How ‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt Science Especially in climate and Covid research, abuse of peer review and self-censorship abound. Allysia Finley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-preapproved-narratives-corrupt-science-false-studies-covid-climate-change-5bee0844?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Scientists were aghast last month when Patrick Brown, climate director at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, Calif., acknowledged that he’d censored one of his studies to increase his odds of getting published. Credit to him for being honest about something his peers also do but are loath to admit.

In an essay for the Free Press, Mr. Brown explained that he omitted “key aspects other than climate change” from a paper on California wildfires because such details would “dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.” Editors of scientific journals, he wrote, “have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives.”

Nature’s editor, Magdalena Skipper, denied that the journal has “a preferred narrative.” No doubt the editors at theNew York Times and ProPublica would say the same of their own pages.

Mr. Brown’s criticisms aren’t new. In 2005 Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote an essay titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” He contended that scientists “may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings.”

“The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true,” Dr. Ioannidis argued. “Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure.”

In addition, many scientists use the peer-review process to suppress findings that challenge their own beliefs, which perpetuates “false dogma.” As Dr. Ioannidis explained, the more scientists there are in a field, the more competition there is to get published and the more likely they are to produce “impressive ‘positive’ results” and “extreme research claims.”

The same dynamic applies to Covid research. A July study in the Journal of the American Medical Association purported to find higher rates of excess deaths among Republican voters in Florida and Ohio after vaccines had been rolled out. Differences in partisan vaccination attitude, the study concluded, may have contributed to the “severity and trajectory of the pandemic.”

But the study lacked information on individuals’ vaccination and cause of death. It also didn’t adjust for confounding variables, such as underlying health conditions and behaviors. Charts buried in the study’s appendix showed excess deaths among older Republicans started to exceed Democrats in mid-2020—well before vaccines were available.

Despite these flaws, the study was published and pumped by left-wing journalists because it promoted their preferred narrative. The peer-review process is supposed to flag problems in studies that get submitted to journals. But as Dr. Ioannidis explained in a Sept. 22 JAMA editorial, the process is failing: “Many stakeholders try to profit from or influence the scientific literature in ways that do not necessarily serve science or enhance its benefits to society.” Those “stakeholders” include the scientific journals themselves, which he notes have among the highest profit margins of any industry—by some estimates, about 40%.

Journals often don’t compensate peer reviewers, which can result in perfunctory work. The bigger problem is that reviewers often disregard a study’s flaws when its conclusions reinforce their own biases. One result is that “a large share of what is published may not be replicable or is obviously false,” Dr. Ioannidis notes. “Even outright fraud may be becoming more common.”

Donald Trump’s Fraud Trial in New York Is this a case about inflated asset values or partisan politics? Yes.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-new-york-fraud-trial-arthur-engoron-letitia-james-49ef3200?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

New York’s civil fraud trial against Donald Trump and his business empire started Monday in a Manhattan courtroom, and the great shame is that he and state Attorney General Letitia James can’t both lose. In comments at the courthouse, Mr. Trump called it a “witch hunt,” and he has a point. Yet the investigation also seems to have caught some typical Trumpian deception.

Judge Arthur Engoron granted partial summary judgment to the state last week, ruling that Mr. Trump presented grossly inflated financial figures to lenders. This is “not a matter of rounding errors or reasonable experts disagreeing,” he wrote. Mr. Trump’s famed triplex residence in Trump Tower is 10,996 square feet, but he repeatedly claimed 30,000 square feet.

“Defendants absurdly suggest that ‘the calculation of square footage is a subjective process that could lead to differing results,’” the judge added. “Well yes, perhaps, if the area is rounded or oddly shaped,” but “good-faith measurements could vary by as much as 10-20%, not 200%. A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”

The ruling goes on for pages like this: Despite four appraisals pegging his Seven Springs estate at $30 million or less, Mr. Trump claimed it was worth $261 million. He valued apartments in New York as if their rents weren’t regulated. His figures for several golf clubs “included a 15% or 30% ‘premium’ based on the ‘Trump brand,’” according to the judge, even while lenders were told no such premium was added.

Palestinians Steal Water From Palestinians, Then Blame Israel by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20006/palestinians-steal-water

“Yesterday there was an enforcement activity in the Idna area near Hebron during which four illegal water wells were sealed. The water wells, which were drilled in violation of the interim agreement [with the Palestinians], damage the natural water reserves and pose a pollution threat to the aquifer [the source of water supplied to both Palestinian and Jewish communities]. The enforcement action was carried out in accordance with the jurisdiction authority and established protocols.” — Israeli authorities, July 27, 2023.

