Trust the Experts! “You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”

Research is for the experts. Listen to them instead.

Source: You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science

The linked column is from 2020 but illustrates the thinking of our technocratic elite. The rest of us idiot should just do as we are told.

Is that column a parody or the work of an arrogant scientist?

1. I had 5 knockout blows including a 5-inch-long skull fracture. Not once during my life did any Expert mention traumatic brain injury to me. At age 58, I stumbled on a book on TBI. 2 weeks later I had a chance social encounter with neuropsychologist whose few words led me to an appointment with my doctor – and the first time in my life my head injuries were reviewed, which then led to 5 months with a neuropsychologist. I was diagnosed with multiple past mild TBIs and one moderate TBI. None of that would have happened if not for my own research.
2. For 11 years I experienced random parts of my body swelling up, eventually including the oral cavity and my throat, putting me in an ER at 4:30 am in the morning. I was diagnosed with “idiopathic angioedema” which is Latin for “swelling of unknown origin”. I went to PubMed and began reading. I learned that 85% of these diagnoses were ultimately determined to be food allergies. It took me months of record keeping identifying, ultimately, 3 food allergies, starting with almonds. Because my allergic reactions took place 8-24 hours after eating the allergen, identifying the culprits was hard. After I identified 3 suspects, I went to an allergist who did double blind skin prick tests and confirmed my findings (I’d also done my own SPTs!) Food allergies are a life-threatening condition – I could have died if I had not done this work myself. Today I carry 3 oral medications and two Epi-Pens with me. I still end up with an allergic reaction about once per year, always after eating out and consuming “mystery foods”. To be fair, restaurants have been great about allergies – but it still happens from time to time. This would not have been resolved if I Trusted the Experts.
3. In 2022, my blood pressure was starting to periodically skyrocket into the danger zone, once hitting 204/120 at a dentist office. High BP like this can lead to a stroke and can be fatal. Thousands of dollars of tests could not find the culprit. During this time I also experienced migraines with visual aura. I logged 37 days with auras in 2022. I charted the start times of the first aura of each day they had occurred and found that 90+% started between 8 am and 2 pm. I immediately thought of coffee. 4 weeks later, as I write this, the frequency and intensity of the auras has fallen by more than 90% and continues to decrease. It appears I found the culprit, by myself. My blood pressure is now normal and my resting pulse has fallen to 55-65. This would not have been identified except for my own work and ignoring The Experts: The Experts at the FDA say we can consume up to 400 mg of caffeine per day, safely. As I found, The Experts were wrong.
4. During the Covid pandemic, I tracked (on this blog) Expert predictions from disease models and the outcome of alleged “Superspreader events”. Nearly every Expert prediction made proved to be wrong. Every one of them.
5. During Covid, The Experts told us that Covid is spread by droplets, not by airborne transmission, that a cloth mask or bandana made out of an old t-shirt would protect us from Covid, we should stay home-save lives but protesting in large crowds is okay, natural immunity does not exist, the Covid vaccine would prevent infection and transmission – all of which proved to be either wrong or lies.  In Oregon, from late October 2020 to February 2021, the State issued 13 disease model projections. They had the sign wrong in 11 out of the 13 projections. Trust the Experts.
6. I logged perhaps 12,000+ items during the pandemic. There were many hundreds of times The Experts were not only wrong, but were frequently inconsistent, contradictory, illogical and irrational.
7. In the late 1960s and continuing into the 1980s, The Experts told us about the Population Bomb (the book by Paul Ehrlich) which predicted end times. The consensus of experts canceled anyone – including other experts – who challenged his views. Today we know that every single prediction Ehrlich made was wrong, and the fertility rate in the U.S. fell below 2.1 by 1972. I spent decades believing his story was true – it was never true.
8. When I discovered this in 2022, I felt massively manipulated and lied to. The result of the above is that I am now incredibly skeptical of everything, everyone and all Experts. Trust now needs to be earned and is no longer granted due to a title, initials after a name, or because a group of “Experts” believe it. I now believe the default position on all topics must be skepticism.

Trust The Experts.

At this point I no longer trust the FDA, CDC, WHO or local and state public health officials. I have lost confidence in any science that is used to drive public policies – which includes climate science.

I no longer have any idea what to believe. What I do know is that The Experts are frequently wrong – incredibly wrong to the point of causing harm yet refuse to acknowledge their errors and learn from those mistakes.

In March of 2020, I suffered a foot injury. The day I decided I needed to see a doctor, our public health Experts told the Governor to shut all non-life-threatening health care. At times I was in considerable pain.

TEN WEEKS later when I was permitted to see a doctor I was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the navicular bone and a partially torn tendon. At this point there was little to be done for it. 3 years later I still suffer periodic bouts of pain in my foot due to this untreated injury.

The reason the state shut health care access was due to The Experts at the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics “disease model”. Their model projections were off in space but were used as the basis for our state’s lock down (our state really did shut everything down). Within months, the state discontinued using IHME’s worthless models. By the fall of 2022, the CDC – finally – stopped producing their model summaries on their web site saying they had found that disease models had “low reliability”.

The Experts caused actual harm and delivered no benefits for their actions.

Trust the Experts.

Right.

Author Ethan Siegel needs to start talking to real people to understand why many of us no longer Trust the Experts. He needs to listen a lot more to understand why many of us no longer trust the experts and see his column as written from the perspective of arrogance. They need to stop telling and start listening if they hope to restore trust.

But he’s not listening – he’s still stuck on telling others how to think – because he has initials and a title, and you don’t – so shut up.

Note – many of the examples I gave above are of personal medical experiences as they are easy to convey and understand. I recognize that medical diagnosis is hard – although some things like the TBI should have been up front and center. Medicine can be outstanding for acute, well-defined conditions. My current and previous doctor are both great and I have utmost respect for both. My current and prior dentists are also both fantastic. But sometimes, we really do need to do our own research and draw our own conclusions. Thinking for ourselves is not a sin, although unfortunately during the past 3 years, we have seen many Experts convey that idea – that thinking for ourselves is wrong.