In his article, Horgan rightly points out that today's so-called "science skeptics" are little more than dogmatic tribal cultists (my words, not Horgan's) who celebrate "skeptical" thinking concerning their selected philosophical targets while vehemently denying anyone's right to question their own beliefs on things like breast cancer screening, vaccine safety, global warming and genetically engineered foods.
As Horgan eloquently explains in his piece, real skeptics are skeptical of everything, not just selected topics that are targeted by the madness of status quo science crowds (i.e. the "cult of scientism").
Real skepticism means questioning everything... especially the status quo
A real skeptic, in other words, would bring critical thinking to all of our science narratives and cultural beliefs, including those that cover the origin of the universe (cosmology), the origin of the human species, the nature of consciousness, the long history of indigenous botanical medicine, the cancer industry and mammography, homeopathy, antidepressant drugs, water filters, the existence of God and everything else imaginable. But far too many of today's infamous "skeptics" (such as Richard Dawkins) are really just cultists who labor under the false banner of "science." And they're offensive to real critical thinkers, it turns out.
"I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists," explains Horgan. "When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber."
I've seen this myself, on both ends of the medicine spectrum. I've seen insanely stupid pharmacology experts swear that statin drugs are such miraculous chemicals that they should be dripped into the public water supply. But I've also seen "raw foodies" at festivals swearing that their "water vortexer machines" could levitate water in defiance of the laws of gravity.
In both cases, my critical thinking alarms go haywire, and I shake my head in disbelief that so many people are so gullible, regardless of their level of academic education or technical mastery of certain subjects. A highly trained doctor with an IQ of 200 can be just as functionally stupid as a high school dropout, I've observed. In fact, when it comes to medicine and health, many so-called "experts" are so ignorant of reality that they almost seem cognitively retarded.
My experience as a food research scientist has taught me to distrust everything by default
As a food scientist and lab science director of CWC Labs where I conduct food analysis via ICP-MS, LC/MS-TOF and other instruments, I've become even more skeptical of the mainstream natural products industry over the last few years.
Take note of the massive scam of commercial almond milk sold in grocery stores. Such products contain almost no almonds at all. Instead, they're thickened with carageenan and made to look milky white by the addition of an inorganic mineral compound called calcium carbonate -- ground up rocks! This calcium carbonate, when consumed in large quantities, can cause extreme bone pain, kidney calcification and may even contribute to the calcification of arteries. Yet it's added to a so-called "natural" health product that people are drinking in huge quantities while thinking they're being smart about their health. Truth be told, you'd be far better off drinking raw, unpasteurized cow's milk than commercial almond milk.
I've also seen so much pollution in "natural" products -- including toxic heavy metals and alarming quantities of pesticides and herbicides in supposedly "clean" products -- that I've reached the point where my own food manufacturing operation now rejects 80% of the raw material lots we test. (See my upcoming book Food Forensics for detailed ICP-MS analysis revealing the heavy metals concentrations in over 800 foods, supplements and spices.)
Similarly, I find myself rejecting 80% of the total B.S. science nonsense reported by the scientifically illiterate mainstream media... (and sometimes even the "science" media). I've literally seen seemingly credible reports in the mainstream media that claim the most ludicrous science nonsense, including claims that cars can be "powered" by air and that cell phones can be "powered" by water. The air powered cars stories always neglect to mention that the air must be pressurized by some other energy source; usually coal-generated electricity that's used to power the compressors in the first place.
I've also seen the Associated Press falsely report that all mercury has been removed from all vaccines in America (blatantly false), and I've seen the obedient Monsanto-puppet media (i.e. Forbes.com, a propaganda rag steeped in utterly false journalism) report ridiculous claims such as asserting that glyphosate disintegrates quickly in the food supply. In truth, this cancer-causing weed killer survives food processing and human digestion, showing up in both urine and breast milk, fully intact in its original molecular form.
So why is there no skepticism among "skeptics" about the food chain persistence of pesticides? The false diagnosis hoax of mammography? The lunatic quack medicine diagnosis of "psychiatric disorders" that are treated with mind-bending psychiatric drugs? Or even the scientifically proven fact that some children are seriously harmed by certain vaccines, most notably HPV vaccines?
As Horgan writes in Scientific American:
“The Science Delusion” is common among Capital-S Skeptics. You don’t apply your skepticism equally. You are extremely critical of belief in God, ghosts, heaven, ESP, astrology, homeopathy and Bigfoot. You also attack disbelief in global warming, vaccines and genetically modified food... Meanwhile, you neglect what I call hard targets. These are dubious and even harmful claims promoted by major scientists and institutions. In the rest of this talk, I’ll give you examples of hard targets from physics, medicine and biology. I’ll wrap up with a rant about war, the hardest target of all.
