You can listen on Bitchute and Gab. This one is a good one. Complete with a clip from the Fabulous Fauci.
Forgive me my dear friends and despised enemies for bringing you news of one of the silliest papers I’ve read in a long time, but I laughed so much while going through it, I thought some of you might be amused by it, too. I know I’ll go on too long, but I can’t help myself.
The peer-reviewed paper is “A darkening spring: How preexisting distrust shaped COVID-19 skepticism” by J. Hunter Priniski and a Keith J. Holyoak, in PLOS One.
Now long-time readers know I always emphasize the “peer-reviewed” bit because I want to demonstrate the absurdity of the system. PLOS One does one better—by including the peers’ reviews! This, as you will see, does a far superior job at that demonstration than I could ever do.
Before we get to it, another amusing thing is the inflation in credits. Remember movies from back in the 1940s? You’d see the main actors listed, maybe the writer, a producer and the director, and that was about it. Modern movies have lists of credits longer than an EPA regulation. We learn who the guy who brought the burgers to the assistant to the guy who did the hair for the assistant grip was, and fascinating things like that.
Same thing here. Turns out Priniski did the “Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing”. Holyoak’s credits were just as impressive.
Anyway, as you can tell from the title “A darkening spring”, this paper belongs to the common horror genre in academia. Professional academics love to frighten themselves as much as anybody else, and there’s nothing, to them, scarier than a populace who no longer loves or shows proper deference to them.
I know it’s long, but I promise you will at least smile as you read the Abstract (my paragraphifications):
Despite widespread communication of the health risks associated with the COVID-19 virus, many Americans underestimated its risks and were antagonistic regarding preventative measures. Political partisanship has been linked to diverging attitudes towards the virus, but the cognitive processes underlying this divergence remain unclear.
Bayesian models fit to data gathered through two preregistered online surveys, administered before (March 13, 2020, N = 850) and during the first wave (April–May, 2020, N = 1610) of cases in the United States, reveal two preexisting forms of distrust––distrust in Democratic politicians and in medical scientists––that drove initial skepticism about the virus.
During the first wave of cases, additional factors came into play, suggesting that skeptical attitudes became more deeply embedded within a complex network of auxiliary beliefs. These findings highlight how mechanisms that enhance cognitive coherence can drive anti-science attitudes.
They seem to have forgotten the panic was well under way by March 13. And that Democrat politicians like Chuck Schumer had already told people to come on down to riskless Chinatown and have a riskless meal! (Pelosi did the same.) Schumer did that because Trump wanted to close the borders to Chinamen—and Chinawomen.
They also forgot there were quite a lot of sane doctors, including at the WHO itself (as we reminded you last week) that recommended against lockdowns. Even the Fabulous Fauci himself was then saying masks were absurd.
As far as trusting doctors goes, doctors hadn’t really begun slicing the breasts off little girls, and the penises of little boys, and drugging the lot to gills, but some were doing it, and the news was out. You can’t trust any “doctor” who recommends that. Or doctor’s organizations, like the AMA. Who were out chattering about white supremacy (yes).
Now to the really funny material. If you are reading this in public, be forewarned of the danger of guffawing.
In their surveys they asked these (and other) questions:
- “Some politicians are making a big deal out of COVID-19 for political gain.”
- “I fear the government will use COVID-19 as an excuse to mandate vaccinations.”
- “Medical organizations like the CDC and WHO are untrustworthy.”
- “COVID-19 was engineered in a laboratory.”
- “Your chances of getting a disease after being vaccinated against it are incredibly low.”
- “We should stop social distancing as soon as possible to kickstart the economy.”
Number 1 is unambiguously true. And everybody knows it. As we just saw with Schumer.
Number 2, I did a spit take. Remember–can you remember—when mandated vaccines was a conspiracy theory? People who warned of mandated vaccines were cancelled. And then, after vaccines were mandated, they were fired from their jobs. A double jab. (Good pun!)
