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Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend

By Michael Tomlinson | Brownstone Institute | April 28, 2023

The thrust of Let a hundred flowers bloom was that the world’s response to COVID-19 should not have been exempted from the normal processes of policy formation and development, which in a democracy have informed debate at their core. By exempting pandemic policy from critique, governments were attempting to ensure that the correct response was undertaken, but in fact increased the likelihood of falling into serious error.

Governments felt that in a public health emergency there was no time to explore policy alternatives, and it was essential to take a disciplined approach to defeat the enemy (i.e. the virus). It was necessary for governments to control information given out to the population from the centre and to suppress ‘unreliable’ sources of information that might promulgate ‘incorrect’ information, and thereby cause the deaths of people who were led astray from the true path.

Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, notoriously declared ‘we will continue to be your single source of truth.’ She advised the New Zealand people to listen to the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health and ‘dismiss anything else.’

There should be no scenarios in which governments and government agencies are the single source of truth. No organisation, no individual and no groups of individuals can be infallible. She is now headed to Harvard University to expound on disinformation with and to the best and brightest.

Therefore, we need to go through a divergent phase of policy development in the first instance, in which all the relevant diverse sources of knowledge and diverse voices are consulted. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the wisdom of crowds,’ but ‘the wisdom of crowds’ must be distinguished from ‘the groupthink of herds.’

The prices of companies on the stock market are thought to reflect the combined knowledge of all traders and therefore the true market price. But stock prices go through cycles of boom and bust, in which true underlying prices are distorted for a time by the famous ‘animal spirits,’ and rise exponentially before falling, much like the pandemic curve indeed.

The need to bring diverse perspectives to bear on common problems is why we have parliaments and congresses instead of dictatorships. There is widespread disillusionment with parliaments, but they exemplify Winston Churchill’s famous dictum: ‘Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.’ Deliberative decision-making in which all voices are heard is an essential safeguard which can lead to sound policy formation if deployed carefully, avoiding the pitfalls of groupthink, and it is superior to all other forms of decision-making that have been tried.

Governments must choose a path forward, they must make strategic choices, but they should do so with full knowledge of the policy options, and they should never attempt to prevent other options from being discussed. But this is what happened in the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was driven by a simplistic view of science in which the scientific community supposedly formed a ‘scientific consensus’ about the best ways to handle the pandemic, based on universal measures aimed at the entire population. But the Great Barrington Declaration advocated an alternative strategy of ‘focused protection’ instead, and was originally signed by 46 distinguished experts, including a Nobel Prize winner. It has subsequently been signed by over 16,000 medical and public health scientists, and nearly 50,000 medical practitioners. Whatever you may think about the Great Barrington Declaration, these simple facts demonstrate that there was no consensus.

When activists refer to ‘the scientific consensus,’ what they mean is ‘the establishment consensus’ – the consensus of sages and worthies of the type referred to by Jacinda Ardern and referred to in ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom.’ These agency heads, advisory panels, and ministries of health are naturally predisposed to accept their own advice and ignore contrarian voices. Yet contrarian voices remind us of ‘inconvenient facts,’ data that conflicts with the establishment view. It is through the dialogue between diverse voices that we work closer to the truth. ‘The authorities’ must be held accountable, even in a pandemic.

The key point about the establishment consensus is that it is always entirely devoid of individual insight. In order to qualify to be a sage or a worthy and to sit on government advisory panels or be an agency head, you have to show your capacity to toe the line at all times and never say anything remotely controversial. This was expressed so well by George Bernard Shaw: ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’

The pandemic response has been dominated by the reasonable ones who trim to the wind and accept the current framework whatever it is.

In early 2020, an establishment consensus formed within weeks around the grand strategy (which, remember, was neither grand nor strategic) of suppressing the spread of the pandemic through lockdowns until vaccination could end it. At that stage, there were no vaccines in existence and there was literally zero evidence that lockdowns could ‘stop the spread,’ but alternative strategies were never considered. Since then, the establishment has had greater success in suppressing debate than in suppressing spread of the virus.

Maryanne Demasi, who has a fatal tendency to think for herself that has got her into trouble in the past, has written about this ‘consensus by censorship’ in a Substack article: ‘It is not difficult to reach a scientific consensus when you squelch dissenting voices.’ Scientists such as Norman Fenton and Martin Neill, with hundreds of publications to their name, have been unable to get papers published if they raise any questions about papers with favourable findings on COVID-19 vaccines. They have written about their experiences with the Lancet here. Eyal Shahar has given three examples here.

This is unacceptable. COVID-19 vaccines, like any other therapeutic product, should be subject to rigorous ongoing analysis for safety, and strategies must be adapted where necessary in the light of emerging knowledge. Again, there can be no exemptions from this.

