Wednesday 11 March 2015

Peer Reviewed Research: The Holy Grail of Truth?

"It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so." ~C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man


I've read once that when Harvard University was founded back in 1636, its original mandate was to be "Protectors of the Truth." Back in those days, Western Civilization had a clear concept of Absolute Truth because most of its citizens were Christian and many of its customs and laws were based directly upon the Bible. 

Pretty much all civilizations that have ever existed have had a religion at its base or in its historical founding. What religions tend to do is make a large group of people more "functionable" because they all share the same belief system. For example: Driving on the left-hand side of the road or the right-hand side doesn't really matter - both sides are equally valid in every way. What does matter, however, is that everyone understands which side of the road is the "correct" side to drive on. Without such "moral values," the road system just wouldn't work. It doesn't really matter which religion it is in this functional sense and it's for this reason that when anthropologists and archaeologists study a culture they focus so heavily on trying to understand their religion - it reveals much of the culture's structure and helps explaining its history, its laws, its traditions, and so forth. 

The reason why Atheists, despite all their allegiances to science, have never created a successful civilization (it's not like this is the first time abolishing God has been thought up!), is because they are ignoring the scientific facts presented to them: 

"If God did not exist, it would be neccessary to invent him." -- Voltaire

We obviously can't decide "which side of the road to drive on" completely of our own volition - that each side of the road is equally valid and therefore it is of no consequence. No matter how smart you think you are! We must all follow the same system or it just doesn't "work." Religions do this to large parts of the human population. Richard Dawkins does not.

Western Civilization obviously has Christianity and the Bible as its core founding religion and it's for this reason I often will refer to Biblical concepts. In order to study our own culture and what has happened to us over the decades, centuries and millenia, we must start at our culture's founding religion. This is not an attempt to be a "Christian apologist" or to try and convince you to go to church twice on Sundays. I only go to church for weddings and funerals myself and if we were studying a culture from the East, we'd probably be focusing on Buddhism or whatever religion that culture adhered to. In fact, it is from this very observance about how religions form cultures - and sometimes great civilizations (while other times not) - that we can start to map out a "blue-print" for what it takes to create a successful culture. For example - What features were present in Greece and Rome that helped them build such magnificent civilizations, while so many ancient African and North American cultures remained at what was essentially the Hunter-Gatherer stage?

Well, one significant feature of Western Civilization is its philosophical attachment to Absolute Truth through the Bible and its mono-theistic God, or, One Truth. The authority of the Bible, for example, was used to reign in the power of the king with the signing of the Magna Carta. Not even the king with his "divine right" could contradict the Bible. This concept of Absolute Truth in Western Civilization was present right from its beginnings up until the early 19th Century, when G.F. Hegel's "Hegelian Dialectic" philosophically over-threw it. 

Back in the first section of this chapter, we discussed how John Locke and the American Founding Fathers had an "ordering of the Truth." It was based upon the Bible and went like this:

1 - God's Law/Absolute Truth
2 - Natural Law/Objective Truth
3 - Civil Law/Subjective Truth

Hegel's dialectic, however, posited that "The Truth is Relative." What he did was make all three of the above truths "subjective truths," or the lowest and least to be revered of the truths as put forth by Locke. 

Therefore, we can see what was meant when Harvard University was originally mandated to be "Protectors of the Truth" back in 1636 - they were to protect the higher truths from being torn down by lower truths. Further, we can understand how by 2005, Larry Summers was forced to resign as the President of Harvard University for merely speaking the Truth (let alone protecting it): That there are innate differences between the sexes. 