Number 3. WHO abandoned their old recommendations after receiving a junk-load of money from China (a junk is a Chinese boat—thank you). The CDC was caught in error after error, exaggeration after exaggeration. How dare they still not be trusted.
Number 4. Indeed, as all evidence suggests, the doom was created in gain-of-lethality research.
Number 5. The best of them all. CDC director Rochelle Walensky said, on camera, many times, if you got the vax you could not get infected, and you would not pass on the virus. And she was one of many, many.
But that was after. In 2020 during these surveys, people only had their suspicions, built from watching these stalwart organizations in practice.
Number 6. Well, yes. As even backtracking Experts are now admitting.
So. It turns out the skeptics were right, the Experts wrong. On all these things.
Nevertheless, our Expert authors conclude (again my paragraphifications):
The emergence and maintenance of COVID-19 skepticism appears to be similar in form to climate-change denialism. Both misconceptions are based on conspiracy theories that posit malevolent intentions of political and scientific organizations.
Conspiracy theories promote narratives alleging that academic and scientific organizations are conspiring with Democratic politicians and the mainstream media to push political agendas under the guise of scientific rigor.
For example, skeptics of climate change often claim that Democratic politicians are conspiring with climate scientists to use scientific evidence to regulate the economy for liberal (or socialist) ends.
In the case of COVID-19 denialism, conspiracy theories have claimed that that the virus was spread on purpose, and that medical professionals and Democratic politicians were conspiring to make then-President Donald Trump look bad in an election year.
All that can, or should be said about this, is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Incidentally, the regime paid for this study. NSF Grant such-and-such.
Indulge me in one last joke, will you? The peer review. It’s all there. Here are the juicy bits:
The paper deals with a very important and actual topic…
Overall, this paper can be viewed as a good presentation of the insights of the skeptical attitude regarding covid…
Solid work…
Your manuscript was well thought out, clear and provides important information that helps explains the current beliefs about COVID.
There were four reviewers. Reviewer 2—and I’d like to shake his hand–rejected the paper.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com.
I’d bet, that if you attached these people to a lie detector, it wouldn’t move
Bayesian Models
Were you able to examine these models and were they “proper”?
How does one critique a Bayesian Model?
Isn’t the Bayesian model based on assumptions and givens?
The paper is Funny but extremely SCARY
Funniest and Scariest
I wanted to listen again to extract the thought above
I don’t know if this is an insult or not (let’s call it a neutral observation)
Your laughing reminded me of Alan Alda’s portrayal of Hawkeye Pierce
and his raucous laughter
Pretty funny stuff Briggs.
It’s like watching a scaled-up version of the stage-show hypnotist who hypnotizes a group of audience volunteers and then has them do and say all manner of nutty stuff, like trying to eat their shoes, or strutting like a chicken while mooing, or twerking while reciting the pledge of allegiance — and the audience guffaws in amazement.
Only it’s a bit less less funny and more creepy when you see half the world trying to eat their shoes while twerking and mooing and reciting the pledge of nonsense. Still funny though. They say if you’re unwilling to be hypnotized it’s much harder to get you to do stupid hypnotic stuff.
A handy part of the term “conspiracy theory” is that it can be used to dismiss a huge number of topics without question. This is done by conflating observed facts with ridiculous hypotheticals.
For example, the paper talks about medical professionals conspiring with democrats, as though every doctor in the country met in a secret lair to figure out how to screw over the country for the good of the DNC. Obviously that didn’t happen. But suppose we change the frame to acting whether a large number medical professionals had their judgments affected by political biases. It’s just as obvious that that DID happen, given the widespread support among medical professionals for the BLM riots at a time when practically everything was in medical lockdown mode. Yet both statements get swept up into the term “COVID conspiracy theory.” As a result, someone on the fence and just looking for answers must immediately be willing to accept the brand of “conspiracy theorist” just to be able to address questions about whether doctors made mistakes or not.