Even with these impediments, some papers slip through the net, such as the rigorous analysis of the primary clinical trial evidence by Joseph Fraiman, Peter Doshi et al: ‘Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults.’ But many papers with adverse findings about the vaccine are blocked at the pre-print stage, such as the paper on COVID vaccination and age-stratified all-cause mortality risk by Pantazatos and Seligmann, which concluded that the data suggests ‘the risks of COVID vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure.’

Pantazatos described his experience with the medical journals here. This demonstrates that the most effective tactic to dispose of contrarian research is not to refute it, but to suppress it and then ignore it. Indeed, establishment researchers have ignored the whole issue and have not addressed the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on all-cause mortality at all. This is extraordinary, as the entire goal of the pandemic response is supposed to be to reduce mortality. But two years after the commencement of mass vaccination, researchers have not conducted controlled studies of its effect on overall mortality, even retrospectively. This is incomprehensible. Are they afraid of what they might find?

Demasi’s blog came under attack from the ultra-orthodox David Gorski, who wrote in response: ‘Antivaxxers attack scientific consensus as a “manufactured construct.”’ The title is a big giveaway – since when was ‘antivaxxer’ a scientific term? His blog merely throws mud at Demasi, without engaging with her arguments about pandemic policy, let alone engaging with the analysis in the pre-print she wrote with Peter Gøtzsche: ‘Serious harms of the COVID-19 vaccines: a systematic review.’

Gorski has nothing to contribute on the subject. The nearest thing he has to an argument is that individual studies do not necessarily invalidate a scientific consensus. But Gøtzsche and Demasi’s paper is based on a meta review of 18 systematic reviews, 14 randomised trials and 34 other studies with a control group. It has been open for review on the pre-print site and I am not aware of any substantive objections to the information and analysis therein.

Words like ‘anti-vaxxer,’ ‘anti-science,’ and ‘cranks’ are thought-stoppers – rhetorical devices designed to signal to the orthodox that their cherished convictions are safe, and they don’t need to understand the arguments and evidence put forward by dissidents because they think they are by definition disreputable people out to mislead. Resorting to these methods and ad hominem attacks is in fact anti-intellectual,

The fake consensus has indeed been ‘manufactured.’ The scientific debate on COVID-19 was closed from the outset, particularly at the level of opinion, whereas a hallmark of true scientific consensus is openness.

Consider, as a case study, the great debate between the advocates of the ‘big bang’ theory of the origins of the universe and the ‘steady state’ theory, the history of which is related in this account by the American Institute of Physics. The steady state theory (in which the universe is expanding at a steady rate with matter being continuously created to fill the space created as stars and galaxies move apart) was advocated by Fred Hoyle, one of the most eminent physicists of his generation, over more than 20 years, until the weight of empirical observations by radio astronomy brought about its demise. The debate was ended in the traditional way, whereby the predictions of the steady state theory were falsified.

The grand strategy of COVID-19 pandemic responses, which was supposed to end the pandemic and end excess deaths, has been contradicted by empirical observations. The pandemic did not end, almost everyone became infected, excess deaths have continued and there is no hard evidence especially from randomised controlled trials that the vaccines can prevent or reduce all-cause mortality. In Australia, the bulk of our excess deaths have come during the mass vaccination period.

And yet, the orthodox continue to have faith in the strategy and continue to ignore and suppress alternative strategies, believing that the science has been settled, when it seems to be decidedly unsettled.

This leads to the war against ‘disinformation and misinformation,’ which is in fact a war against contrarian viewpoints. Government has colluded with establishment scientists and social media companies to systematically censor alternative observations and strategies.

The straw-man arguments usually deployed to justify this highlight irrational ideas such as rumours that the vaccines contain microchips, etc. But they completely ignore the issues raised by serious scientists such as Doshi, Fenton, and Gøtzsche. The orthodox hold that sceptics are science denialists, whereas the reverse is true: the establishment denies the diversity of findings in the scientific literature.

The market in ideas should be the freest of all markets, as there is much to be gained and little to be lost by engaging with all ideas that derive from evidence-based analysis. By contrast, pandemic policy has been characterised by a kind of intellectual protectionism, in which orthodox ideas are privileged.

The fake consensus has been used as the basis for academic studies of ‘disinformation.’ There is no precise conceptual basis for the concept of disinformation, which is assumed to be ‘false or misleading information.’ Who determines what is false? This is usually defined derivatively as any information that goes contrary to the established narrative.

The self-appointed Aspen Commission in its final report on ‘information disorder,’ referred to some of these issues, by asking for example ‘who gets to determine mis-and disinformation?’ and acknowledging that ‘there are concomitant risks of silencing good-faith dissent’ – and then proceeded to ignore them. Without defining it, a key recommendation was: ’Establish a comprehensive strategic approach to countering disinformation and the spread of misinformation including a centralised national response strategy’ (p30).

