Mikovits, redux

A lot of people reply to any criticism of the Plandemic video with some version of, “but she sounds so convincing”. “Just listen to her, have an open mind, they say”. Really all you are telling me with that is that you are overly credulous, or your confirmation bias is overwhelming your critical thinking skills. You like what she says too much to objectively think about it. There is plenty of actual...

Mikovits and Plandemic, a Quick Take

Judy Mikovits is starring in a new video that has grabbed a lot of attention in the past few hours. The main thing I can find about Mikovits is that she has published a scientific study that was retracted due to suspected falsification of data, and was later arrested and detained on a warrant for theft of property related to a dispute with a former employer. She was later released and charges dropped. It is a long way from...

The challenge with death certificates

Even in regular years death statistics are challenging. Coroners do their best, but there is always a startling degree of imprecision in why someone actually died. Among other reasons, because just about everyone ultimately dies of heart failure. So they try to get to what caused the heart failure – cancer, blunt force trauma, infection, etc. But those are often just guesses, and in some cases they pick the one they...

Surveillance, Pandemics, and Conspiracies

Lately there have been a number of people who point to this or that proposal for tracking infected people, or recovered people, or contact tracing during an epidemic. In some cases the proposals predate this pandemic. After all, pandemic response is not a new concept. But to people reading the ideas for the first time, some immediately see a conspiracy, as if the whole reason we are suffering a pandemic is because the...

The Self-Reinforcing Worldview of The Conspiracy A...

Bill Gates is being portrayed as a scheming villain in quite a few social media posts I’m seeing lately. His sin? His organization actually did anticipate a coronavirus outbreak beforehand, warned about it, planned for it, and attempted to get people to take it seriously before it was here. To the ignorant that is evidence that somehow must have created it. But really it is simple phenomenology. If you look at how the...

Examining the Evidence: Bill Gates wants to Microc...

Someone alerted me to a facebook post: PATENT 060606 is a Cryptocurrency System using body activity data in humans…. The patent is owned by Microsoft-Bill Gates. ..Again.. not a conspiracy theory…! For some this is absolutely shocking or unbelievable…. For others.. we have seen this coming all along…. This post isn’t to fuel fear..it’s to raise awareness… You can look up the patent here:...

Terry Boardman on Covid

Coronavirus and Cosmology: The Study of World Events I would be more impressed if Terry Boardman actually predicted events like Covid beforehand, rather than offering really elaborate post-hoc explanations dense with carefully curated correspondences. Bill Gates, though depicted as a villain, comes off as far more prescient in that his organization actually did anticipate a coronavirus outbreak beforehand, warned about it,...

Debunking the Debunkers

Israeli Professor Debunks Government Claims That Lockdowns Slow Coronavirus Infection, Proves Worldwide Decline In Spread The word that caught my attention was “debunks.” Somehow, these days that type of language triggers my conspiracy theory radar. It practically screams, “motivated reasoning” by someone who is about to go to great lengths to willfully ignore the scientific consensus–or the...

Firstenberg’s Covid Message

In a widely circulated essay from Arthur Firstenberg there were some things I felt compelled to comment on. First of all, it the whole article is a wonderful compendium of every single reflexive “the opposite of what the authorities are telling us” idea that has been circulated lately. Of course really penetrating every single point would be the work of a lifetime. There are a few suspicious claims that pure...

SARS-Cov-2 and Conspiracy Theories

SARS-Cov-2 is a novel virus, meaning that humans have never before encountered it. But it is also just one more in a pattern of pathogens that have, at a particular time, moved from the animal kingdom and spread widely among the human population, striking down some and passing over others. Given these facts—that it is new, and it is deadly—it is little wonder that all sorts of explanations are proffered. People do what...

Thoughts on Grading

A former student asked how she should grade a course she was asked to teach. My reply: The wrong way: throw out a grade at the end based loosely on what you feel about the student. The right way: a rubric. A rubric is a list of what will be scored and how it will be evaluated. The rubric can be tuned to support the learning goal of the class and assignment. Not every paper needs a heavy emphasis on spelling, for example....

Will a Covid Vaccine be Found?

A vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is the type of logical thing we can all write into plans for how to restore society and the economy back to “normal”. Except there is no reason to believe that a vaccine will ever be found. As of right now there are no vaccines for this type of virus. Some viruses have traits that allow for easy vaccines (polio) some kind of work (flu) and some have eluded us to date (the common cold)....