This could illustrate a paper on Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” approach to reporting. Pretty much everything in this paper is BS and pretty much everything the authors seem to believe is wrong. However: remember the boy who cried “Wolf!”? Many people who had been taken in by previous cries refused to believe and for good reason – and that’s really all this paper is about. To see this, just replace all the climate/covid stuff in the paper with electoral fraud stuff and you’ll understand that the illustrative covid/climate bs has little or nothing to do with the conclusions they pretend to (the obvious ones) and the one they most assidiously avoid: that sooner or later a real wolf comes along the kid get eaten.
The Nutsy Papers are necessary to create consensus for the Nutsy New Normal that the Nuts want you to get used to of kicking you in the nuts.
Notre Dame mandates 5th jab to enroll for… Fall 2023 – Spring 2024
https://nonvenipacem.org/2022/11/18/notre-dame-mandates-5th-jab-to-enroll-for-fall-2023-spring-2024/
World leaders agree to cattle-tag the planet
Washington and Moscow put aside their differences for the greater good
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/world-leaders-agree-to-cattle-tag
“…narratives alleging that academic and scientific organizations are conspiring with Democratic politicians and the mainstream media to push political agendas under the guise of scientific rigor.”
With both climate change and corona virus, it has become obvious to anybody with a properly functioning brain that this is exactly what goes on. It’s no wonder so many people no longer trust what they say and do.
The peer review comments read like the generic comments bots would leave on blogs back in the day. “Very informative and useful weblog posting. I have bought much enjoyment to my life by and knowledge by this article.”
Yet again, Monsieur Bagpipe nails it with one word, “creepy”.
Early in the pandemic, I spent most of one day with regular doctor visits, routine labs and simple medical procedures. The area I live was in the news because we had one of the first Covid-19 cases in the country, treated in the adjacent hospital. I always try to make small talk with the medical personnel, and this was a topic of interest with all of them. All were fairly dismissive of the media panic-hype, having been through similar scares in the past.
A couple weeks later I was in again for some follow-up stuff, and the attitude was starkly different, with the medical personnel either changing the subject or speaking in talking points. I distinctly remember feeling very creeped out, in a Stepford wives sort of way. If there was anything on the medical agenda that day besides simple follow-up stuff, I think I would have made up some excuse and gotten the heck out of there. Very creepy, very surreal; I still have dreams about it on occasion.
I did chuckle at the “conspiracy theorists” slam. As Rush used to say, you don’t need conspiracy theories to explain their behaviors, since they all instinctively think and act alike all on their own. Can you remember the last discussion you had with a liberal who displayed any sort of original thinking, instead of regurgitating same tired talking points you’ve heard a thousand times before?
Liz,
Hilarious!
Blog name: The Improbable Blog
Well well well…:
https://500queerscientists.com/hunter-priniski/
Maybe the authors of these “peer-reviewed articles” are too ignorant to know they are committing fraud, or else they don’t care. As AOC noted in her 60 Minutes interview a few years ago, “Facts Don’t Matter when you’re morally correct.” That might as well be the official slogan of the Democrat-Communist party.
Some might think the FTX scandal is mostly about woke fraudsters defrauding other woke fraudsters, but there were also deep connections between FTX and the Covid “Plandemic” industry.
Linked here below is an excellent, not too long article, “The Covid/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga of FTX and Sam Bankman-Freid” ? Brownstone Institute
“FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby…..”
“….Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes.
“Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look…..”
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-crypto-connection-ftx-and-sbf/
I especially liked this quote that Briggs excerpted from “A Darkening Spring”:
“…mechanisms that enhance cognitive coherence can drive anti-science attitudes.”
Thanks to this important, peer-reviewed paper, we now have confirmed what many of us have suspected all along: Cognitive Coherence is the Enemy of The Science™.
“A darkening spring”
Wisdom [17] For they were all bound together with one chain of darkness
What do the officials of the FTX and the putative overseers – like the SEC Chairman- have in common?