A further recommendation is: ‘Call on community, corporate, professional, and political leaders to promote new norms that create personal and professional consequences within their communities and networks for individuals who willfully violate the public trust and use their privilege to harm the public.’ In other words, pursue and persecute those who step out of line, with no consideration of whether they may be relying simply on different information, not misinformation.

  1. They go on to make helpful practical suggestions on how to implement their vaguely worded recommendation:
  • Ask professional standards bodies like medical associations to hold their members accountable when they share false health information with the public for profit.
  • Encourage advertisers to withhold advertising from platforms whose practices fail to protect their customers from harmful misinformation.
  • Spur media organizations to adopt practices that foreground fact-based information, and ensure they give readers context, including when public officials lie to the public.

All of this assumes that there is a simple distinction to be made between ‘true’ and ‘false’ information, and underlying this, a naïve trust that only the health authorities are relying on ‘fact-based information’ and contrary views are self-evidently not fact-based. But, as we have seen, Doshi, Fenton, Gøtzsche and Demasi have published contrarian papers that are heavily fact-based.

In an academic extension of the ad hominem attack, there is even research into the psychological characteristics of dissidents, which brings to mind the worst excesses of the Soviet Union. Examples provided by ChatGPT of general studies on misinformation indicated that those of us who question established narratives are apparently led astray by confirmation bias, have a ‘low cognitive ability,’ and are biased by our political views. This implies that those who support conventional positions are unbiased, smart, and are never influenced by their political orientation. These assumptions should also be tested by research, perhaps?

In relation to COVID-19, it turns out that us dissidents are also prone to ‘epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in [our] belief structures,’ according to Meyer et al. This was based on testing people’s willingness to believe 12 patently ridiculous statements, such as ‘Adding pepper to your meals prevents COVID-19,’ which I have never heard of before. Willingness to agree with these statements was then stretched to equate with more serious issues:

People who accept COVID-19 misinformation may be more likely to put themselves and others at risk, to strain already overburdened medical systems and infrastructures, and to spread misinformation to others. Of particular concern is the prospect that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will be rejected by a sizeable proportion of the population because they have been taken in by misinformation about the safety or effectiveness of the vaccine.

None of these issues were tested in the research, yet it was extended beyond the findings to justify these conclusions.

In an article back in 2020 for the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, Uscinski et al asked: Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories? They summarised their findings as:

  • Using a representative survey of U.S. adults fielded March 17-19, 2020 (n=2,023), we examine the prevalence and correlates of beliefs in two conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
  • 29% of respondents agree that the threat of COVID-19 has been exaggerated to damage President Trump; 31% agree that the virus was purposefully created and spread.

These beliefs are certainly debatable and are held to be founded once again in denialism: ‘a psychological predisposition to reject expert information and accounts of major events.’ Denialism was further broken down to these:

  • Much of the information we receive is wrong.
  • I often disagree with conventional views about the world.
  • Official government accounts of events cannot be trusted.
  • Major events are not always what they seem.

Are you telling me these statements are not true?! I will have to rethink everything!

These studies all equate dissident views with ‘conspiracy theories.’ They assume that dissident views are self-evidently contrary to the scientific record, invalid and plain wrong; and they do not see any need to support this with references. They are insufferably superior and patronising, resting on immense confidence in their unfalsifiable academic findings.

The scientific method contains many valuable tools for counteracting confirmation bias – the tendency we all have to interpret all data as favourable to our pre-existing ideas. Pandemic science has shown that these tools themselves can be misused to reinforce confirmation bias. This leads to a kind of objectivity trap – the sages become blind to their own bias because they think they are immune.

They are founded in a belief that dissidents must be fundamentally anti-social since they are ‘anti-science.’ They must be either bad actors or gullible and misled. These authors do not consider the positive attributes that could be associated with dissident beliefs: a proclivity for independent thinking and the critical thinking that is supposed to be inculcated by higher education.

Establishments have been trying to suppress rebels and dissidents for hundreds if not thousands of years. But every society needs (non-violent) rebels to challenge beliefs that are not well-founded.

The establishment consensus on COVID-19 is built on sand and should be challenged. It arose from premature closure of the scientific debate, followed by suppression of contrarian evidence-based analysis. Dissidents include scientists, who are clearly not anti-science but are opposed to flawed science based on ‘low cognitive ability’ and confirmation bias in favour of establishment ideas. They are pushing for better science.

The most reliable policy arises from open science and open debate, not from protectionism and closed science.

Let a hundred schools of thought contend – or we are all lost!

