Facts, opinions, context and fact checkers.

Jason Mathias writes:

Is how Facebook defines fact checkers on its website, as follows:

“Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, Facebook significantly reduces the content’s distribution…we…apply a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article, disproving the claim.”

Facebook uses the term “disproving the claim.” Opinion? Sounds like a statement of fact? 

 

 
 
 

 

Citizen Irrelevant writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

Here is a link:  

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/01/01/fact-checkers-misinformation.aspx?ui=a86b90a4ffaeebc53e3db42bbfcd430377e1c43df6b46e3d1f0c91a96bd95275&sd=20211110&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20220101_HL2&mid=DM1080076&rid=1367350684

You made a couple of unfortunate typos in your original post : “out of contest”, i.e., out of context;  and then “deformation” where you intended “defamation”.  Those are significant errors so I thought it helpful to highlight the matter.

 

Jason Mathias writes:

[To Citizen Irrelevant]

Yes, I was typing too fast. Once I had time to read my comment it was too late to edit it. I think it only gives you 10min or so to edit the post. 

You might want to check your source though: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mercola/ Says your source is pseudoscience conspiracy. 

Citizen Irrelevant writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

That would amount to rechecking mbfc, as I did already in advance.  But I have also applied scrutiny to mbfs, and hold them in dim favor, as well.  I vastly prefer critical thinking to “factcheckers”, personally.  I feel reliance upon these sources may reflect one’s own underlying “confirmation-bias”; and when pressed in court, these domains all openly declare that the core of what they produce is “opinion”.

And the problem with that?  Opinion isn’t always the truth, as you know.

just an FYI footnote:  While faculty at Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, WA., I was chosen by admin to become the single Microsoft-certified “ Information Specialist” for the entire campus.  This experience taught me the importance of researching both sides of an issue, especially perhaps the POV I would feel personally repulsed by.  It is always beneficial to retain an open mind with these issues, in order to be certain you are arriving at your own conclusions.

This New Year may put all our best-applied logic to the test.

Jason Mathias writes:

[To Citizen Irrelevant]

"I vastly prefer critical thinking to “factcheckers”.

If that were the case then why did you present this as a false dilemma fallacy? Its not either critical thinking or fact checkers. Fact checkers are just one tool to be used amongst many when engaging in critical thinking, and we should not rely on just one tool. Fact checkers can be useful as they often provide links and evidence. They can be used in corroborating evidence to help make the best assessment.

"and when pressed in court, these domains all openly declare that the core of what they produce is “opinion”

That would be an appeal to authority fallacy, as well as framing it as another false dilemma fallacy. Its not just either fact or opinion, it can often be both. For example, the ratings like “pants on fire” is an opinion based rating because one could have also selected "false". The facts given in the fact check are still facts. It’s easy to tell the difference between fact and opinion, because they have very different definitions. Therefore, one can demonstrate with evidence if a statement is fact or opinion and they don't need FB to tell them that. What FB did was a legal strategy to be protected by the 1st amendments free speech. They could put both opinion and fact in their fact checkers and still have the fact check be accurate. 

Citizen Irrelevant writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

Forgive my tardiness in responding.  My wife had surgery on Monday, and I have just been too busy to reply.

I was not presenting a formal argument of any kind, Jason;  I thought I had made it clear I was simply stating my personal preferences?  To find “logical fallacies” propagating like so many randy rabbits amongst the sage brush of my words, may itself, be an example of what Bo has defined as “logic-chopping”? But I am sure you would not resort to equivocation of any sort;  I don’t know, I’m not very adept at these things…

I was not predicating a syllogism or advancing a definitive stance on the subject, nor indicating it had any boundaries or known barriers, but rather indicating to you my preferences , in as succinct a manner as I could manage ( had the surgery thing coming up the next day, so my cognitively-limited mind was fully preoccupied…).  I could not agree more with nearly everything you had to say, outside your incessant need to point out the poor logic roiling about at the center of my opinions, of course…

  “Litigation tactic” or not, at the end of the day the social media giant’s best & brightest had to retreat to the “free speech” defense.  It kind of reminds me of the time FOX News shocked the world by having to declare that what they create is meant as “entertainment”, not “news”.  