Now, let me ask you, if the president of the most prestigious university in the Western Hemisphere cannot speak the Truth about gender without getting so much grief that he must resign his post, what chance do you think either you or I have of getting the Truth from that university's studies, or for that matter, from all the less prestigious institutions of "higher learning" that have created the modern body of work on "gender?" If you were a researcher where people higher up the chain of power than you lose their job for making mere politically incorrect - yet truthful - remarks, would you really risk requesting a research grant "to find out the Truth" about a particularly unpopular subject? (Here's a good example: Lynched by the Sisterhood by Jeffrey Archer)

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think all studies and research should be thrown out and ignored. Often times I will refer to this study or that study throughout the following pages - but they should always be taken with a grain of salt and sifted through for what is true and what is, quite frankly, bullshit. 

However, it would be foolhardy to simply assume that because a study has been "peer-reviewed" that it is unquestionably and reliably "the truth," because academia no longer encourages the free thinking that lends credibility to peer reviewed research! Even the so-called STEM subjects are incredibly infected with politically correct thinking. We may as well be living in Nazi Germany and asking a Jew to prove he is discriminated against by only using Nazi Reviewed Research. 

Reason, commonsense, mankind's natural curiosity and desire for the truth should always trump academic research. In fact, over the years I have found so much faked research used for activist and propaganda purposes, that it motivated me to start seeking answers on the subject of "the sexes" from other sources - like ancient history, religion, myth, and those dastardly misogynists of old.

There is really only one example that needs to be given for why "peer reviewed research" has absolutely zero credibility in the issues of which we speak and write of.

http://masculineprinciple.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-suffragettes-versus-truth.html
Click Pic for "The Suffragettes versus The Truth"
The fundamental basis of feminism is that "gender is a social construct;" that we are based upon "tabula rasa," the Latin for "blank slate." It is upon this foundation that all else of feminism's ideology and victimology is based upon. Since we are essentially the same, the only reason that women did not figure prominently in history, or science, or music, or philosophy, or pretty much anything else, is because of the innately evil and misogynistic nature of men (which already refutes tabula rasa in itself). Therefore, women are institutionally discriminated against by the very fabric of civilization and society itself, thus affirmative action and breaking down gender barriers is completely justified.
http://masculineprinciple.blogspot.ca/2015/03/marriage-20-versus-civil-unions-and.html
Click Pic for "The Family Plot: The Future (Civil Unions & Shared Parenting)"
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However, walking across the hall in our ivory towered institutions, we can attend courses in Queer Theory where the fundamental basis for it all is that homosexuality is a normal, biological condition - that gays are "born that way." This is 100% the opposite of feminism's fundamental premise of "gender is a social construct." Queer Theory argues that since their LGBT "gender" is natural and biologically based, they are therefore discriminated against by virtue of their birth, and suffer socially and in numerous other ways because of something over which they had no ability to control.

ThumbnailTake your pick. If you support gay rights you are a cretin of a misogynist - a sexist, really, for believing that the sexes are different by virtue of their birth. However, if you support women's rights and equality based upon the blank slate, you are a homophobe (a hate-crime in Canada), because then you'd also believe that gays could be "cured" of their homosexuality through laws and social conditioning in the same way that feminism has been trying to "cure" men of their masculinity for the past 50 years. I mean, if the male gender can be cured of its masculinity and made more feminine, why can't gays also be cured of their homosexuality and morphed into heterosexuals? Because, you know, equality.  

These two positions are 100% completely and irrefutably in direct opposition of each other. This is just simple common-sense. You cannot be walking east and west simultaneously. Yet, both Women's Studies and Queer Theory have panels of academics judging whether the studies each puts out are "the truth." In other words, they are both peer-reviewed and found to be satisfactorily representing the truth. Well, the truth cannot possibly be the same for both of them, so at minimum one of them must be completely wrong.      

Not only does the above example prove that something is wrong with academia's "truth,' but the idea of Evolution itself is incompatible with with the sexes being a "blank slate." In fact, scientifically speaking, the entire purpose of sexual reproduction is to create "a difference". The differences helps us overcome environmental adversity. If we did not need this difference, we would most likely be reproducing asexually.

Therefore, our universities are knowingly and willingly promoting falsehoods, and simply should not be trusted as reputable sources of "truth."

