Timothy Birdnow

Here is a feel-good story which also acts as a cautionary tale about trusting experts" over one's own judgment. A young man became very ill and remained so for years. Eventually his doctors ran out of ideas and tried to move him into psychiatry, on the theory it was a psychiatric problem and not physical. Well, this fellow (a fellow St. Louisan) began doing his own research and eventually discovered not only what was wrong with him but invented his own surgery to cure him of the problem. And it worked.

The story is too long and winding to excerpt; please read the article.

It is a cautionary tale about over-reliance on experts. This guy would have died had he simply accepted the medical profession's opinions. But he didn't.

My older brother Brian had a thing called pyloric stenosis when he was a child. He was the second born, and my mother was told by the pediatrician (who had a reputation for being a top guy in his field) that it couldn't be that because "that only affects first born". Well, my father had had it, and HE was also a second son. Eventually my mother lost her temper with the doctor and he relented saying "I think we have a nervous mother" but put Brian in for tests. Well, they did an emergency surgery on him shortly after he was brought in, and said had they waited he would have died. So, I almost lost a brother because an expert was wrong.

This brings to mind the whole global warming issue. I have been fighting with Alarmists on Facebook for the last week now, and invariably it comes to "I trust science" by my antagonists, who assume that "the science is settled" because an expert tells them it is so. I point out that the "consensus" is nothing of the sort, and explain how that was based n two rather dubious studies, one by an historian and another by a communications professor, and that the latter was a questionaire which asked if the climate was changing and if Man had anything to do with it. Naturally the answer was yes to both, so John Cook, the author of the study, got the answer he wanted. Oh, and he only sent out 1100 of these questionaires. And how many busy scientists - without an ax to grind - just threw them away? The former - a survey of peer reviewed papers by Naomi Oreskes - concluded no papers disputed global warming. Well, she was looking for a bald conclusion in the paper's abstract saying "no global warming". How often does that happen? and let us not forget the pressure being put on editors and the like to not publish "denier" research. We know this is happening; the "hockey team" in the Climategate e-mails proved there was collusion in that regard.

But these people who I am arguing with don't want to hear it. They also don't want to hear about the Oregon Petition, which has 31,000 signers.

What they DO want is to believe "scientists" uncritically. They want this in ]black and white. The very marginal nature of what is being analyzed escapes them. But, like this fellow in the story above, or like my brother, a healthy dose of skepticism could possibly save a life or two. It certainly will prevent a terrible tragedy in the global warming business as the world is about to horribly impoverish itself if decarbonization schemes are implemented, and the poor in the Third World will suffer the most. People will die, of starvation, of bad water, lack of medicine, etc. It is completely unnecessary, but it will happen if the Gang Green gets it's way. And they'll only get their way if people stop thinking for themselves and become obedient.

At any rate, do read the entire story; it's a wonderful testament to the human spirit.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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