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have important work to do:  I have laundry to fold, something where unflawed reasoning will not raise its ugly head!  The life of a caregiver.

Cheers, mate!

Shawn writes:

This may not be much of a contribution to the discussion, but I am currently reading "Bad News: Why we fall for fake news" by Rob Brotherton. It provides some much-needed context for these types of discussions. 

Petra Liverani writes:

[To Shawn]

I wonder if Rob Brotherton referred to the fake news we were given at the start of the alleged pandemic in the form of people falling flat on their faces and laid out on the ground and on hospital floors and stories about hospitals being erected in 48 hours? If so, I wonder what his take on it was.

People laid out on the ground, person falling flat on face
https://twitter.com/rachadchahine/status/1220785179146563585

Man found dead in street
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-latest-china-wuhan-picture-man-outbreak-a9310846.html

China opens 1,000-bed coronavirus hospital after just 48 hours of construction
https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/29/china-opens-1000-bed-coronavirus-hospital-just-48-hours-construction-12142899/

 

Shawn writes:

[To Petra Liverani]

He did not talk about Covid at all in this book as the book was published just as the pandemic was beginning. 

See pbs.twimg.com/media/FH3Hj. . .

 

Petra Liverani writes:
[To Shawn]

Precisely.

Petra Liverani writes:

Factcheckers are funded by government and other interested parties so we can have no confidence, a priori, in what they claim in their fact checks. It's always up to us to work out the facts ourselves by applying our own critical thinking abilities and canvassing widely.

An egregious example of fact-checking by a so-called factchecker is that performed by PolitiFact on the article COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless in their post, COVID-19 tests are not ‘scientifically meaningless’, to which the article authors issued a resounding rebuttal, Open Letter: Refuting Politifact’s “fact check” ... that remains unresponded to by PolitiFact or any other factchecker or scientist.

Jason Mathias writes:

[To Petra Liverani]

Off-Guardian is rated as a "Strong conspiracy theory pseudoscience website." https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/offguardian/ 

While reading the Off-Guardian article you provided it does have some strong biased language which is a sign that raises red flags to me. And sites with such a poor rating also raise red flags to me regarding its accuracy. 

Claiming that the main test thats used by doctors and hospitals to diagnose Covid-19 is scientifically meaningless is an odd claim to make, especially by Off-Guarding which was created by a group of people who got kicked off of the Guardians free comment section. 

All the aligning evidence does show that Off-Guardians claim is most likely false. 

 

And fact checkers have transparent funding pages. I have never seen any government funding in there before? And even if it was, would that not be a genetic fallacy 

Petra Liverani writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

Jason, critical thinking requires engagement with the material itself not looking up what's said about the publisher of an article and dismissing a claim as "odd" without checking to see how the claim is backed up if it is. You must engage with the material.

My reading of the original article suggested to me that the claims it made were correct so - without realising that already an alleged debunking by PolitiFact had been written and responded to by the authors - I performed due diligence to see if credible criticism had been made of the article. I found the PolitiFact post and immediately I, as a layperson, could see that it had done a very poor job of debunking.

An example:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/07/blog-posting/covid-19-tests-are-not-scientifically-meaningless/

OffGuardian makes several other inaccurate claims in its article, including:
"There are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19." The CDC says otherwise.

PolitiFact simply puts a link to the page where the CDC has published symptoms with no analysis of that page but when you look at it it's clear that the CDC does not state there is a distinctive set of symptoms and simply lists a number of symptoms which may or may not be present and which also apply to other illnesses.

Massive factcheck fail.

That the alleged covid does not have a distinctive set of symptoms is of great significance because when you combine that fact with a PCR test that is a non-diagnostic test and the fact that covid "cases" do not necessarily involve a clinical diagnosis by a doctor and are simply based on a positive test result we can see that an alleged "case" of covid means very little.

