latter error that has done the greater harm - including fostering widespred distrust in scientific / medical expertise. RFK might be an over-correction, but he is certainly "directionally right" (in the words of Scott Adams).
On older science being better science because it has been tested and developed more: Yes. And I've said variations of that a thousand times.
On science getting it wrong: I could write a short book on the subject off the top of my head.
On error bars, overstatement, etc: Yes, again, as I've said a thousand times. I'm writing a book now in which hewing to what's known, no matter how complicated or dissatisfying, and no matter what the political implications, is the advice for communicating science to the public. And when did I last see error bars? That would be the last time I look in a scientific paper, where they are routine.
On intelligence and morality: Who are these people? I'd like to meet them. But I guess I don't know anyone dumb enough to believe that.
On scare quotes around "expert": If that's your reason, then stop doing that; it communicates "they pretend to be but aren't really," not what you say is the reason.
On "the latest conjecture": The basic principle behind global warming dates from the late 19th century while the evidence supporting the theory is now a medium-sized mountain, complete with an extensive array of accurate predictions, the gold standard of reliable science. If that isn't sufficient to give you modest confidence it is true, I very much doubt anything ever could. Which is to say, your belief isn't skepticism, it is wilful rejection.
Dan, if you have said all of this 1,000 times before, then you should be on my side berating the health authoritarians during covid for causing people to mistrust medical science so much that they go to RFK for insights.
The point that there is zero correlation - or maybe even a negative correlation - between intelligence and morality is important. (Intelligence is a power, and we know that power corrupts...) For if it is true, then those who may appear to be scientific "experts" are as likely to be charlatans as politicians and used car salesmen are. We should show them, as a class, no deference, but rather question everything. That's what "nullius in verba" - the motto of the Royal Society - means.
As for climate science, you are plainly wrong. (Let me show you the ways.) The public policy debate today has nothing whatsoever to do with what was known about the physics of the CO2 molecule - the "basic principle" as you put it - in the 19th century. The debate is about the "feedbacks" that are conjectured to amplify what everyone understands to be the very modest and beneficial warming that CO2 does cause directly. If you haven't even got this far in your understanding of climate science, you aren't worth paying attention to on the subject. So it isn't surprising that the climate models which consistently and uniformly "run hot" strike you as making "accurate predictions." They don't.
It was known already in the 19th century that the incremental warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere falls exponentially with its rise in concentration. It is actually an open question how close we currently are to the "saturation point," where any additional CO2 will have effectively zero impact on temperature.
Maybe history can be our guide on this question? As an historian, you should know how little - approximately zero - correlation there is between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperatures over geological time. CO2 was 16-20 times the current concentration during the greatest explosion of life the planet has ever experienced, during the Cambrian. Much of that life was oceanic shellfish - and mark this, the oceans were not boiling nor were they so acidic the shells dissolved. The Cambrian (among other periods) provides compelling evidence that CO2 is not a significant driver of climate and that concentrations as much as 20 times that of today are beneficial to life. Maybe try reading that other Ottawa historian, John Robson, for some insights on this.
Finally, need I remind you that science advances by falsification? There may well be a medium-sized mountain of evidence "supporting" global warming - in the sense of "being consistent with" the conjecture. After all, there are endless $billions in research money available to search for confirmation, and we are still rebounding from the Little Ice Age so it is out there to be cherry-picked. (Besides, *everything* is consistent with global warming, even snow in a desert that has never experienced snow before in the historical record.) But science doesn't advance by searching for confirmation of a conjecture; it advances by resisting falsification, or being revised as a consequence of falsification. So far, not one scientist has ever been bold enough to claim to have an experiment that would provide observations that will tell us whether the current warming is natural or anthropogenic, or in what proportion. There is a 100% universal consensus among climate scientists that the global warming conjecture is unfalsifiable by current scientific methods. That's why it remains, technically, a conjecture - not the hypothesis of an experiment, and certainly nowhere remotely close to a scientific theory. Just a conjecture. In that, it differs marked from evolution, gravity, etc.
(I put "expertise" in scare quotes when I mean "apparent or putative expertise." That is a perfectly legitimate use of scare quotes; I would say their standard use.)
By the way, there are thousands of other examples I could have drawn from to illustrate the severe problems with medical expertise in the modern age. How about "recovered memories" of childhood sexual abuse that were quite the rage 30 years ago? Consigned to the dustbin of history. Too many examples. Just way too many.
*bacteria
I don't think drinking raw milk or cutting floride out of drinking water is going to cause people to start dropping dead, or lose every tooth in their heads. To me it's about the danger of despising experts, not learning from history and giving respect to junk science and magical thinking like cavemen. By the way, the mongolians and other raw milk drinkers would have breast-fed their children for years. We don't. I would seriously not advise giving raw milk to infants and children. I hope it doesn't take a severe illness or death to tarnish RFK's false sheen.