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/13/1063593977/a-profile-of-wall-streets-top-cop-sec-chairman-gary-gensler
Well, they ain’t mormons and why hasn’t that FTX crook been brought back to America and put in the slammer?
Will he ever be arrested and prosecuted\?
Here’s something to brighten everyone’s day!
The Covid/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-crypto-connection-ftx-and-sbf/
From funding Covid-lockdown-tomfoolery for no reason other than it was the hip thing to do, to Ukrainian/Democrat money exchange laundering, FTX is the gift that keeps on giving!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Beautiful! More! MORE!!!
“The New York Times’ DealBook Summit will be taking place on November 30, 2022. The event will include Sam Bankman-Fried, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen as guest speakers.
The Dealbook Summit is an annual event hosted by the New York Times. This year, the proceeding will be focusing on connecting business, culture, and politics. According to the New York Times’ website, DealBook attendees are typically “high-level executives, emerging leaders, and entrepreneurs from the worlds of financial services, technology, consumer goods, private investment, venture capital, banking, media, public relations, policy, government, academia and more.” Those who want to participate in the summit must apply and pay a fee of $2,499 in order to attend.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
Saying this gathering of powerful members of The Tribe is anything other than a coincidence is a conspiracy.
Have a fun and free weekend 🙂
“I AM INNOCENT!” sayeth the Fraudci, “I HATE CONSPIRACIES ABOUT ME! YOU ARE THE CRAZY ONES!!!!”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fauci-unapologetic-about-covid-19-decisions-in-face-of-likely-house-gop-investigations/
NO! WE DON’T NEED TO TELL YOU WHAT’S IN THE DAMN VEXXINES!!! COVID VEXXINES ARE OWNED BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE – ie – NOT a pharmaceutical company! Therefore fancy pharma laws and FOIA Requests don’t apply to us! The Pfizers and Modernas are just 3rd party manufacturing and distribution contractors and delivery men! ALL DETAILS MUST REMAIN TOP SECRET TO PROTECT YOU!
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/us-defense-dept-secretly-controls-covid-vaccine-production-process-that-cannot-be-traced-researcher/
Briggs, though the detailed reviewer comments can be seen by the authors only, why don’t you publish your comments below? Be brave like the Editor!?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263191
Why ‘Murica will lose the next whar!
US Army Seeks to Force Out Soldiers Claiming Religious Exemption to Vaccine Mandate, Service Members Report
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/11/21/us-army-seeks-to-force-out-soldiers-claiming-religious-exemption-to-vaccine-mandate-service-members-report/
Hey, remember that time The Science ™ banned and prevented the sale of Ivermectin? SYKE! That you couldn’t get any was not their fault, blame those other store guys for not understanding!
“FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was Just a Recommendation”
https://www.barnhardt.biz/2022/11/20/nurse-claire-sends-fda-says-telling-people-not-to-take-ivermectin-for-covid-19-was-just-a-recommendation/
BWAHAHAHA! Look Ma! I’m-a fac-checkin!
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/youtube-flags-world-government-summit-video-on-new-world-order-as-conspiracy-theory/
THE SCIENCE ™ are just guidelines, not factual law… If you listened to THE SCIENCE ™ then you only have yourselves to blame! “Follow THE SCIENCE ™” never meant you had to go along with absolutely everything THE SCIENCE ™ recommends!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/grade-gaslighting-fda-says-anti-ivermectin-campaign-was-just-recommendation
Chaos Breaks Out As Reporters Ask Fauci About COVID Origins
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chaos-breaks-out-when-reporter-asks-fauci-about-covid-origins
China Restricts Movement Across iPhone City
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/massive-unrest-rocks-worlds-largest-iphone-factory-china
Biden COVID Minion Tells Americans “God Gave Us Two Arms” For Multiple Vaccines
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-biden-covid-minion-tells-americans-god-gave-us-two-arms-multiple-vaccines
Boom!
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/vaccinated-now-account-majority-covid-deaths
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/vaccinated-people-now-make-up-majority-covid-deaths/