PCR test packets say things such as:

"For Use Under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) Only"

"Positive results are indicative of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA; clinical correlation with patient history and other diagnostic information is necessary to determine patient infection status. Positive results do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease"

https://www.molecular.abbott/sal/RT_SARS-CoV-2_HCP_Fact_Sheet_51-605304.pdf

As further due diligence I approached fact-checkers and virologists for their response to another article published by the two authors of the article above (plus third co-author), Phantom Virus: In search of Sars-CoV-2. The response: zero. Interestingly, one factchecker I approached, sciencemag, had no trouble publishing a debunking of one of those who oppose the mainstream narrative, Judy Mikovits, but while some opposers of the mainstream narrative are easy to debunk because they talk rubbish (not that they did the best job really) others are not.

Jason Mathias writes:

[To Petra Liverani]

"Jason, critical thinking requires engagement with the material itself not looking up what's said about the publisher of an article and dismissing a claim as "odd" without checking to see how the claim is backed up if it is. You must engage with the material."

Yes, of course that is the case. Its not either critical thinking or fact checkers. Fact checkers are just one tool to be used amongst many when engaging in critical thinking, and we should not rely on just one tool. Fact checkers can be useful as they often provide links and evidence. They can be used in corroborating evidence to help make the best assessment.

It was my first step as a quick assessment as being gish galloped takes too much time to respond right away. There were 3 different links and Off-Guardian made a ton of scientific claims that would take a while to go through it all, especially for someone who is not in this field of scientific expertise. 

Look, claiming that PCR tests are scientifically meaningless is not true and is false and dangerously so. That Off-guardian article made false claims like about the inventor of the PCR. This article undermines public health safety by spreading dangerous misinformation. The information can be factual, but can be taken out of context. Therefore you can have factual premises, but false conclusions. 

Poltifact doesn't have to go into a deep analysis of every detail as it can just defer to the public health authorities about it. 

Think about what it is claiming. It's claiming that a man invented something so important and marvelous that he won the Nobel prize for it, but also that the invention doesn't even work at all and is scientifically meaningless. Way too many internal contradictions and does not match up with the reality we are observing regarding real world testing and infection. Aline that with the source being given one of the worst ratings as being pseudoscience and conspiracy theory site and the probabilities stack up against it. 

Petra Liverani writes:

[To Jason Mathias ]

A point by point response to your response does not constitute a gish gallop, Jason. It is, in fact, the antithesis of a gish gallop.

OK, Jason, what I'm going to is put forward the first assertion you make without backup and I'll ask you to back that assertion up. Critical thinking means that when you make an assertion you must back it up. First, I point out that the authors of the article do not state that PCR tests are scientifically meaningless - of course not - they state that COVID-19 PCR tests are scientifically meaningless - a completely different claim. Be careful of strawmanning - such a commonly indulged-in logical fallacy. I present a corrected version of your quote to back up.

"... claiming that COVID-19 PCR tests are scientifically meaningless is not true and is false and dangerously so."

Just to add: the PCR technique was not so much devised as a test but an amplification technique - a kind of DNA photocopier useful for research purposes. With regard to covid it is not being used as it was designed which, a priori, doesn't invalidate it, of course, many things can be adapted for different uses, however, the fact is, it doesn't work as a diagnostic test which is even admitted on the packet. Then the authors go further than simply criticising the PCR being used as a diagnostic test, they also point out that the experiments done to isolate the virus weren't valid experiments so there's the double problem:
--- there's nothing to say the test is testing for the stated viral material
--- even if the test were testing for the correct material, it only tests for molecules which don't mean infection. We might all have a few molecules of a virus in our body but so what? Means nothing. As the inventor, Kary Mullis, said, a PCR will NOT tell you if you're sick.

Jason Mathias writes:

[To Petra Liverani]

You provided a source that you claim proves fact checkers are opinions or inaccurate. And that source has dozens and dozens of different claims about PCR tests, and you made several comments that were very long and you told me I need to address all of them when I don't have nearly enough time time to do that. Therefore, I cant reply to your response in full. That is a gish gallop or at least a kind of shotgun response. 

