I will just use ">" for quotes here. This will be a looooong one.
> Whilst it's true that Cowan veers off a bit towards the end of the book,
He is deep in it from the very beginning and all the way through. If you don't see it, I doubt anybody can convince you otherwise.
I don't want to either convince or be convinced. "Conviction" is the wrong word; it implies that I have firm ideas and am asserting something is wrong or right. Actually, my argument is that I don't have firm convictions in this matter; at most, I have
strong suspicions. But a suspicion isn't a conviction; hence my word choice.
> imho his central thesis, that viruses may not in and of themselves be infective agents, is an intriguing and plausible one,
That intrigued me too. You can believe it or not, but that's why I wasted a few hours on it.
There was no need for all of the sentence highlighted in
red. You could have left your statement at "That intrigued me too. You can believe it or not." But you added "but that's why I
wasted a few hours on it". Why the word "wasted"? What does it add apart from evidence of your own predilection? You could have said something like "...that's why I spent a fair amount of time on it", and then come up with the
reasons why it didn't convince you. But that would invite 2-way dialogue.
You don't always write in a dispassionate manner, or even sometimes use very clear language or spell correctly, which I would expect a scientist to do more often than you do.
Well, I guess you can give him credit there - making people aware of exosomes. There are much better ways to learn about them though.
What better ways? You don't say, just leave an air of mystery implying your own superiority.
As I see Cowan's and Co argument - it is nothing but a straw man. Let's take a criteria from a couple of centuries ago and demand that everybody now follows it. The funny part - he trashes the author of the criteria too.
Apparently, arguments from a couple of centuries ago, (viz. germ vs terrain theory, I assume) can automatically be dismissed. Follow that sort of thinking to its logical conclusion, and the only things that are right are what is most currently accepted by convention or consensus. I guess we can ignore Kuhn, and feel certain that paradigm shifts never occur, especially in favour of ideas from the past. Idealism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, continental drift and so on are all, for all time, ruled out. Except that at least some of them may find themselves being taken seriously again.
And why? Often, because empirical evidence is discovered that conflicts with currently widely-accepted theoretical frameworks of a consensus of the
priesthood scientocracy.
> One thing I'm very sceptical about is that we've "isolated" viruses that putatively cause AIDS and COVID-19. "Isolated" means one thing in commonsense understanding, and another to people (unjustifiably in my view) convinced that scientists have actually extracted pure viruses and used such extracts to infect uninfected organisms.
That's the problem with "isolation" critera that these clowns perpetuate. Let's take what they like - toxins, poisons. How about hidrogen cyanide (HCN)? I am sure everybody knows about it. Let's take a glass of water and another glass of water that contains HCN. HCN is not pure, right? It has water with it, a lot of it. You can add some other stuff to that sollution too, so it is not "pure" by any means. If you try to "isolate" HCN by drying water to see what is there, you will not find HCN in the residue - it's volatile, trust me, it will evaporate. What Cowans do is equivalent to crying that see, it was not isolated, so it's not that "hypothetical" HCN thingy that all the eggheads say kills people.
Your analogy is flawed. No one's arguing that exosomes don't exist, can't actually be photographed. No one's arguing that what are currently labelled "viruses"can't exist either. What is being argued is how to
interpret them.
> Alas, the papers I've seen are often so obfuscated by jargon that it's difficult to be sure what procedures were followed.
That PNAS paper is quite plain language and they clearly define the difference between viruses (including damaged ones) and exosomes.
Yes, it was more or less plain English, and I actually said so earlier. But many of the technical papers in this area are unfathomable to the uninitiated.
> But there are quite a few qualified scientists who maintain that we haven't isolated viruses. Even the conventional scientists who ascribe to germ theory may say that their experiments haven't isolated the AIDS or COVID-19 viruses, especially when pressed for an opinion: or even when not, as when they include the explicit disclaimer in their papers.
That could be true. But that's true for other things, like diabetes seems to be one disease, but actually is a bouquet of things that go wrong. AIDS could be the same thing. I admit, I have not gone into it, I have only 24 h in a day.
How does it being true in other areas constitute a coherent and valid argument about the case under consideration?
> Many probably don't know about these additives, but if you were to propose injecting people solely with such toxins sans the supposed active principle, they'd be up in arms. However, add it in, and they're miraculously supposed to enthusiastically embrace vaccines. The active principle, an allegedly killed or otherwise disabled pathogen, apparently not only cures the disease, but also renders inoperative the toxic brew in which it is delivered.
But that's a different story from whether or not viruses/bacteria actually exist. Believe it or not, I stopped taking flu vaccines (not sure how long I will be allowed to do that), because I do not think the risks outway the gains, especially that quite often they mispredict the strain.
Good heavens. No one says bacteria don't exist -- not Cowan, not me. No one says that things we label "viruses" don't exist, either. What Cowan asserts, and what I'm at least willing to consider, is that they aren't necessarily always infective agents.
> We're seeing it all over the place -- from cosmology to psi research, Darwinism to nuritional science, and now, germ theory, which may be only partially correct. I never really questioned it before, but that's what I'm entertaining after reading Cowan's book.
