Defusing Conspiracies About Fake Science

[First Draft] 
 
This blog-reply answers the following comment:

"If only people who claim science really followed science. Most follow pop news, so-called experts, unverified theories, and politically motivated science claims."
=======================

Generally speaking, that comment is valid. 
I agree.

However,
it's always a little disheartening whenever I see a liberal say that.

Why?
Because they are plugged into a 
lesser-of-two-evils version of the very same system of mass-manipulation and orchestrated-dependence they are warning people about. 

However, ...
it's far more disheartening whenever I hear a "Conservative" saying the same thing. 

Whenever I hear a "Conservative" (worse yet, a religious conservative) expressing those ideas, 
I realize a few things. 

The goods news is: 

It means they understand how mentally lazy and culturally-brainwashed a lot of people are. 

It also means they understand that some broadly trusted sources are severely unworthy of that trust.  

However,
it also means they are deep into the very same type of cultural-cult they are warning people about.

It would be like a Sharia-Law Islamic fundamentalist warning people about the dangers of religious intolerance, violence or sexism.

I'll agree with them;
while I'm stuck in a hard cringe about how utterly non-self-aware they are. 

Moving forward from there, 
...

To be fair
(because I think it's good to be fair),
people are busy.

Sleep, showers, meals, chores, transit, work, family, etc..

Some people find the time (or make the time) to do topic-specific research.
But even then, 
just researching something as simple as "supplements that may help with anxiety" (for example) can take hours.

Health sites only give a rough outline of suggestions for supplement's; with minimal information.

Government sites have a lot more data.
However, that can be daunting to sift through.

International health data can also be examined and compared. 

Metanalysis are helpful. But most people don't know how to find those, how to understand those, and why it matters.

Online discussions (such as at Reddit) can be helpful. But random anecdotes are unreliable; and work best as "it might help" or "be careful, if ...".

Consumer product reviews can be helpful. But many of those are fake.

Meanwhile, there isn't anywhere anyone can go to 'verify' a global conspiracy to spread fake-data and fake-finding on crucially important life-impacting science.

But that's ok because:
Such conspiracies haven't even been *possible* to successfully perpetrate in decades.

It has not been happening with Climate Research.

That literally can't happen; 
at least, not on a large enough scale to skew the public positions taken by the majority consensus after decades of both cooperative and competitive global research. 
 
The scientific community's vast consensus could still be collective wrong about something important; for a while, at least.
 It's unlikely yet possible. 

But even then, it won't be because they conspired to falsify their findings. Because it's 100% certain they'd quickly (not just "eventually") be exposed for fraud, whenever the issue being researched has multiple independent labs working on the same research. 

That's why we could 'reasonably' trust SARS-CoV-2 (aka "Covid") research during the pandemic. 

"A scientist", "a lab", or a small network of co-conspiring labs could falsify their data. 

However,
 the bigger the importance, the more we'll see independent agencies working on it.

Independent agencies will discover published frauds.
And then they'll cash-in on exposing that fraud; effectively eliminating their competition. 
 
Fake-science can only happen for short amounts of time, in very "niche" branches of research that only a few small labs (at most) are involved in.

Just a soon as any lab releases "amazing" (surprising and signficant) findings on ANY issue considered broadly to be important for either money or health,
...
big labs (with well-earned reputations) will examine the data and findings.

From there, both associated and rival agencies will *do the work* and either prove or disprove the smaller lab's findings.

If it seems to check out,
or if it doesn't check out,
those labs will submit papers about it.

Meanwhile,
if the entire issue is about something of extreme and time-sensitive importance (like Covid research during a global pandemic),
...
MONEY and LIVES will incentivize GOOD SCIENCE because BAD SCIENCE could ruin (or end) millions of lives, and would end careers.

Literally every million and billion dollar funding source
wanted to restore nations to optimum function and health ASAP.

Big Money Players who rent-to-own our governments were losing money because of how Covid was impacting their industries.

This was one of those rare situations where the interests of Big Money Players aligned (albeit, imperfectly) with the interests of the people. 

Overall, this assured maximum oversight and factually correct data, while independently funded health-science agencies and governments rushed to get it right. 

Looking back, mistakes were made. 
But those mistakes were unintentional.

Those mistakes were mostly due to desperately rushed excursions into uncharted waters.

Many were also due to erring on the side of caution until more data could be collected. 

For example, they weren't "sure" that social distancing would really matter. 
 But it "stood to reason" that social distancing could help.
From there, they had to guess about how much distance to recommend. 

It also stood to reason that masks could help.
But they weren't really sure how much difference it would make. So they recommended masks based on limited relevant knowledge; from studies pertaining to other similar contagions.

From there, then kept updating the public with new statistics and refined recommendations. 

The same applies to vaccines. 
They made the most ethically responsible recommendations they could;
 based on incomplete data.
From there, they revised recommendations based on new data as it became available. 

There was no conspiracy being organized and committed by scientists across the globe to defraud the public, nor to control the public through fear.

The only organized efforts to control masses of people via fear, relative to Covid, or relevant to Climate Change, etc.
...
were the organized efforts to control political and religious conservatives, by weaponizing their "fear of being controlled". 

 THAT conspiracy was really happening. 
And it was being perpetrated by a conglomerate of hyper-Conservative Christian organizations, in cooperation with billionaire, Conservative mass-media moguls, and the predatory politicians they rent-to-own. 
 
A lot of the confusion is caused by large masses of people being lied to by far-right media.
 
As a general rule, the more "Conservative" the media, the more it just makes shit up. 

 
Conservative media empires are funded by special interest groups; such as Big Oil and Big Religion.

Big Oil wants to make sure we don't quickly grow into national fuel independence.

They make a lot of money buying crude oil cheap from under-developed nations and then selling it to developed nations at a premium.

They also can't make money selling a lot of fuel if we only need a little.

Meanwhile,
Big Religion profits off of social-division, all forms of suffering, scientific illiteracy, poverty, and death.

Thus, they use Conservative Media as a major tool for fueling social and political divisions,
and to "warn" people away from things that will actually make us healthy.
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Some skepticism about science, and about all media sources ... is obviously prudent. 

However, ...
The Big Money Players who fund Conservative Media *and* who sit atop Christian-fundamentalist networks (such as the Southern Baptist Convention and "Answers In Genesis")
...
have duped their followers into irrational *levels* of distrust from the most reliable sources of information we have,
and into strongly favoring and strongly trusting the least reliable source of information we have.

This is the main cause for all the heated disagreements in developed nations about hot-topic issues.

Granted, there are problems in science that are causing some false-data to circulate.

Also,
there are some misleading stories on "left" media. 

However,
those aren't nearly as extreme and consequential as those happening currently (and, honestly, since always) at religious and Conservative media, churches, and culture.
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Some helpful links:

On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs

David Robert Grimes ^1,*

Editor: Chris T Bauch2 

Originally found here. 
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