Well, I don't watch any "news" on TV (I assume that's what you're referring to there) and IMO most of it will give you a very distorted view of reality. It is mostly propaganda masquerading as journalism...especially when it comes to any major stories or issues. It is almost all sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry which accounts for the extreme bias in any and all types of medical science "reporting" you will get from them.
Yes, of course it is. Who said anything about food fighting? I only said the political aspect of how science operates has become unavoidable...IMO.
No, I'm not speaking from first hand experience, just from years of reading and listening to interviews with scientists. Too much to get into here, but in a nutshell, in all or nearly all areas of the modern scientific "establishment" there is an orthodoxy that exerts much control over what gets funded and/or published and what's in the textbooks.
Of course this is supposedly done to safeguard the integrity of the scientific process, but there has been an abundance of evidence over the years that this is often not the case and it seems to keep getting worse. Much of the "orthodox" views do not hold up to scrutiny, and a lot of what they are excluding is valid data but when it challenges the dogma that they claim is "settled science" it is typically ignored or censored.
You are in the majority with that view...so I'm well used to it. We can just agree to disagree. I'll just say that there are countless books and white papers and interviews challenging your perspective. The comment that was made here about secrets can't be kept because people would talk is mostly true...but the thing is, people have been talking, and writing, for decades on these subjects...much of the "secrets" have not been kept...it's just that most people dismiss them out of hand because it doesn't fit their world view. Good investigative reporting is critical...but you won't find it anywhere in the big corporate news anymore.
I always say the search for truth is mostly a process of elimination...it's usually easier to determine what is not true than what is...especially if you're an "ordinary" citizen and don't have investigative powers or resources. Most "official" narratives on major subjects are so full of holes and contradictions and impossibilities it's laughable...acknowledging that is the first step.
A final comment is that it's amusing to me how people react to anything they perceive to be "conspiracy theory". They seem to think those are magic words that can be used as an immediate blanket dismissal of any information. As Paul Simon said, "a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest". Conspiracies are nothing more than organized crime...and these OC networks operate both within and atop governments and corporations...always have and always will...this is not theory...this has been well documented throughout history.
I think this discussion has run its course. I’ve reached this same stage in conversation with people before. You said mine is the majority view, but I’m not sure if that’s the case. I feel like a lonely voice in the wilderness sometimes.
I would just ask, from what privileged vantage point do you criticize the media? You draw conclusions based on your exposure to some part of the information ecosystem. Is there some pure domain, free of self-interested actors? For my part, I don’t watch NFL football,
and I have no opinion on it. I’m sure it exists to sell advertising, but I wouldn’t be so hubristic as to draw conclusions about its content without observing it for myself. Yet you say you don’t watch TV news,
and it’s all corrupt etc etc. I’m very sceptical of opinions in general,
including my own, because I can only ever have access to partial information. This is true for every human. So I find it’s not a good idea to paint any domain of society with too broad a brush. FYI, I can watch PBS Newshour or NBC Nightly News without having my brain corrupted and immediately running out to buy Viagra. I also have access to CBC, BBC World, Al Jazeera, NPR, RT, The Guardian, The Atlantic, etc. etc. Anyway, we have very different perspectives. I’m a Canadian and when I watch American media, it’s from the outside looking in. In Canada, pharmaceutical companies aren’t allowed to market their products directly to the public. Only doctors are allowed to do that. And not TV doctors.
Real doctors. In America, you have more freedom I suppose. That’s a double edged sword, it would seem.
I also listen to Podcasts. A good one is “Decoding the Gurus”, where they at least
try to cut through all the bullshit. I’m drawn to conspiracy theories and broad social critiques just like anyone else. It’s nice to think there’s a coherent way of explaining and understanding what the fuck is going on, or that at least someone (obviously way smarter than me) has it all figured out. There are so many problems including the gerontocracy, the oligarchy, the replication crisis in science, “credentialing” in higher education, and just generally the erosion of institutions and social cohesion. Rupert Sheldrake claims the speed of light is not a constant and physicist have been covering up that fact for decades! I don’t doubt it. There are
definitely conspiracies out there, and corruption of all kinds. But a
conspiracy theory isn’t the same thing as a
conspiracy, any more than an opinion is the same thing as a fact.
) require them to do research in order to stay employed—this is one reason why so many profs no longer have time for their students and their lectures are subpar: because most of their time is consumed by writing papers and they must employ teaching assistants. Under this premise, scientists cannot report research results that will offend or make their grant-givers look bad. If the results have to be cooked, so be it, after all WHO is really gonna read the paper beyond the abstract??