That's what really perplexes me: you really don't see problems with Cowan's book? He's lying for crying out loud. 88 countries, if I remember correctly, had G5 by April 2019, but the effect was sooo slow I guess. G4, G3, radars - none gone away, and yet epidemics have a clearly isolated time signature. Can't you see through his BS?
I've already said that I am expressing no opinion about EMR. I'm focussing on germ theory. "Perplexed" is another of those words you seem to be using from an assumed position of vastly superior knowledge and understanding, which an eegit like me can't possibly appreciate.
When it comes to biology, I'm an educated layman with a degree in zoology and a some postgraduate experience in that field, plus a botany ancillary and a year in chemistry and biochemistry . I also hold a master's degree in education, a teaching certificate and qualifications in programming and systems analysis, which I was employed in for many years. Don't treat me like an idiot: it says more about you than me. Others here are just as well-educated as I am -- and we have several people here with phDs. So don't think you can get away with dismissive hand-waving.
You don't have to agree, but if you want to disagree, you need to present your case more coherently. IMO, you try to say too much in too small a space. I think you need to slow down and concentrate on one or a few points at a time and really thrash them out rather than jumping about all over the place. And cultivating a little more humility might prove helpful.
I don't think his argument is anywhere near being plausible, I gave plenty of reasons. What are your reasons that there is a baby in that bathwater?
What you think his central argument is, is quite possibly not the same as what I think it is. Yes, he points the finger at EMR such as 5g and earlier sources throughout history, but I'm not focussing on that. I've already given my reasons, so check them out and don't ask me to repeat myself.
To say Cowan's lying implies intent. People can be wrong without lying -- don't you see that?
I like it too. Apply it to Cowan's work and see what happens. He is a complete fraud and I gave you reasons why.
No you haven't. You only think you have. Again, fraud implies intent to deceive, and you aren't a mind-reader. That he might be wrong is a given, but I've never implied he is right: only that he makes some interesting points that cause me to question assumptions I've formerly held.
> Maybe some bacteria are infectious, as may be some particles we label "viruses", but the rest act in ways that help us. One sticking point is the fact that no "viral" agent appears to have been demonstrated to satisfy Koch's or Rivers' postulates.
See above. What I have seen makes sense if you apply some logic: you add a mix of something that contains A,B,C,..., then you have a control that does not have A, see what happens. If the one with A caused problems, then it probably has something to do with it. If you also see that A increased in concentration after administering it - it probably is infectios, not just poisonous. You don't need to isolate it.
There you go again with the thinly disguised dig: "...if you apply some logic", implying I employ mostly illogic. And seeing as you mention controls, you should read the Perth group article (links directly to the PDF),
"HIV -- a virus like no other". There you will find that the group has found a lot of evidence that Montagnier and Gallo were sorely lacking in their use of controls in experiments that purported to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS. Or, don't read it and continue with the hand-waving. It's up to you.
>I've seen no convincing evidence it does, surrogate evidence having been taken as proof positive in lieu of actual isolation followed by actual infection and reinfection. This seems circumstantial to me.
Yes, a conjecture, but much stronger than a comet, would you agree?
I've said many times I'm laying aside the EMR argument. So why are you yet again attempting a strawman argument?
See above re postulates. Should we demand that all quantum phenomena be treated strictly within an outdated classical mechanics paradigm? Even if the quantum theory is wrong, it makes things tick - we would not be able to communicate now without all those semiconductors, you know. This is why a couple of posts back I brought up the pragmatic/utilitarian aspect of science. Even if a theory is wrong, if it makes things easier to interpret, predict, design useful things, etc, - that's all one needs, at least for a time being.
This is not an original view. However, scientific postulates and theories are but the way we
model the world. As time progresses, we change our models. Those that are currently conventionally or consensually accepted are in most cases (and this includes Quantum Theory), provisional. The fact that a theory gives good (sometimes amazingly good) quantitatively applicable results doesn't mean that the theory, the model, is actually correct. Newtonian gravitational theory gives very good approximations in quantitative terms, but currently it's regarded as somewhat inaccurate in light of the Einsteinian model, which latter will quite possibly be amended or even, who knows, discarded. "Shut up and calculate" is a good way of suppressing dissent.
For me, a mistake that many scientists make is to take current models as representations of reality as it actually is. I'm not saying that you do, at least in some cases, but at a certain point, the utility of science can't, in the light of incoming empirical evidence, maintain the model. If science attempts to do so, it can become a science stopper: new empirical findings, if they run counter to expectations, may be dismissed. If they were taken on board, they might lead to actual progress. It's a balancing act, I'll grant you that, but knee-jerk hostility to things that challenge the status quo is a big problem.
Re controversies: Cowan claims germ theory is wrong. I think I have shown that he is full of shit.
How very eloquent and expansively explanatory that remark is! Actually, you haven't shown that. You've done a lot of hand-waving, used strawman arguments and a few dubious analogies, but you haven't even really tried to convince anyone of much that is specific. Could that be because you can't?
I'll stop there. You know, we used to have a guy come on this forum who reminds me of you -- he went by the soubriquet of "The Ethical Sceptic." He always used a lot of obscurantist terminology, so that few if any could grok what he said. Maybe he knew what he was talking about, and maybe he didn't, but whatever, I doubt much of what he said made much of an impact here. Be careful that you don't also end up being habitually disregarded.