Michael Tomlinson is a Higher Education Governance and Quality Consultant. He was formerly Director of the Assurance Group at Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, where he led teams to conduct assessments of all registered providers of higher education (including all of Australia’s universities) against the Higher Education Threshold Standards. Before that, for twenty years he held senior positions in Australian universities. He has been an expert panel member for a number of offshore reviews of universities in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr Tomlinson is a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia and of the (international) Chartered Governance Institute.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Meeting of the Defense Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Delhi

By Gilbert Doctorow | April 28, 2023

One quite important event today in global politics is unlikely to receive coverage in The New York Times, The Financial Times, the BBC or Euronews.  I have in mind the meeting in Delhi of the defense ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The SCO is one of the two principal bodies that bring together the nations that are today challengers to the US-dominated world order. The other such body is BRICS.

Whereas BRICS is primarily an economic fraternity with focus on commercial relations among its members, meaning a platform of Soft Power, the SCO is primarily a Hard Power fraternity focusing on the security of its member states. It is also more limited geographically, concentrated on Eurasia. Its founding members were China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Today it also includes Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Among the states accorded “observer” status are Afghanistan, Mongolia and Iran. And at its edges as “dialogue partners” are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

There were a couple of outstanding and newsworthy developments at the SCO gathering in India today. One was the speech delivered by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Several minutes from this speech were carried on Russian news channels and what we heard was Shoigu declaring that from the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine the Collective West was throwing all of its military assets against Russia.

The other noteworthy development was the side meeting of Shoigu and his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu. They were shown on television walking side by side to that meeting. Russian news tells us that Li used their meeting to extend an invitation to Shoigu to visit him in Beijing, and that Shoigu accepted.

The impact on the other SCO member states, observers and dialogue partners of these close and fast developing relations between the Russian and Chinese defense ministries cannot be overstated. Today they were all direct witnesses of this fact.  Among other things, this spells the end of opportunities for Central Asian states to play Russia off against China in obtaining favors, as Western media believed they were doing. It completely vitiates all efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Blinken over the past several months to pressure these same Central Asian countries into loosening or breaking ties with Moscow. These states are now all caught between a rock and a hard place.

The drama of the Russian-Chinese entente also will bear on the future conduct of India and Pakistan.  Here, too, the options for playing games or fence sitting are fast disappearing. For their part, Iran and Saudi Arabia will surely be among the countries taking great comfort in the bloc forming between the states they rely on to pursue a foreign policy independent of diktat from Washington.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

D.C. Doctors Gone Wild

It is shameful to pressure and coerce a minor to receive a vaccine

BY AARON SIRI | INJECTING FREEDOM | APRIL 28, 2023

A recently filed lawsuit alleges that a pediatrician who works at MedStar in Washington, D.C., forcibly vaccinated two minors without parental consent. According to the lawsuit:

two minor children were held in a room by Defendant until she overcame their will and forcibly vaccinated them while physically preventing them from consulting with their mother, who was right outside the room.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the lawsuit further alleges:

Minor children W.M. and K.M. were additionally provided with false and fraudulent information in order to obtain purported consent to a procedure in the absence of actual or freely given consent. Specifically, Dr. Rethy told the children that they were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school and that they had no lawful option to decline such vaccination.

What makes this story even more incredible is that this is the same pediatric practice that sought to vaccinate a minor child in the lawsuit we brought to strike down the “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020” passed by Washington D.C. in 2020. We succeeded in winning an injunction which resulted in the repeal of that law.

Before being repealed, the law permitted doctors in D.C. to vaccinate a child, 11 years of age or older, without their parent’s consent or knowledge, and created an elaborate and deceitful scheme in which the healthcare provider, insurance company, school, and health department all participated to hide from those parents the fact that their child had been vaccinated. According to the law, a child did not even need to be a resident of the District of Columbia in order to be vaccinated without parental consent!

In this previous case, the minor was subject to intense pressure and coercion to get vaccinated by a doctor and her staff at MedStar in D.C. When she eventually refused the vaccines, the doctor and staff took physical positions in the room that made her feel trapped! Thankfully, she was eventually able to escape without getting vaccinated.

These lawsuits expose a deeply concerning trend that must be stopped dead in its tracks. And these lawsuits should hopefully have that exact effect.

To any doctor out there who injects a minor without parental consent, you should know this: if that child’s parent contacts our firm, expect to receive an unwanted injection of justice in return.

For now, I am pleased to celebrate the repeal of the D.C. law that permitted vaccination of minors without parental consent and thank ICAN for making that lawsuit possible!