“Additionally, there were approximately 2,500 instances during those years in which Israeli authorities disconnected illegal connections to existing water infrastructure.” — NGO Monitor, October 2021.

The “illegal connections” included wells and pipes in the West Bank to illegally divert the water elsewhere, thereby stealing water that Israel had intended for both Israelis and Palestinians.

In 2018, the Israel Water Authority identified 77 Palestinian illegal well-diggings in the West Bank. During the same year, Israeli authorities arrested 25 Palestinians on suspicion of stealing water and disconnected 1,457 illegal connections to water mains. Some Palestinians also reportedly drilled holes in water mains to divert water.

“Without this activity [by the Israeli authorities], the water supply would have been significantly disrupted,” the Israeli Water Authoroity said. The following year, Israeli authorities discovered another 58 illegal water wells and confiscated ten well- drilling machines.

The Palestinians’ actions are in violation of the “Water Agreement” that is part of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (“Oslo II”) of September 18, 1995 (Annex 3, Appendix 1, Article 40), which stipulates the manner in which the parties must act in the field of water in the West Bank. This is an international agreement that was not only signed by Israel and the Palestinians, but also witnessed by the US, Russia, the European Union, Norway, Jordan and Egypt. According to the Oslo II accord: “Each side shall take all necessary measures to prevent any harm, pollution, or deterioration of water quality of the water resources.”

[T]he Israelis and Palestinians agreed in 1995 to establish a Joint Water Committee to deal with all water and sewage issues, including protection of water resources. The Palestinian Authority, however, decided to boycott the committee after the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000.

According to a 2017 report from Israel’s State Comptroller, the Palestinian Authority prevented the committee from convening for seven years. The report noted that the reason for the Palestinian boycott was to hinder the development of water infrastructure for Israeli communities in the West Bank. Instead, the Palestinian boycott severely hindered the development of water infrastructure for the Palestinians and created a massive blockage of projects, including several waste-treatment facilities.

While Israel has fulfilled its obligations according to the “Water Agreement,” the Palestinians have continuously breached the accord. Israel made available approximately 70 million cubic meters (MCM) a year of water to the Palestinians in the West Bank before they boycotted the Joint Water Committee, even though the agreement allocates a much smaller quantity of only 23.6 MCM/year for the West Bank.

The Palestinians have also failed to treat their sewage, which flows freely into streams flowing through the West Bank and Israel, thereby contaminating both the environment and the Mountain Aquifer for everyone.

RFK Jr. as Independent Would Propel Trump to Deliver Crushing Blow RFk Jr. could announce on October 9 By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/01/rfk-jr-as-independent-would-propel-trump-to-deliver-crushing-blow/

So it looks as if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is just about to turn up the volume. It was bad enough for the Democratic establishment when he announced he was going to run for President on the Democratic ticket. Didn’t he know that The Committee already had its heir and a couple of spares, none of whom was named Kennedy? “Look at your poll numbers, Bro. Even against a senile and visibly failing puppet you are trailing by 50 or 60 points. Give it up now before you embarrass yourself further!”

No such luck. It seems that Kennedy is in for the duration. A couple of days ago rumors started circulating that he would soon announce that he was going to run as an independent. Several sources put the magic day as October 9.

As I have said elsewhere, I think Kennedy and Vivek Ramaswamy are—or at least were—the most interesting things to happen in the early stage of this campaign. Both are ferociously articulate. Both have lots of ideas. And neither is named “Trump,” the kiss of death among uniparty factota, Republican as well as Democratic.

According to my astrolabe, the glitter has dissipated somewhat from Ramaswamy. He is powerfully glib, has put forth many good policy ideas, but often seems like a reincarnation of the Energizer Bunny—if not, it pains me to say, that character in Humbolt’s Gift whom Saul Bellow described  as “smooth as a suppository.”

In any event, I suspect that Ramaswamy’s presidential prospects, certainly for 2024, are gibbous waning.

And Kennedy? It’s hard to say. I like his forthrightness. And the fact that Wikipedia, that reliably left-wing fount of approved ideas, castigates him as someone who is “known for advocating anti-vaccine misinformation and public health-related conspiracy theories” tends rather to endear him to me than otherwise. I disagree with Kennedy quite strenuously about many things—the second Amendment, for example, the climate, taxes, and some of what he has said about vaccination. But the fact that he has, as Wikipedia sniffs, “targeted prominent figures such as Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and Joe Biden” I regard as a public service.