The context of this discussion is covid-19 and not some other disease. I thought you would know I was talking about covid-19. So, its not a strawman. 

If the covid-19 PCR tests were meaningless then we would see random results and not clear waves that aline with hospitalizations and deaths very nicely. Also, the PCR test was the choice of experts and you think a conspiracy theory site knows they are meaningless and the global experts using the tests dont know what the conspiracy site people know? Very unlikely. 

Your source contains multiple errors and is designed to cast doubt on public health. This is because the conspiracy theorists anti-vaxxers need for the covid tests to be useless so that they can claim the gov numbers are fabricated on purpose. This justifies a whole swath of different conspiracy theories. 

 

Petra Liverani writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

"If the covid-19 PCR tests were meaningless then we would see random results and not clear waves that aline with hospitalizations and deaths very nicely."

This is an assertion unbacked by evidence. We see no such thing.

There are cases of:

--- different results of testing in the same person
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.25786

--- many "asymptomatic" positive tests
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10273517/NSW-records-325-Covid-cases-one-death-Omicron-variant-spreads.html

--- explanations other than covid for excess mortality, eg, there was a spike in mortality in excess of the normal post-winter spike in Europe last year in April which might suggest covid being responsible at first sight, however, on closer inspection we see the excess spike align with aggressive drug trials, eg, Spain (aggressive drug trials) showed an excess spike while neighbouring Portugal (no aggressive drug trials) had a lower mortality spike than in 2017.
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/excess-mortality-what-you-aren-t-being:0

--- it is admitted that people said to have died FROM covid died WITH it - of course, I don't admit to the existence of covid in the first place, however, the fact that a lie is being told at any level with regard to cause of death is of great concern
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9467793/Covid-lockdown-UK-Nearly-quarter-people-dying-Covid-NOT-killed-virus.html

GoblinCookie writes:
[To Petra Liverani]

 
Factcheckers are funded by government and other interested parties so we can have no confidence, a priori, in what they claim in their fact checks. It's always up to us to work out the facts ourselves by applying our own critical thinking abilities and canvassing widely.

You are only one person, who is not as they say an island and therefore your ability to fact-check everything personally is limited.  We know very much what agenda Off-Guardian is pursuing, where it's there interest to cover up the rampant Coronavirus outbreak by calling into question PCR tests which reveal the extent of the outbreak.  There interests are basically arsonist 'burn all science to the ground' using the nirvana fallacy, because if there is no science there are no facts which means they are 'free to disbelieve'. 

A particularly ridiculous line in the response is this one however.

When cells, cellular debris and particles are mixed in a culture, the only way of determining which RNA and proteins are viral is by separation of the particles from all the non-viral material. In a paternity suit the genome can be obtained from a single “particle” (father/child).

Viruses are not made of an entirely separate substance to non-viral matter, viruses are made of proteins and exist at a molecular scale as molecular machines, not being particularly different from the other molecular machines that run the cells and allow them to communicate etc. It is this fact that means that no cell has ever evolved to become entirely virus-proof. 

You are looking for the specific protein or RNA strings that identify the virus and distinguish it from all the other RNA or molecular machinery in the body.  You don't have to first separate it from everything else to carry out the test, the separation of the materials *is* the test. 

Paternity tests on the other hand, you can easily acquire a complete cell from both parties and extract their DNA for comparison, because the scale is much larger.  A complete false analogy. 

Petra Liverani writes:

[To GoblinCookie]

OK I'll go through your comment point by point.

1. "You are only one person, who is not as they say an island and therefore your ability to fact-check everything personally is limited."
Yes, I am only one person with limited knowledge and experience as each of us is but I endeavour to compensate for that limitation by doing due diligence. As I've stated in a comment on another post, one compensatory measure is to follow the debunking trail. Expert A says it's X while Expert B says no, it's not X it's Y, etc. Who has the last word? Whose argument stands up best? If one expert drops out is it because it's obvious they really have the better argument and are not bothered to keep going round in circles or is it because they've run out of argument? Surely, this is a fundamental approach everyone should include in their critical thinking toolkit - why so few who do? It's just so simple and basic.