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

State Covid Propaganda Destroyed Public’s Ability to Consent to Vaccines – Chairman of UK Council for Psychotherapy

BY DR CHRISTIAN BUCKLAND | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 28, 2023

There follows an open letter from Dr. Christian Buckland, Chairman of the Board of the U.K. Council for Psychotherapy, to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemning the “use of unethical psychological techniques and behavioural science on the unknowing and non-consenting U.K. public”. Among numerous harms are that the use of techniques to increase fear, shame and guilt “materially undermined, if not removed, the U.K. population’s ability to give valid informed consent to taking a COVID-19 vaccine”.

April 28th 2023

Dear Prime Minister,

I am the Chairman of the Board of the U.K. Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), one of the UK’s foremost psychological governing bodies. However, I write this open letter in my own capacity. I believe I have a professional obligation to write to you in an attempt to protect the public from any further harm caused by the unethical application of psychological research and practice.

I unreservedly condemn the U.K. Government’s use of unethical psychological techniques intended to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt, under the guise of behavioural science and insights which were designed to change the public’s behaviour without their knowledge and conscious participation. It is now clear that in 2020 the U.K. Government deliberately chose to artificially inflate the level of fear within the U.K. population by exaggerating the risk factors of COVID-19, and concomitantly downplaying the protective factors. We also witnessed the Government’s promotion of social disapproval and guilt messaging. These techniques were embedded into a multi-channel, co-ordinated public health campaign designed to change the public’s behaviour without their knowledge. Moreover, in tandem with the mainstream media, the Government also proactively suppressed, censored and ostracised any healthcare professional or scientist who suggested alternative responses to COIVD-19, or who simply questioned the messaging and measures being implemented by the Government.

Evidence of the recommendation of using unethical psychological techniques to gain behavioural change

The Government document titled ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’ was written for the Government by the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) which is a subgroup of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

The premise of the document was to provide options for changing the behaviour of the U.K. public without their knowledge. A passage within this document states: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”. It makes certain recommendations including:

  • “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard hitting emotional messaging”
  • “Coercion”
  • “Social disapproval”

The recommendations made by SPI-B included ones intended to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt. Psychological practitioners know that deliberately trying to frighten someone into change with erroneous or exaggerated information can easily cause long-term psychological damage. We also know that using social disapproval can create splits and divisions within society, and that inducing feelings of guilt can elevate the risk of suicide.

SPI-B also included a simple risk assessment matrix which acknowledges that the “spill over effects” of using media to increase the sense of personal threat and of using social disapproval “could be negative”. There is also a statement demonstrating there was a conversation regarding the spill over effects, although this does not appear to be fully documented. The risk factors and ethics of using fear, shame, guilt and coercion would almost certainly have been known to the members of SPI-B because several members were British Psychological Society (BPS) registered chartered psychologists. In an interview with one of the members of SPI-B, BPS registered educational psychologist Dr. Gavin Morgan, he refers to the use of fear by his SPI-B colleagues and says (as relayed by Laura Dodsworth, in A State of Fear pp. 262,263):

“Clearly using fear as a means of control is not ethical. What you do as a psychologist is co-construction. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.” … Was it unethical to use fear, I asked? “Well I didn’t suggest we use fear.” But your colleagues did. What do you think of that? He paused. “Oh God.” Another reluctant pause. “It’s not ethical,” he said.

Like Dr. Morgan, any BPS registered psychologists within SPI-B would or should have recognised that recommending the Government uses fear as a means of controlling the public breached their professional code of ethics and conduct. An urgent investigation is required both by the U.K. Government and the BPS. Two specific points of the British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct (2021) that may have been broken are (with my emphasis):

3.3 Responsibility. Because of their acknowledged expertise, members of the Society often enjoy professional autonomy; responsibility is an essential element of autonomy. Members must accept appropriate responsibility for what is within their power, control or management. Awareness of responsibility ensures that the trust of others is not abused, the power of influence is properly managed and that duty towards others is always paramount. Statement of values: Members value their responsibilities to persons and peoples, to the general public, and to the profession and science of psychology, including the avoidance of harm and the prevention of misuse or abuse of their contribution to society. In applying these values, psychologists should consider:

  • Professional accountability;
  • Responsible use of their knowledge and skills;
  • Respect for the welfare of humans, non-humans and the living world;
  • Potentially competing duties.

3.4 Integrity. Acting with integrity includes being honest, truthful, accurate and consistent in one’s actions, words, decisions, methods and outcomes. It requires setting self-interest to one side and being objective and open to challenge in one’s behaviour in a professional context. Statement of values: Members value honesty, probity, accuracy, clarity and fairness in their interactions with all persons and peoples, and seek to promote integrity in all facets of their scientific and professional endeavours”.

Evidence that psychological techniques to induce fear, shame, guilt and coercion were used on the U.K. public

The SPI-B document in question demonstrates that the options of eliciting feelings of fear, shame, guilt and the use of coercion was recommended to the U.K. Government. There is evidence that those options were indeed subsequently deployed on the U.K. population.

