9 Comments

I never miss reading your substack. 🔥

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As usual, I agree with everything you said. I have started, and never finished, writing an article addressing the very first part of what you discuss here--the push to sensationalize your results in order to gain funding. I had to explain to so many non-scientists that the term "novel" (in the COVID context we heard- "it's a NOVEL virus") is one of the most overused words in the scientific lexicon. It constitutes an entire section of the scoring rubric on any grant (i.e., INNOVATION). It motivates people to distort the novelty of what they are studying, and the SIGNIFICANCE section of that scoring rubric motivates people to exaggerate something like the severity of a disease they are studying. I think academic scientists are so used to overplaying significance and novelty of diseases and treatments that they lapped up the various COVID narratives without actually taking a step back to think about it.

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Thanks for this excellent piece of writing. I can assure you that the USA doesn’t have a monopoly on this sort of mind-numbing inertia and politically driven intellectual corruption and dishonesty. As an Australian pathologist with 20 years experience spanning public and private sectors, I have seen exactly the same things here; a top-heavy, bloated, insufficient and incredibly expensive system driven not by science but by politics, not for the good of society but for the good of the institution. Efforts to change anything are met with, at best, insurmountable inertia, but usually, hostile resistance to change. Needless to say, the madness and feverish politicisation of ‘The Science’ in the last few years has rapidly worsened this situation and further entrenched those careerists hiding in these dysfunctional institutions. I’m not sure what we do about this. To me, it seems like it’s all gone too far down this road to repair. I suspect nothing short of a giant broom to abolish and sweep away these corrupt institutions in their current form will suffice. Then, possibly, they can be rebuilt.

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Another great article. As a retired RN, I knew what the government was trying to shove down our throats was pure baloney. You explain everything so well. Thanks for your educated commonsense.

Nancy, Mike's mom

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Most of MMWR reports I've read seem to start with a conclusion and ensure the data fit. I just can't accept that the notable authors would do such a shoddy job of statistical analysis. How they got by professionals that must be in the agencies boggles my mind. I'm certainly no expert, but the flaws were much too obvious.

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Thank you Steve for providing your invaluable perspective. Feels a little strange (and sad) to “like” this article, though 😬

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"After accepting the fact that health agencies are political organizations, the next steps should explore ways to ensure bipartisan administration and remove perverse incentives."

Great article, thank you. But I have to disagree with those next steps. The CDC and all similar agencies should be defunded and ended. We do not need them. No amount of bipartisan administration will help. The perverse incentives are baked in. The glaringly obvious flaw in these organizations is that they don't have to earn a profit to keep getting money; they just take more by force.

What's needed is a return to medicine that is driven by unhampered markets, where entities that do not satisfy the preferences of consumers quickly go bankrupt and disappear.

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All of those problems also occur in academia. The simple solution is to eliminate the WHOLE THING. We don't NEED any of the outputs of this system, even when it's not purely evil and torturous.

Science should revert to its pre-1946 position as a fascinating hobby for amateurs with private fortunes or crowdfunding. Entertainment, not authority.

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