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Not sure if this is the right place for this piece -- might better belong in the "opinion" area. Move as you wish...https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/this-is-how-science-works-5918537This Is How Science Worksby Jeffrey A. Tucker
9/24/25
Joseph Hibbeln speaks during a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in Chamblee, Ga., on
Sept. 18, 2025. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesThe second meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was a wild and woolly wonder to behold. Scientists took on industry. Industry fought back. Agencies spoke out. Sometimes the accused fell silent. They dug into data. They made claims and counterclaims. Sometimes the scientists fought with each other in real time, for all the world to see.
Media reports described the scene as chaos without precedent. Maybe so. They were in shock that such a thing was unfolding in real time, livestreamed and accessible from every device.
We are blessed to see it. Why? Because this is how science actually works. It requires debate, open-sourced data, and discussion of studies with strengths and weaknesses by people who have mastery of the subject matter. As it turns out, the experts do not agree.
For years now, public life has been about asserting that science is one thing. Very often we have heard about the “scientific consensus” or the “settled science.” Exactly who defined that? Usually, the consensus was defined by industry. It could be the climate change industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the financial industry, and so on.
The many people who resisted the COVID-19 response were called anti-science. It took Anthony Fauci to explain precisely what that meant. It meant disagreeing with him.
The biggest players have defined what constitutes science. Debate, if occurring at all, has always been outside public purview. The rest of us have been condemned to only accept the results of the experts. Dissenting voices have been silenced, excluded from publishing in journals, kicked out of professions, and mocked and ridiculed for not holding the right views.
For five years, this has gone on in the world of immunology, with vaccines in particular. The science has been reduced to slogans. “Safe and effective” has been the preferred incantation. Anyone who questioned either word or even added a caveat was treading on thin ice. Outright dissent was punished.
In other words, science had come to mean the opposite of what René Descartes said it was.
He wrote: “The first [rule] was never to accept anything as true unless I recognized it to be evidently such: that is, carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudgment, and to include nothing in my conclusions unless it presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I had no occasion to doubt it.”
This statement from 1637’s “Discourse on the Method” was considered the foundation of Enlightenment ideas on science. The world came gradually to shred that view. The experts decided, and the job of the rest of us was to accept it.
More at URL above...Very good article...