The other thing I ALWAYS do which the vast majority of people don't is I respond to every challenge to my belief. What I find interesting is that questions aren't raised for you by the following:

the only "fact-check" done of the article in question is proven rubbish - you ignore this glaring fact, aka, cherry-picking. Any ignoring of important facts we might call cherry-picking and I'd say this is one of the most common logical fallacies indulged in. If your criticism is valid why aren't fact-checkers out in force putting that in fact-checks? Why does the debunking trail so obviously end with the article authors and not any fact-checker or scientist supporting the mainstream narrative? Why have no fact-checkers or scientists responded to the second article I cited?

I point out that one of the article authors, Torsten Engelbrecht, is also a co-author of the 4th edition of the book, Virus Mania, which has received endorsement by highly reputable relevant professionals.
https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-COVID-19-Hepatitis-Billion-Dollar-ebook/dp/B08YFBCH2F

"The book 'Virus Mania' has been written with the care of a master-craftsman, courageously evaluating the medical establishment, the corporate elites and the powerful government funding institutions."
Wolfgang Weuffen, MD, Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Epidemiology

"The book 'Virus-Mania' can be called the first work in which the errors, frauds and general misinformations being spread by official bodies about doubtful or non-virus infections are completely exposed."
Gordon T. Stewart, MD, professor of public health and former WHO advisor

2. "We know very much what agenda Off-Guardian is pursuing, where it's there interest to cover up the rampant Coronavirus outbreak by calling into question PCR tests which reveal the extent of the outbreak."
The term "cover up" refers to attempts to suppress the truth about crimes or similar either by those who committed those crimes or others who have an interest in a cover-up. OffG might be publishing articles that counter the mainstream narrative but to use the term "cover up" makes no sense.  They are a tiny voice against the mainstream who are not in any position to cover up the reality of a pandemic if there is one and to make the claim that is their intention is simply absurd - you have no evidence for that claim.

Can I just reiterate the point that source means nothing in this day and age. It's simply content we must address. I certainly am not a "blind follower" of OffG, that is for sure. One of their editors wrote an article attacking what I say and didn't even show me the respect of granting my request to have my initial comment in response to that article pinned to the top of the comments. Also, completely against their ethos, OffG moderates all my (and I believe some others') comments and on occasion does not publish them. If there were another website publishing what I believe to be the truth about certain events I would move there but I haven't found one - well, I've found another one that I'm more aligned with in certain ways but not completely ... no matter what, I find I'm in disagreement with virtually everyone in some way.

3. "You are looking for the specific protein or RNA strings that identify the virus and distinguish it from all the other RNA or molecular machinery in the body.  You don't have to first separate it from everything else to carry out the test, the separation of the materials *is* the test."
The text you reference is in relation to isolation of the virus that is required before a test can be developed to test for the virus. How do you know what RNA string belongs to a suspected virus when within a sample there will be many different RNA strings?

4. "Paternity tests on the other hand, you can easily acquire a complete cell from both parties and extract their DNA for comparison, because the scale is much larger.  A complete false analogy."
I think their whole point is that the nature of determining paternity makes the test easy to conduct so I don't see how it's a false analogy - the point they're making is that the processes for establishing paternity and the presence of a virus are very different which is surely the same point you're making.

 

GoblinCookie writes:
[To Petra Liverani]

Yes, I am only one person with limited knowledge and experience as each of us is but I endeavour to compensate for that limitation by doing due diligence. As I've stated in a comment on another post, one compensatory measure is to follow the debunking trail. Expert A says it's X while Expert B says no, it's not X it's Y, etc. Who has the last word? Whose argument stands up best? If one expert drops out is it because it's obvious they really have the better argument and are not bothered to keep going round in circles or is it because they've run out of argument? Surely, this is a fundamental approach everyone should include in their critical thinking toolkit - why so few who do? It's just so simple and basic.