Lee Smith:High-Level Iranian Spy Ring Busted in Washington The trail that leads from Tehran to D.C. passes directly through the offices of Robert Malley and the International Crisis Group

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-spy-ring-robert-malley-lee-smith

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

On Thursday, Maier told a congressional committee that the Defense Department is “actively looking into whether all law and policy was properly followed in granting my chief of staff top secret special compartmented information.”

The emails, which were exchanged over a period of several years between Iranian regime diplomats and analysts, show that Tabatabai was part of a regime propaganda unit set up in 2014 by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. The Iran Experts Initiative (IEI) tasked operatives drawn from Iranian diaspora communities to promote Iranian interests during the clerical regime’s negotiations with the United States over its nuclear weapons program. Though several of the IEI operatives and others named in the emails have sought to portray themselves on social media as having engaged with the regime in their capacity as academic experts, or in order to promote better understanding between the United States and Iran, none has questioned the veracity of the emails.

The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

Diversity, Division, Disintegration By Peter J. Sandys

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/diversity_division_disintegration.html

What is wrong with the U.S.? What is wrong with the Western world? Indeed, they are coming apart.

The terms “racist,” “racism,” and “hate” are now commonplace charges and allegations in political discourse and the sphere of public opinion where whites are called to ceremonially denounce the “white privilege” into which they were born.

The destiny of migrants illegally crossing the southern borders of the U.S. and the European Union is to replace white Americans and Europeans. As the ongoing invasion continues, native-born white Americans and Europeans have practically stopped reproducing themselves. Any such voluntary downturn in the birth rate has always been a sign of internal agony, collapse of society, social upheaval, and decaying civilization.

The question to which the rendering of the old fabricated answer, i.e., “diversity is our greatest strength,” has never been adequate: Is there no limit to the racial, religious, ideological, political, social, cultural, and ethnic diversity America can accommodate before it splinters into its parts?

Diversifying religious teachings leads to incompatible, opposing viewpoints about morality on the most divisive social issues of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc. Racial diversity and population exchange are enhancing and sharpening problems that have never been solved since the birth of the United States. In a few short years, white Americans will belong to racial minorities—the apparent goal of the ruling globalists.

Paying Iranian Terrorists Billions in Ransom What’s the going rate for an American hostage these days? by David Harsanyi

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paying-iranian-terrorists-billions-in-ransom/

The going rate for an American hostage these days is around $1.3 billion. That’s what the Biden administration paid out for five Americans in a prisoner swap with the Islamic Republic of Iran this week. And with little overhead, it’s mostly profit for the mullahs.

But don’t let the term “prisoner swap” insinuate that there is any moral equivalence. These are not two normal countries trading spies or combatants. No, this is just old-fashioned extortion.

The Iranians released political hostages, snatched off the streets of Tehran after unwisely returning to visit family or attending funerals or protests. Many of them were reportedly thrown into the notorious Evin Prison for the crime of having dual citizenship. Some, like Siamak Namazi, were put in solitary confinement for over two years.

Conversely, the United States released a bunch of spies, most of them caught trying to send military and nuclear equipment back to Iran — all of them given the benefit of due process.

Having a moral imperative to retrieve American citizens from these fascist regimes is admirable. Incentivizing more kidnappings is not. So, it’s one thing for the Biden administration to contend, “we did what he had to do” and quite another for them to celebrate as if they had just signed the Peace of Westphalia.

Last week, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted out a triumphant picture of the Biden team and the released hostages, writing, “seven Americans on their way home from Iran alongside a world class group of American diplomats.”

The fact that Iran, a far weaker state with little leverage, walks away with its spies and $6 billion in sanctioned cash in exchange for five innocent people does not strike me as a great diplomatic coup … at least not for the United States.

Prophetess of Climate Propaganda Meet Agnes Walton – a professional in playing down the facts and playing up the feelings. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/prophetess-of-climate-propaganda/

Her name is Agnes Walton, and in her environmental fanaticism she makes Greta Thunberg look half-hearted and Al Gore look irresolute. Let’s start with her 2017 video for HBO’s VICE News Tonight, in which she noted that “more than half of all consumer goods” contain palm oil – often labeled on packaging as “vegetable oil” or “vegetable fat” – and, over images of trees being felled and cute animals running for their lives, claimed that the growth of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia was causing “massive deforestation,” “killing the rainforest,” and “driving forest species to the brink of extinction.”