In August 2022, you stated:

In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the ‘fear narrative’. It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong… It was wrong to scare people like that.

Additionally, leaked WhatsApp messages from the former Health Minister at the time, Matt Hancock, published in the Daily Telegraph in March 2023, confirm that fear and guilt were used:

Hancock: We frighten the pants of everyone with the new strain. But the complications with that Brexit is taking the top line

Poole: Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour (sic) change

Hancock: When do we deploy the new variant …

Case: Ramping up messaging – the fear/guilt factor vital

The above are just two examples where senior Government Ministers recognised that fear and guilt was used as drivers for behavioural change of the UK population without their knowledge.

The existing literature

It is important to acknowledge that the above-mentioned psychological techniques were used on the U.K. population without their knowledge or consent, and that this in direct contradiction of long-established and carefully considered behavioural science advice which made clear that, in theory and practice, the consent of the public is paramount. According to a 2010 Institute for Government report:

The use of MINDSPACE (or other ‘nudge’ type policy tools) may require careful handling – in essence, the public need to give permission and help shape how such tools are used. (p10)

Continuing, the report states:

Policy-makers wishing to use these tools summarised in MINDSPACE need the approval of the public to do so. (p74)

Further literature supports that permission from the public is essential. David Halpern wrote in 2015:

If there is one great risk to the application of behavioural insights in policy, it is that the thread of public permission wears too thin. If governments, or indeed communities or companies, wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public to do so. (p365)

As there was no approval obtained, the options recommended and deployed were not in alignment with the principles of behavioural science.

It is important to highlight that the same kinds of techniques were used on children in relation to mask wearing, social distancing and vaccine uptake, with many techniques continuing into 2022. These techniques violated UNICEF’s recommendations from its ethical toolkit for behavioural science projects directed at children. The tool-kit states:

A core idea underlying the applied behavioural science approach is that interventions should not restrict choice and should transparently communicate project goals. When designing an intervention, practitioners should determine how transparent it will be to those affected by it. They should ensure that children and parents can easily opt out, and should design feedback mechanisms so that children and their parents can voice concerns, see the outcomes of their objections, and hold decision-makers to account.

The behavioural science literature also indicates a potential link between the misuse of behavioural psychology and an increased risk of suicide, stemming from an All Party Parliamentary Group Report on the Morse Review into the Loan Charge in 2020. One of the recommendations within the report demands:

An independent assessment and a suspension of HMRC’s use of behavioural psychology / behavioural insights, in light of the ongoing suicide risk to those impacted by the Loan Charge.

The literature highlights that approval from the public must be sought and maintained. Additionally, all behavioural science projects directed at children must have effective feedback mechanisms and methods of opting out, with decision makers able to be held accountable. There are also existing potential concerns that behavioural science may increase suicide levels. These important ethical aspects and safety signals appear to have been ignored. The lessons of history warn us that in times of existential crisis, whether real or only perceived, our ethics are at risk of being abandoned, and psychological knowledge can become misused by governments:

Under some historical conditions or circumstances and contexts, psychologists and psychological knowledge were in danger of being abused by political powers, largely for clandestine purposes, such as conducting torture or the persecution of political opponents. (Maercker A, Guski-Leinwand S, 2018)

It is of grave concern that the actions of the U.K. Government during the Covid era potentially fit into the category of abusing psychological knowledge and being absent of ethics, thus require serious investigation.

The impact of psychological pressure on informed consent

For the sake of brevity, I will not reiterate the multiple concerns already documented by others surrounding the consequences of the Government’s actions around lockdown, hospital discharges, school closures and mask mandates. I do, however, wish to highlight one extremely serious consequence that I believe has occurred as a direct result of the use of unethical psychological techniques and behavioural insights on the unknowing public: by adopting the techniques used, the Government significantly and materially undermined, if not removed, the U.K. population’s ability to give valid informed consent to taking a COVID-19 vaccine.

According to Public Health England:

Consent must be obtained before starting any treatment or physical investigation or before providing personal care for a patient. This includes the administration of all vaccines.

Also,

It is a legal and ethical principle that valid consent must be obtained before starting personal care, treatment or investigations.

Also,

For consent to immunisation to the (sic) valid, it must be given freely, voluntarily and without coercion by an appropriately informed person who has the mental capacity to consent to the administration of the vaccines in question.

From the above, it is clear that for medical consent to be valid it must be given without coercion. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines coercion as:

The threat or use of punitive measures against states, groups or individuals in order for them to undertake or desist from specified actions. In addition to the threat of or limited use of force (or both), coercion may entail economic sanctions, psychological pressures, and social ostracism.