And I don't need a peer-reviewed study to prove it, do I?

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“‘This is not to be wondered at,’ said Goethe; ‘such people continue in error because they are indebted to it for their existence. They would have to learn everything over again, and that would be very inconvenient.

“‘But,’ said I, ‘how can their experiments prove the truth when the basis for their evaluation is false?’

“‘They do not prove the truth,’ said Goethe, ‘nor is such the intention; the only point with these professors is to prove their own opinion. On this account, they conceal all experiments that would reveal the truth and show their doctrine untenable. Then the scholars — what do they care for truth? They, like the rest, are perfectly satisfied if they can prate away empirically; that is the whole matter.’”-- quoted from Johann Peter Eckermann’s conversation with Goethe, Feb. 1, 1827.


http://masculineprinciple.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-masculine-principle-table-of.html

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Q: "... but has any researcher made a serious longitudinal study on this?"

A: "Maybe you should do a longitudinal study on the overall effectiveness of always depending on longitudinal studies."

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"Cigarette smoking has been shown to increase serum hemoglobin, increase total lung capacity and stimulate weight loss, factors that all contribute to enhanced performance in endurance sports. Despite this scientific evidence, the prevalence of smoking in elite athletes is actually many times lower than in the general population. The reasons for this are unclear; however, there has been little to no effort made on the part of national governing bodies to encourage smoking among athletes." – PLOS
 
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Did you know that Albert Einstein did much of the groundwork for the Theory of Relativity not while at a university, but rather while working at a patent office? He also got mediocre grades when he was in school.

Did you know that neither of the Wright Brothers graduated from high-school? Yet, they proved all of the academics of the day's "lift equation" to be, obviously, wrong. They also both never married. Smart men indeed!

Did you know that Thomas Edison was considered to have an "addled" brain because his mind wandered while in school? He likely would have been given Ritalin today. He was pulled out of formal schooling after three months and taught by his mother at home.

Did you know that Louis Pasteur was ridiculed by the medical community for his "Germ Theory" and suggesting that surgeons should wash their hands before cutting people open?

Did you know that the cure to scurvy was discovered in the early 1600's by Samuel de Champlain, when his ship was ice-locked for the winter and Indians brought the crew pine-needle tea which was rich in Vitamin C? When he told of "the cure" back in Europe, he was scoffed at by the intelligentsia for a cure from "savages." In 1753, James Lind first proved citrus could cure the disease through experiments he described in his book, A Treatise in the Scurvy, although, even then it took several decades for people to believe him and implement the use of citrus on ships. In fact, there were still a variety of other techniques the "intelligentsia" believed to be correct instead of Vitamin C, causing people to suffer and die from scurvy right through World War One and beyond, until it was definitively proven to be a vitamin C deficiency in 1932.  
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Did you know that in the past, before we had universities, the intelligentsia were mostly to be found in religious institutions such as the church or its monasteries? When we talk of the religious persecution of those such as Galileo, it is just as fair to claim the intelligentsia persecuted him (and other discoverers) as it is to claim religion did. In fact, you can see this phenomenon everywhere. Rarely does the intelligentsia discover anything or even really "do" anything except for defend their position, while adding little of significance to it, which real mavericks already paved the way for.

Academics have a vested interest in telling everyone that which they have learned is 100% correct, and discrediting all those opposed to them. After all, they tend to look really stupid when grade eight drop-outs demolish their beliefs after they've spent a decade of time, tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, and a lifetime of building a social reputation based on academic "achievements" which really, someone else achieved, and they only parrot and teach.
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Further Reading: 
Do We Need Gender Studies or Women's Studies Departments or Programmes? -- Science Files
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The Pursuit of Truth, Goodness and Beauty -- ROK

Can You Trust Academic Research? -- Angry Harry  

Major Medical Journal Retracts Numerous Scientific Papers After Fake Peer-Review Scandal
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http://masculineprinciple.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-masculine-principle-table-of.html
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