Only one country, Walton said, had “taken on the industry.” That country would be Norway, where, she explained, the entire population boycotted palm oil products; consequently, the substance was removed from all Norwegian food products. (I live in Norway, but somehow I entirely missed this people’s crusade.) Since Norway’s population is so small, alas, this glorious local success “didn’t put a dent in the global market.” The only answer, then, instructed Walton, is for the rest of the world to follow Norway’s example prontissimo – or consider itself responsible for a genocide of both flora and fauna.

Or check out Walton’s video editorial from August of last year. In this one, produced for the New York Times, Walton warned of another existential dilemma: American lawns, which, she solemnly asserted, “are damaging our planet, ruining our health, and wasting our time.” Maintaining them depletes precious water and involves the use of dangerous fertilizers. And why should we want lawns, anyway? Walton flashed an image of the Stars and Stripes, and another of a wholesome-looking traditional white family (mom, dad, two sons) standing behind a white picket fence – thereby linking lawns to those two appalling phenomena, the American dream and middle-class suburban life.

Chicago Armed Robbers on an Extraordinary Rampage: ‘Everyone Is so Freaked Out’ By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2023/10/01/chicago-armed-robbers-on-an-extraordinary-rampage-everyone-is-so-freaked-out-n1731381

Chicago’s criminal class is feeling a little left out these days. They’re envious of all the smash-and-grab looters that are operating out west. So Chicago’s criminals decided to go the looters one better.

In a shocking series of armed robberies throughout the city, thieves have developed new tactics that allow them to hit a dozen or more unsuspecting victims on the street and disappear before the police can scoop them up.

The robbers use stolen cars and hit specific neighborhoods, accosting people and taking their valuables while brandishing automatic weapons in their faces.

One such spree included two armed thieves hitting two discount stores and robbing employees and then stealing wallets and other items from pedestrians on the street,

The police captured one of the crooks by sheer happenstance when a citizen called in a report of two men running from a stolen Kia. But this is a “drop in the bucket,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

In the days before and after those robberies, waves of other stickups were happening around the city, including a driver accosted by rifle-toting teens as he was unloading his car in Bucktown, a woman carjacked at gunpoint in Rogers Park, students walking near DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus and a bar worker mugged after leaving work in the West Loop.

While armed robberies are nothing new in Chicago, a disturbing new pattern has emerged in recent months where crews of robbers — many of them juveniles — toting high-powered weapons go on crime sprees, robbing or carjacking multiple victims in a matter of minutes, often using stolen cars and dressed head to toe in black.

They seem to be constantly one step ahead of authorities. Before police can even respond to one scene, more have popped up, leaving dozens upon dozens of victims in their wake.

Never Mind Those Hordes of Military-Aged Chinese Men With the Same Clothing, Haircuts, and Tattoos Swarming Our Southern Border By Kevin Downey Jr.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/09/29/never-mind-those-hordes-of-military-aged-chinese-men-with-the-same-clothing-haircuts-and-tattoos-swarming-our-southern-border-n1730993

Experts believe that more than seven million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since *President Biden occupied the White House.The apparatchiks in the Pravda Press downplay the situation by assuring us the invaders are “families,” even though most of the videos we see are of single, military-aged men, frequently from Venezuela.

But the most onerous onslaught at our northern and southern borders is the disturbing number of single, military-aged Chinese men and women finding their way into our country and disappearing once they get in.

FACT-O-RAMA! Between January and March of 2022, 71 Chinese individuals crossed the Darien Gap, the strip of land that connects North and South America, the route preferred by the Chinese. During the same time frame this year, 2,200 made the journey. You can see a video of young, Chinese nationals lining up for buses in Panama headed for the U.S.

Why would Chinese nationals fly into Panama and make a seemingly arduous voyage to our southern border? According to Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, who filmed Chinese people lining up for a seat on a U.S.-bound bus, they aren’t able to simply fly in and wait for their visas to expire like they did in the good old days.

“This would be for people who can’t fly into the U.S. directly,” Rubin told Fox News. So what they do is they get on a flight, and they fly into some South American country. Then from there, they would go to Colombia, they would go across the jungle, pop out in Panama, and then they would head up to the United States. But this is going to be for people that can’t fly into the U.S. directly. You’d rather just fly into the U.S. and overstay your visa. This is for people that don’t have that access for whatever reason.”