Disbelieving in everything and everyone isn't critical thinking, it is uncritical skepticism or as it generally known conspiracism.  Something is honest unless you can prove it is a lie, not the reverse; the burden of proof lies on the accuser not the accused.  So unless you can prove the medical scientists are wrong, incompetent or lying, they aren't and the same also applies to individual dissenting medical scientists. 

That means that since to actually debunk something requires a stronger case than the appeal to possibility, there isn't really usually a 'debunking trail' to follow, just a claim that is sound and people arguing fallaciously that because the claim *could* potentially be unsound for X, Y and Z reason, the claim is therefore unsound (time-wasters in other words).

People arguing that PCR tests are unsound fall into that category.  They list a number of reason why they *could* be wrong or erroneous and then fail to prove that any of them are in fact erroneous as they describe.  Could be false or lying, does not equal *is* false or lying. 

 

"The book 'Virus-Mania' can be called the first work in which the errors, frauds and general misinformations being spread by official bodies about doubtful or non-virus infections are completely exposed."
Gordon T. Stewart, MD, professor of public health and former WHO advisor

None of which has the slightest relevance to the matter.  Just because certain medical bodies were proven wrong in certain ways in the past does not prove they are wrong about a certain matter in the present.  For instance they were proven demonstrably wrong about the effectiveness of the vaccine at reducing transmission.  They were not however proven wrong about the effectiveness of the vaccine at reducing death-rate per case. 

The way the world works is that everyone is wrong sometimes and right other-times.  Yes we like to think we are always right (ie Donald Trump), which is probably why we want to believe there are others out there that are always wrong; neither is the case.

The term "cover up" refers to attempts to suppress the truth about crimes or similar either by those who committed those crimes or others who have an interest in a cover-up. OffG might be publishing articles that counter the mainstream narrative but to use the term "cover up" makes no sense.  They are a tiny voice against the mainstream who are not in any position to cover up the reality of a pandemic if there is one and to make the claim that is their intention is simply absurd - you have no evidence for that claim.

I have all the evidence for the claim I need, they are observably trying to undermine confidence in the effectiveness of the tests for the virus by the articles they choose to publish.  Without any reliable tests for the virus we have no objective way of determining the extent of the virus's spreads, so sowing doubts about the effectiveness of any tests furthers the ends of what is very much a cover-up.

Having objective measures for the extent of things that you are trying to hide is completely opposed to the ends of cover-up.  So in service of a cover-up you must discredit any objective measurements regarding the true state of the thing you are trying to hide. 

In summary, unless you have a better, more reliable test that can be carried out en-masse, the effect of discrediting PCR tests is to make it easy to cover-up the Coronavirus epidemic.  Cover-ups do not like objective measurements of things they are trying to conceal and will always try to discredit any such things. 

The text you reference is in relation to isolation of the virus that is required before a test can be developed to test for the virus. How do you know what RNA string belongs to a suspected virus when within a sample there will be many different RNA strings?

Because I am not an ignoramus, unlike the person who wrote the damned response.  I actually know something about viruses, maybe not as much as an expert would but enough to know just how stupid the argument being made against PCR tests really is.

Viruses you see, they aren't human beings.  Their RNA is distinctly viral and furthermore Coronavirus RNA is distinct from the RNA of other viruses.  You *know* because the RNA of the Coronavirus has distinct patterns in it which you look for, patterns not shared with human RNA or with other viruses RNA. 

The only real concern here is that you might pick up a related Coronavirus that isn't *the* Coronavirus (ie SARS-CoV-2).  Because the problem is so obvious however, we can hope that those making the test thought of that problem and came up with a solution to it (it is not the obvious problems in life we have to worry most about). 

I think their whole point is that the nature of determining paternity makes the test easy to conduct so I don't see how it's a false analogy - the point they're making is that the processes for establishing paternity and the presence of a virus are very different which is surely the same point you're making.

The inability to determine that he is making a false analogy is further evidence that the person knows next-to-nothing whatsoever about viruses. 