Real scientists reject the cult of scientism
What Horgan is doing is, dare we say, exercising REAL scientific skepticism. He's refusing to sign up for the "cult of scientism" that all the other closed-minded skeptics obediently follow as their dogmatic mental prison.
Horgan understands that legitimate science is a process, not a belief system. "Science" isn't belief in vaccines, GMOs, chemotherapy and global warming. Those are conclusions, not processes. Real science is a process of discovery; and that process must be subjected to questioning and criticism, or it isn't science at all.
Let me repeat that for emphasis: Real science is a PROCESS, not a set of conclusions. Any "scientific" belief system which rejects critical questioning isn't based in real science at all. It's just dogma.
This explains why the entire vaccine industry -- as it is fraudulently promoted today -- isn't scientific at all. Vaccine propaganda is founded in a dogmatic belief system that demands absolute obedience to political vaccine narratives while rejecting even the slightest questions or criticisms about vaccine ingredients, vaccine safety, vaccine adverse events or vaccine efficacy.
For example, merely asking the question of why flu shots still contain over 50,000 ppb mercury -- that's over 25,000 times the EPA limit of mercury in drinking water -- earns you widespread ridicule and condemnation. And yet the mercury is still being injected into children. Yet the entire vaccine propaganda establishment rejects even the hint of discussion of mercury in vaccines, pretending it doesn't exist.
By the way, how do I know for sure that flu shots still contain over 50,000 ppb mercury? Because I tested flu shots myself via ICP-MS. How accuracy is my testing via ICP-MS? My lab was recently awarded a certificate of excellence for producing extremely accurate results in a blind water contamination proficiency test involving 323 laboratories.
The vaccine establishment, as Natural News readers well know, is practicing delusional thinking masquerading as science. It's just as delusional as so-called "psychic surgeons" who claim to pull diseased liver parts out of a patient's body (which later turn out to be chicken livers, go figure...). Any real skeptic, upon observing the quackery, propaganda and blatant deception of the vaccine industry, would have to conclude that the way vaccines are formulated, approved and promoted today makes a mockery of science.
More "science" B.S. is readily found in the fields of physics and medicine, too
Speaking on the subject of computing and AI systems, Horgan explains, "The Singularity is an apocalyptic cult, with science substituted for God. When high-status scientists promote flaky ideas like the Singularity and multiverse, they hurt science. They undermine its credibility on issues like global warming."
Of course, Horgan may not yet understand that belief in man-made global warming as the primary cause for rising CO2 levels is also based on a politicized science cult. But that's not even the point. I don't expect other scientists to arrive at the same conclusions I've reached. What I do expect, however, is that scientists should honor the process of critical scientific thinking. If they honor the process, they will eventually reach the correct conclusions on subjects such as man-made global warming, vaccine safety problems, the total con job of statin drugs and so on.
On medicine, Horgan nails it. He gets the fact that today's medical screening system is largely a fraud:
Over the past half-century, physicians and hospitals have introduced increasingly sophisticated, expensive tests. They assure us that early detection of disease will lead to better health.
But tests often do more harm than good. For every woman whose life is extended because a mammogram detected a tumor, up to 33 receive unnecessary treatment, including biopsies, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. For men diagnosed with prostate cancer after a PSA test, the ratio is 47 to one. Similar data are emerging on colonoscopies and other tests.
He's also right on the mark when it comes to psychiatric drugs and their fraudulent marketing:
Over the last few decades, American psychiatry has morphed into a marketing branch of Big Pharma. I started critiquing medications for mental illness more than 20 years ago, pointing out that antidepressants like Prozac are scarcely more effective than placebos.
In retrospect, my criticism was too mild. Psychiatric drugs help some people in the short term, but over time, in the aggregate, they make people sicker.
He also exposes the total fraud of so-called "gene discoveries" that ridiculously claim genes have been discovered for things like gay-ness or intelligence:
Another hard target that needs your attention is behavioral genetics, which seeks the genes that make us tick. I call it gene-whiz science, because the media and the public love it.
Over the past several decades, geneticists have announced the discovery of "genes for" virtually every trait or disorder. We’ve had the God gene, gay gene, alcoholism gene, warrior gene, liberal gene, intelligence gene, schizophrenia gene, and on and on.
