Articles

Brownstone Journal Articles, News, Research, and Commentary on public health, science, economics, & social theory

Brownstone » Articles » Page 191
Science is

Science Is Not to Be Trusted

By / / , , / 20 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Science is not a belief system, so it’s not something to be trusted. Science is a social process which anyone can join, it is a conversation with evidence to be examined, discussed, questioned, and tested. Science is not limited to Ivory Towers and people with PhDs. Anyone, no matter how anonymous or weird they are (in our idiosyncratic views of “weird”), can examine a paper, question some results, discuss them, and change our perspectives. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

Science Is Not to Be Trusted Continue Reading

gordian knot

How to Cut Through the New Gordian Knots

By / / , / 13 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

We can forget about seemingly simple fixes, like giving politicians the right to fire civil servants on the spot. Besides, giving clueless and corrupted politicians yet more power is not going to make matters better. Real reform will have to be dramatic, and it will come about only in dramatic circumstances.

How to Cut Through the New Gordian Knots Continue Reading

Covid Response Museum

The Covid Response Museum

By / / / 4 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The target inauguration date for the museum is March 25, 2023, which is the third anniversary of mass incarceration of one-sixth of humanity, i.e. India’s first lockdown. To start, the museum will be online. We also encourage people to setup physical museums using the material from this website, under creative commons license: free to share with attribution.

The Covid Response Museum Continue Reading

bureaucratic doublespeak

Bureaucratic Doublespeak Gets People Killed 

By / / / 11 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Orwell argues that these language patterns destroy truth and beauty and clarity; they cloud thinking and collapse culture with their obfuscations. When reading or listening to such speech, we find ourselves mired in the muck of sloppy language that confuses, disorients, and depresses, and in the extreme, such language gets people killed, because if we don’t question it, allow it to frustrate and anger us, it lulls and numbs our minds.

Bureaucratic Doublespeak Gets People Killed  Continue Reading

freedom is the answer

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer

By / / , / 4 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Lest the crowd that has long been properly anti-lockdown forgets, pathogens are as old as mankind is. Since they are, the accenting of where they come from is to completely miss the point. Instead, the always and everywhere expressed view should be that reality should not be used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our freedom. Freedom is precious, and authoritarians can’t have it regardless of a pathogen’s origin or its presumed lethality.

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer Continue Reading

sanitation

The Sanitation Power Does Not Permission Tyranny

By / / , / 6 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The enlargement of the term sanitation beyond its vernacular meaning is fraught with danger. Indeed, it threatens to undermine all the achievements of public health over a century. Perhaps, then, it stands to reason that the CDC, which got so much wrong during the pandemic, would now be trying to convince us that a power designed to protect us from foreign disease-carrying rubbish would entitle them to make us cover up our faces and inhibit our ability to breath or communicate through non-verbal signals. 

The Sanitation Power Does Not Permission Tyranny Continue Reading

far-right

“Far-Right” – The N-word of Politics 

By / / / 7 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

When the facts are not with them, they have few options other than resorting to ad hominem attacks – and no such attack better fits the false inference of ill-intended opposition to state action than “far-right.” By the same token, no attack better fits the purposes of state actors with an interest in containing a minority opinion that threatens to expose their designs. 

“Far-Right” – The N-word of Politics  Continue Reading

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

By / / , , , / 12 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Interventions rooted in panic, driven by political machinations, and using all the levers of state power to terrify citizens and muzzle critics in the end needlessly killed massive numbers of the most vulnerable while putting the vast low-risk majority under house arrest. The benefits are questionable but the harms are increasingly obvious. The Johnson government in general and Hancock in particular revalidate Lord Acton’s astute observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts Continue Reading

masks ineffective

Cochrane Ends the Masking Rage 

By / / / 8 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Even before the pandemic, the best available evidence – randomized controlled trials – already showed that masks are ineffective in containing respiratory viral transmission. Additional RCTs conducted during the pandemic support this conclusion. Therefore, the best available evidence does not support even the recommendation of wearing masks, let alone making them compulsory. 

Cochrane Ends the Masking Rage  Continue Reading

Join the Brownstone Community
Get our FREE Journal Newsletter