A basic fact about viruses is that they are small.  Yes there are lot of things that are small, cells for instance, or the genomes in the cells which are obviously smaller.  But compared to viruses those things are massive. 

There is no similarity whatsoever in any sense between the process of detecting viruses and the process of comparing two people's genomes to see if there are similar.  The very use of such an analogy discredits the person making it. 

Petra Liverani writes:

[To GoblinCookie]

Can I request in further comments that you simply use quotation marks and/or italics for quotes unless they're reasonably short. I find it looks very odd to have such long quotes in all caps, however, please do as you prefer.

I'm afraid what your comment displays is the fact that familiarity with logical fallacies doesn't automatically mean the knower will engage in critical thinking. Critical thinking demands dealing with with the material being discussed and presentation of a clear argument which you avoid assiduously. I'm afraid your comment is pure waffle that speaks in generalities and avoids what is said in both the article and the attempt at debunking of the article.

My argument is that particular refuters of the mainstream narrative have not been debunked - either the single attempt at debunking is a failure or debunking is avoided. To support this argument I've presented significant facts:

1. A single attempt at debunking has been rebutted with no attempt, despite invitation, to refute the rebuttal.

2. One item alleging debunking is the claim that the CDC indicates that covid has a distinctive set of symptoms when a perusal of their page on covid symptoms indicates clearly that the CDC doesn't indicate that covid has a distinctive set of symptoms.

I also claim that I've approached a number of fact-checkers and virologists (actually, I lied, it was only one virologist) for their response to a second article to which I received no response. I can provide visual evidence of my emails if you wish. Significantly, one of the fact-checkers I approached, Jon Cohen, of sciencemag, had no hesitation in writing a fact-check expose of Judy Mikovits who, while she opposes the mainstream narrative, says very different things from the authors in question which have no credibility.

Your argument should show any of the following:

--- there are one or more points made in the debunking by PolitiFact that stand up. To this end you need to state their point and say why it stands up

--- find a particular claim in the article and say why it doesn't stand up

You state:

"Something is honest unless you can prove it is a lie, not the reverse; the burden of proof lies on the accuser not the accused.  So unless you can prove the medical scientists are wrong, incompetent or lying, they aren't and the same also applies to individual dissenting medical scientists. 

That means that since to actually debunk something requires a stronger case than the appeal to possibility, there isn't really usually a 'debunking trail' to follow, just a claim that is sound and people arguing fallaciously that because the claim *could* potentially be unsound for X, Y and Z reason, the claim is therefore unsound (time-wasters in other words)."

What you state are simply generalities with no reference to the arguments made. It is rather you, I think, who is indulging in the fallacy of appeal to possibility, not the authors of the article and rebuttal of debunking.

Example of proof of falsity:
--- Article authors state covid doesn't have a distinctive set of symptoms
--- PolitiFact argues that the CDC indicates it does.

Evidence clearly shows it doesn't.

GoblinCookie writes:
[To Petra Liverani]

I'm afraid what your comment displays is the fact that familiarity with logical fallacies doesn't automatically mean the knower will engage in critical thinking. Critical thinking demands dealing with with the material being discussed and presentation of a clear argument which you avoid assiduously. I'm afraid your comment is pure waffle that speaks in generalities and avoids what is said in both the article and the attempt at debunking of the article. 

No it doesn't, but even if it did there simply isn't anything to engage with.  Unproven and dubious claims are made in abundance, aiming to create the appearance of some basis for their core claim by simply being repeated a lot.  I then respond entirely properly to this nonsense by simply making simply general claims that refute all their gish galloping.  Words are used in intimidating abundance, but very little is actually being said and even less of it it true. 

There simply isn't any evidence given that PCR tests do not work to detect viruses as the majority of virologists believe they do.  There is only three instances where it even engages with the real methodology of a PCR test and in these cases it is only to engage in rather definite logical fallacies.

In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.

Strawman fallacy.