None of these linkages of single genes to complex traits or disorders has been confirmed. None!
Much of what you're told today under the banner of "science" is complete bulls--t
Horgan has come to the same conclusion that I've reached through a different path: Much of what we are taught today under the banner of "science" is complete bunk. Some of it is sheer hucksterism, and a lot of it qualifies as criminal fraud.
At the top of that list of science frauds is, of course, vaccines. As I've exhaustively documented here on Natural News, many popular vaccines (flu shots, measles, mumps) simply don't work at all. Shockingly, outright admissions of a complete lack of scientific testing of the efficacy of such vaccines is admitted on their insert sheets. The Flulaval vaccine insert sheet, for example, admits there are "No controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in influenza" among people being injected with the vaccine.
Yet despite these extraordinary admissions of lack of efficacy, vaccine research fraud and the known toxicity of vaccine ingredients (which still include formaldehyde, mercury, aluminum and MSG), the systematic rejection of such evidence by vaccine promoting "science skeptics" borders on the fringe of mental illness. These are not scientists at all... they are con artists and criminals -- like Poul Thorsen, a fugitive from justice who was once a CDC researcher -- pretending to be scientists.
As a real scientist, I've dared to ask 21 questions we're never allowed to ask about vaccines. Such questions are based on reason and rationality. They include commonsense questions such as, "If measles vaccines confer measles immunity, then why do already-vaccinated children have anything to fear from a measles outbreak?"
It is notable that the entire vaccine establishment not only refuses to answer such questions; they consider the mere act of questioning vaccine dogma to be blasphemy. The demand for absolute obedience to the false narratives surrounding vaccines has reached such a fever pitch that anyone can now see it's no longer based in science at all. It is a kind of religious fervor put on by deranged zealots who claim an intellectual monopoly over all things related to vaccines. This phenomenon is, in a very real way, a "scientific dictatorship" -- an apt oxymoron to describe today's juxtaposition of conformist demands and so-called "scientific evidence."
Hint: If you aren't allowed to ask questions about the evidence, it isn't evidence at all. It's dogma, plain and simple. Vaccine proponents, as they operate today, are faith-based dogmatists who don't need any legitimate evidence because they BELIEVE in vaccines. Their belief is so strong that it outweighs all evidence contrary to their current beliefs. And in case you didn't notice, what I've just described here is a cult, not a science.
Vaccine "science" is a massive con job
The other huge con job found in vaccines is described thusly: Vaccines only "work" on those who don't need them. In other words, when vaccines do work, they do so by initiating an immune response to a weakened virus that's introduced into the body. This response requires an active and complex immune system that's functioning well... the same kind of immune system, in other words, that could ward off an infection of a live virus encountered in the wild.
Meanwhile, people who have suppressed immune systems and are therefore extremely vulnerable to infections in the wild also happen to have extremely poor (and sometimes completely nullified) responses to vaccines. They don't build antibodies, in other words, so the vaccines don't work for them (they are non-efficacious).
In order to make vaccines "work" better on those with weakened immune systems, vaccine manufacturers add adjuvant chemicals that are irritants which cause excessive inflammation in the hope of eliciting a stronger immune response. While this may help some people, it also carries a very real risk of causing inflammatory damage to the neurology of some children who receive these vaccines. The results, as borne out by the vaccine adverse events databases and Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, is a growing number of children who are maimed, neurological damaged, put into comas or even killed by vaccines.
The entire "skeptics" cult of modern medicine denies any of this is happening, and that's one reason why the skeptics are increasingly seen as high-functioning idiots who are possibly vaccine damaged themselves. Zealotous hate-bloggers like Doctor David Gorski -- a psychopathic, mentally ill vaccine promoter who also carries out cancer surgery on African-American victims in Detroit -- now characterize the skeptics cult, a cabal of mentally deranged lunatics and gay sex fetish seekers like James Randi who was caught on tape soliciting sex from a young man.
Richard Dawkins, for his part, is also an anti-consciousness cultist who believes in the irrational dualism that no other humans on this planet are conscious beings other than himself. Everybody else, he claims, is an unconscious biological robot suffering under the illusion of self awareness.
Meet three real scientists we need to empower to ask more questions of the scientific establishment
What kind of people do we really need to see more of in the realm of scientific skepticism? People like Rupert Sheldrake, author of Science Set Free. Sheldrake's work is transformative, as it challenges the underlying non-scientific assumptions of modern science.