The psychological techniques used by the U.K. Government fall under that definition of coercion. If follows that according to Public Health England’s statements and for the general public at least, consent to immunisation was invalidated by the behaviour of the U.K. Government. It is also important to highlight that there have been serious injuries and death directly linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. Many of those injured or who have died would not have taken a vaccine if they had not been psychologically pressured, feared being ostracised socially and were given accurate information.

The removal of the general population’s ability to give informed medical consent is of the gravest concern, and a severe and dangerous consequence of using behavioural insights and psychological techniques on an unknowing public.

Conclusion

The need to hold tightly to professional ethics, in particular to the ethical principle of informed consent, is not just an ‘academic’ issue. It is a matter of practical and fundamental importance to responsible government.

According to David Halpern, “Behavioural insights, like any other form of knowledge, can be used for good or bad” (p348). It is my opinion that the use of behavioural insights and psychological techniques designed to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt utilised by the U.K. Government since March 2020 has been unethical. The consequences are still unravelling but they appear to include serious damage to trust in government and its agencies, the NHS and the medical and scientific professions.

I propose that there be an immediate cessation of the use of all behavioural science techniques designed to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt used by the Government pending an urgent, open and independent inquiry. This inquiry should also have as an objective the re-establishment of ethical frameworks necessary to protect the public and to provide accountability. I would welcome a discussion on this most important of matters.

Most respectfully

Dr. Christian Buckland

Doctor of Psychology in Psychotherapy and Counselling

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

FEAR. This 4-letter word probably explains everything big that’s happening.

BY BILL RICE, JR. | APRIL 28, 2023

Don’t ask me why, but I woke up this morning thinking about fear …. And how it’s really the fear of fear that explains every scary thing happening in our world today.

Fear of Covid is the most-recent example of how authorities and our most influential and important organizations profit from selling (and exaggerating) “threats” we should all fear.

Thirty years ago, few people recognized that the CDC or Fauci’s NIAID or the World Health Organization would obtain so much power over our lives.

There’s no need to recount the draconian “mitigation measures” these authorities created to compel mass compliance with their dictates.

But more citizens should probably think about how these people exploited the population’s irrational fear of a respiratory virus to achieve even more immense power and control.

The greatest fear of all is death. It follows logically that any group that tells you they can and will prevent your death is probably going to receive our blind support … which of course happened in Covid times.

Non-sensical fear campaigns aren’t new …

These agencies actually cemented their power decades earlier.

RFK, Jr. argues in “The Real Anthony Fauci” that Anthony Fauci became one of the world’s most influential people in the early and mid 1980s when he leveraged “fear of AIDS” to dramatically increase the funding and influence of his obscure health agency.

Back then, the fear was everyone was at risk of dying from AIDS (or HIV).

Like 99 percent of society’s great “threats,” the notion that AIDS was a potential killer of everyone was preposterously wrong. AIDS is actually only a risk to promiscuous gay men and drug users who share dirty needles.

Celia Farber, a rare contrarian real journalist and author, has noted that the “death of (real) science” can be traced to Fauci’s “politicization” of science.

Until the Great AIDS Scare, science and medical bureaucracies didn’t have tremendous influence on all of our lives. Back then our great fear (kind of like today) was “Russia! Russia! Russia” except four decades ago it was “Soviet Union! Soviet Union! Soviet Union!”

Today’s Great Fear is respiratory viruses.

In 1984 (the year, not the novel), nobody thought alleged experts in some Alphabet Bureaucratic Agency would end up telling everyone 100 things they had to do … and 100 things we couldn’t do.

But fear is a powerful thing and that’s exactly what happened. Not only did it happen, hardly anyone questioned the power given to these “experts.” (And those who did question the authorized narrative …. suddenly had a lot to fear).

It’s still surreal to me that in the “Land of the Free” so few people fear the growth of the government …. or the growth of censorship.

Why did everyone suddenly become a huge fan of Bigger Government?

I’ve thought a good bit about how or why all the key organizations and corporations went along with the massive growth of government.

Again, fear must provide the answer.

One assumes Amazon, Wal-Mart, JP Morgan, the colleges, Facebook, Twitter and Google, etc. must have been motivated, in part, by fear as well.

What these companies probably all fear is getting on the wrong side of the world’s 900-pound gorilla – the federal government.

If one happens to fear some person or organization, one strategy might be to become friends or allies with this mean-spirited bully. If you are too scared to fight “City Hall” … go ahead and join forces with this behemoth. Which is exactly what happened … on a grand scale.

As it turns out, the people who lead mega companies and influential organizations also fear losing their power, status and wealth.

They also fear “competition.” If the government (via its policies and crony-benefitting decisions) can make it much less likely a competitor will take away your company’s market share, it probably makes economic sense to support this ally.