Anne, see my subsequent reply to Dan on this point about distrust of experts. It is pretty clear that a great deal of the skepticism toward medical experts that people have today is well-advised, and derives from so much proven-false expertise recently. E.g. whether or not ivermectin works against covid, calling it "horse dewormer" is like saying you are drinking fire retardant when you have a glass of water. Bullshit like that sows mistrust so fast it isn't even funny - and it is establishment bullshit like that that drives people into RFK's orbit. The *very few* medical professionals who called out the covid bullshit - outdoor masking, plastic barriers at the check-outs, lockdowns, etc. - were severely punished for it. You only punish people for blasphemy, not for debating the science. That's when I knew the medical authorities were reciting the Holy Covid Gospel, not science.
We are coming from such different universes I hardly know how to respond. My education is in science, I’ve worked in research, blah-blah. I’ll say one thing then I won’t respond to you anymore: hindsight is 20/20 and it’s bloody easy to be an armchair critic. You’re lucky you didn’t have to make minute-to-minute decisions for a novel virus we had no natural immunity to, with crucial information being blocked by China, a rapidly changing situation, and hospitals not able to handle the sick and dying. Nobody lied. They did the best they could and they’re my hero’s, as are all the people who work their butts off to improve our lives, with little to no thanks from the ignorant and ungrateful.
I'm not relying on hindsight, Anne. I was emailing almost daily and writing op-eds throughout the age of covid, calling out the establishment bullshit in real time. I will confidently put my record up against the record of any provincial or federal Chief Medical Officer of Health. I made FAR fewer mistakes - in large part because I was much more humble in my prognostications and conclusions.
As for "Nobody lied." Hahahaha!
(1) Deborah Birx has since admitted that she knew from the get-go that the mRNA jabs did not stop infection or transmission. Those weren't even end-points the clinical trials tested for! She has admitted the medical authoritarians only claimed it would protect people from infection and transmission in order to boost compliance - until it was so obvious they could not maintain the lie anymore.
(2) Emails acquired through freedom of information have proven that some of the authors of that early publication coordinated by Fauci claiming that SAR-COV-2 could not have been a lab leak did not actually believe that conclusion. I said at the time that nobody could possibly know this early on that it couldn't have been created in a lab.
(3) They lied about the health risks of taking ivermectin, claiming that "overdoses" were a real risk.
(4) They lied about the efficacy of mask-wearing. Decades of studies prior to covid showed that those ridiculous face diapers everyone was wearing in the age of covid have no value in preventing infection from respiratory viruses - particularly in non-clinical settings. That was in fact Fauci's initial position on "60 Minutes." So he told the truth, and then he lied, and lied, and lied.
Need I go on?
Anne, you need to engage your skeptical scientific side.
We're largely scientifically ignorant. I wonder how many people could describe the.scientific method? Including nurses and a few.doctors. "The Road to Wellville" is an excellent book and movie that delves into the whole problem back when Henry Ford was getting started. We're also spoiled by the incredible success of modern medicine.. The Edsel was un ugly car. My own take is that if Henry Ford hadn't developed mass production cars would have remained too expensive for most people and the USA would've developed cheap, efficient and environmentally far superior rail system and people would walk and bike a lot more and be healthier and happier for it. George Jr said one true thing in his life and it's that America is addicted to oil.
Very much agree, but I think we need to engage with these people more. Dismissing them as kooks and hand-waving only feeds into the "what are you hiding, big pharma?" conspiracy thinking. I don't think you could persuade a Ford (or Musk) but it can help peel off or prevent people from joining such a movement. If one side is making persuasive (but wrong) arguments, and the other side is just calling it stupid, an independent thinking person isn't necessarily going to join with the scientific side.
FWIW, I saw RFK Jr. speak as a young man when he was just an animal rights enviro liberal lawyer and he was super captivating! So sad to see him go down this road.
Who are "these people" to whom you refer? My comment here (and elsewhere) is about the likes of Ford, Musk, RFK Jr. etc. It is NOT about people who may share some of their thinking. I have never been dismissive of whole categories of people, in part because you're right that while it may feel good it is quite counter-productive.
Agree!
100% of the things Homo sapiens do to nature is bad for nature and causes ill health to us. Some of the things that give us ill health prevent a few deaths.
Ultimately our healthcare system is expert at preventing us from dying at two costs:
1-Decimation of all ecosystems
2-Fattened and depressed humans
We have accepted ourselves as farming animals, we've accepted that we're being farmed for the profit of the elites.
You think yourself a great thinker, but you are a superficial thinker.
Sad to see.
We are in an era of complacency when foolish men welding the power that comes with exaggerated reputations of success gain trust from ignorant masses. Their opponents who have facts and sound judgment are too slow to recognize how to break their grip on power. They underestimate the gullibility of the masses and are helpless as the masses frustrated they aren't benefitting from the complacency they see trust the foolish men who claim to have the secrets to success.
Renaldy, I won't dispute your contention that one side in the recent election was comprised of "foolish men wielding power that comes with exaggerated reputations of success" - other than to note that the team also contained women (e.g. Tulsi Gabbard and Susan Wiles). But if you think their opponents came to the fight equipped with "facts and sound judgment," you are utterly delusional. Kamala contradicted herself so often - e.g. on defunding police, fracking, open borders, etc. - she doesn't even believe her own facts or trust her own judgment.