We also need more people like Gilbert Welch, author of Less Medicine, More Health. This book challenges the seven false assumptions of modern medicine.
Another extraordinary scientist who deserves our support is Dr. David Lewis, author of Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits. Dr. Lewis was maliciously attacked, discredited and ultimately thrown out of the government-funded scientific establishment for the simple reason that he questioned the safety of toxic biosludge -- recycled human and industrial waste that's sold as "organic fertilizer" to be spread on home gardens, childrens' playgrounds and city parks. (I am currently investigating biosludge in my laboratory and will have some truly shocking, mind-blowing results to share with everyone this summer... you won't believe what's in this crap...)
The other thing we need, quite frankly, is independent scientists like myself who are conducting cutting edge, truly independent science, without any financial ties to governments, corporations or academia. My science lab, which has now passed our ISO 17025 accreditation audit, is free to pursue precisely the kind of scientific analysis of food and medicine that is blackballed or censored in the government-funded scientific community. Other scientists would lose their jobs if they pursued the kind of science I'm pursuing on a daily basis with absolute freedom.
Notably, this makes me a rare practitioner of real, independent science and a protector of the very kind of independent skepticism and scientific analysis that should be embraced by any system of knowledge that's based on legitimate science. Yet the science I'm conducting is widely considered a threat to the scientific establishment, precisely because I'm willing to analyze vaccines for heavy metals and organic chemicals, for example. Such research is simply not allowed by the cult of scientism (the vaccine zealots) because they depend on widespread ignorance of vaccine composition to continue parlaying their fraudulent lies about vaccine safety.
I honor scientists who pursue a rigorous process of critical thinking... and I despise obedient status quo cultists
John Horgan might not yet be aware of the full story on vaccines, so he might disagree with me on such conclusions. But that's not the point. I honor Horgan's commitment to asking big questions. In fact, I honor those who vehemently disagree with me as long as they are following a process of authentic inquiry and open-minded skepticism.
What I despise is science cultists, dogmatic science propagandists and the worship of the "high priests" of science such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who can only be described as a "sciency" sleight-of-mind huckster who has more in common with stage illusionist David Copperfield than, say, Richard Feynman.
Tyson, like Dawkins, is a cultist. He has zero intellectual integrity and has sold out to the tribal dogmatists who spin tall tales of irrational mysticism that currently pass for "accepted science."
For my part, I don't claim to have all the answers -- no human mind can possibly dare to claim a full understanding of the mysteries of nature (or the mind of God, for that matter). But as a real scientist, I'm willing to skeptically explore the evidence on just about anything. I don't reject entire fields of scientific inquiry merely because they are taboo. It doesn't mean I'm a sucker for silly claims, just that I'm intelligent and humble enough to realize that nature is far more mysterious than any human mind can possibly grasp. And we have much more to learn... many more scientific discoveries to make in the years ahead.
For example, psychic phenomena are often called "paranormal." But what if they are so commonplace that they're actually normal? Why can't we study things like pets somehow anticipating the random arrivals of their owners many minutes in advance? Or mothers having a seemingly intuitive emotional connection to their children even when separated by distance? Why can't we study dream premonition? Consciousness after biological death? Or even the possibility that the brain is a "quantum antenna" that can receive information transmitted from other conscious sources, transmitted by a quantum entanglement mechanism that Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance?"
If we are true scientists, we must at least BE CURIOUS about the nature of the universe and the apparent consciousness we seem to experience inside that universe. The minute we lose curiosity and decide we have all the answers, we cease being scientists at all. At that point, we just become mentally incapacitated dogmatic fools... like Dawkins and Randi, two people whom history will judge as being not just unwise hucksters, but even for slowing the progress of human knowledge into realms of understanding that are viciously attacked by "skeptics" today.
I often wonder just how many people have died needlessly due to the malicious "skepticism" of info-terrorist David Gorski or the Quackwatch propagandist Stephen Barrett. How many cases of cancer could have been prevented or reversed by natural and complementary medicine? How many studies might have been conducted in the pursuit of natural cures if not for the vicious, aggressive assaults on scientific curiosity being waged by "cult of scientism" intellectual bigots?
We'll never know the answer to that question, but at least a few people like John Horgan are willing to start asking some legitimate questions about the false assumptions of "skeptics." Have no doubt that Horgan himself will be maliciously slandered, attacked, defamed, censored and lied about for daring to ask such questions. The one thing today's bulls--t scientific establishment cannot tolerate is actual skepticism. It threatens the cultist beliefs of the faithful "scientism" worshippers, you see...