Once upon a time, political scientists defined this result as “fascism.” Fascism occurs when big government and big business join forces to protect and expand their influence.

People also fear going against ‘The Current Thing’

I’ve also written a good bit about the power of “The Current Thing” (aka the “authorized narrative.”)

In today’s world, the vast majority of citizens possess a fear of going against the Current Thing. What these people really fear is being cast out out of the “herd” for challenging the thinking of the pack … or of the pack’s leader(s).

A key question for our times is who created all the false or dubious narratives in the first place.

I don’t think government officials birthed all of society’s fear-producing narratives. But government has the most power and, ultimately, matters most.

Put it this way, if George Soros, Bill Gates, BlackRock or the Davos club members are really the  master puppeteer’s pulling the most-important strings, they still couldn’t do anything they want without an army of enforcers in government.

Two months ago I wrote a piece arguing that all the most important “truth-seeking” institutions in society now seemingly exist to conceal important truths. One of these institutions is “academia” or higher education.

But why did the key leaders of 99.9 percent of the colleges go along with 100-percent of the authorized Covid narratives?

Fear strikes again. The colleges were simply afraid to lose billions of dollars of research grants and federal funding, which they knew would happen if they bit the hand of the beast who was feeding them.

Government and its cronies are also afraid … 

Which brings me to my final point of this meditation on fear: The people and organizations who rule the world are also motivated by great fears. Their fear is losing control, losing their lofty status in society’s hierarchy.

At some level, they must also fear legions of citizens going for those proverbial pitch forks and coming after them.

By now, practically every Substack author has opined on why Fox News executives decided to dismiss Tucker Carlson. (This despite the fact Carlson produced the most popular TV news talk show on the planet).

My best guess is that someone in some high place (inside this company or outside of it) had to be afraid of the scathing monologues Tucker was airing on a nightly basis.

Tucker’s segments were beginning to resonate with far too many people. And virtually all of his programs had one common theme:

“Folks,” argued Tucker, “It’s about time we started identifying the real Bad Guys who are ruining our world.”

What Tucker was really telling his sizable audience is that government – and all its sycophant cronies – were the real threat to our society.

So someone decided Tucker had to go.

Before this, someone decided that Jame O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, had to go.

Before that, someone figured out how to capture and neutralize The Drudge Report.

And before that someone decided that Julian Assange had to be locked up for life (for the crime of publishing true documents the Powers that Be didn’t want published.)

“Someone” also decided that social media and Big Tech had to heavily censor “dangerous misinformation” to “protect” people from the “harm” of free speech.

Until recent years, most Americans didn’t even know that free speech was that dangerous to them.

We the People are the Boogie Men to our rulers …

John and Nisha Whitehead just wrote an excellent essay which tells readers who is really afraid.

“The war on free speech is really a war on the right to criticize the government,” they wrote.

“… In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.”

That is, the government (and all its many cronies) are afraid of any speech that doesn’t square with its own fear-producing narratives.

In short, the government is afraid of We the People.

More specifically, the government is afraid of large numbers of citizens shedding their irrational fears. If and when this happens, the majority of citizens may no longer run to their Nanny to protect them.

Tucker Carlson referenced this in his first tweet since being dismissed by Fox News. This message has now been viewed by more than 74 million people … so clearly Carlson’s message resonates with massive numbers of people.

The key message: There’s a lot more of us than there are of them. One suspects the people who benefit from selling fear also know this … which must be what scares the hell out of them.

The victor in the existential battle currently being waged will be determined by what message resonates with the most people – the government’s message (that only the government can save us all) … or the message being shared by the dissidents our government clearly fears. 

If we’re all going to continue to be motivated by fear, let’s hope more people at least begin to fear our real enemy … which (great news) I think is starting to happen.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

The Myth of the COVID-19 Pandemic and other lies – Canadian Patriot with Denis Rancourt

denisrancourt | April 22, 2023

“In this Canadian Patriot Podcast, Dr. Denis Rancourt explains his published findings and methods demonstrating the popular fallacy that a “covid-19 virus had caused vast death prior to the vaccine rollouts in 2021. In fact, not a single death anywhere in the world can be provably tied to COVID-19, but rather the criminally incompetent (and likely intentionally criminal) protocols deployed from above nation states. Dr. Rancourt explains the real reasons for the increase in all-cause mortality across the world with a focus on the USA, Australia, Israel and India which occured only after the vaccine rollout began. A discussion on Fauci’s admission that he was wrong about masking protocols and the broader corruption in academic research over the past decades is also explored.”

ORIGINAL FILE SOURCE: https://odysee.com/@DenisRancourt:e/rWuie24xIfTd:6?r=746bnfypCwxF1GRmeLUQnqBF5KWj9dWA

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

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