Nobody is claiming that the specific RNA sequences are the causative agent of COVID-19.  They are the 'dismembered body parts' of a certain virus that is being held to be the causative agent of the disease.  They were selected not because of their completeness but because of their likely effectiveness at identifying the specific virus which they have in fact isolated the complete RNA sequence of. 

They chose their markers because they are unique enough to distinguish the virus from other lifeforms RNA and also large enough to be easily detected. 

Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a “cycle quantification” (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the “Drosten PCR test”, even have a Cq of 45.

<Snip>

The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated:

If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.”

<Snip>

In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that “the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false “positive” results).”

Nirvana fallacy.

Pointing out that there are imperfections, trade-offs and subjective judgements involved in PCR tests does not prove that PCR tests are worthless.  A subjective judgement has to be made as to how many cycles to use, more cycles means a greater chance of false positives while fewer cycles means are greater change of false negatives (exactly as described).  Obviously depending upon the specific size of the strand of RNA you are trying to test and their abundance, the ideal number of cycles will vary.

Appeal to authority is also used to establish as a fact that the test is invalid by quoting the opinion of Kary Mullis on the matter, probably against the wishes of said authority.  The people who designed the test simply judged that many cycles were needed, probably because they kept getting false negatives with fewer cycles. 

That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral. (In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term “isolation” in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term “isolation” is misused).

Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.

Argument by pigheadedness. 

They just love the word particles and purification here.  By purification they seem to sometimes mean detecting actual viruses under an electron microscope which is possible but too difficult and expensive to work as a viable mass-test (back to nirvana fallacy).   Alternatively they also mean separating individual viruses from 'everything else', which given that virus are molecular machinery, to separate them from everything else logically means to place them in a vacuum, which would simply destroy them.

They use the word particle a lot to conceal their apparent utter ignorance of the actual nature of viruses.  Viruses aren't particles and they aren't made of particles either; they are molecular machinery (the actual basis for all living things).  That means are so small they are made of individual molecules which means they effectively have no colour and barely have a shape.  If you break up a virus, what you are going to end up with is not going to be virus particles, but individual molecules or simple strings of molecules. 

This delusion that viruses break down into clearly identifiable particles seems to get them into more trouble later.  (at this point I will engage with the argument and not simply point it's core fallacy(s)).

It is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.

For example, already in February the health authority in China’s Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test “negative,” and then tested “positive” again.

Aha, you talk about the false positive rate but somehow forgot about the false negative rate.  Somebody is doing circular reasoning here, there cannot be any 'false negative rate' because the PCR test don't work so there can only be false positives and the possibility of false negatives can be ignored.

As the ignoramuses appear not to understand, viruses are very, very small.  So small there isn't such a thing as a viral particle, though they seem to think there is because they are ignorant.  In a PCR test you are looking for specific strands of RNA.  There is nothing special about viral RNA, it is made of the same stuff as all other RNA, it just has a specific pattern you are looking for.

And because everything that small tends to be extremely fragile, there is no guarantee that destroyed viruses will leave behind any clear evidence that they ever even existed whatsoever.  Being so small, when they die they tend to simply fall apart into (as already discussed) quite ordinary molecules, with nothing particular that says "I was a virus" about any of them.  

Given all the above, it is quite incredible that it is ever possible for any Coronavirus test to arrive at a positive result in the first place (not time to engage in arguments from incredulity).  Any virus test is looking for a needle-in-a-haystack, but in a universe where the said needles quickly break down into straw. 

That is why you need to do lots of cycles of your PCR test.  Because the probability that you will fail to find anything on the first go is high.  To get a false positive, you have to somehow detect something that isn't the RNA string you are looking for, but given the Second Law of Thermodynamics means that RNA strands will over time break down into the molecular soup, it is not likely that false positives will ever happen; since new RNA strands that resemble those of the Coronavirus are not going to spontaneously come into existence. 

Petra Liverani writes:

[To GoblinCookie]

OK, let's do this a point at a time.

"In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19."

"Strawman fallacy.

Nobody is claiming that the specific RNA sequences are the causative agent of COVID-19.  They are the 'dismembered body parts' of a certain virus that is being held to be the causative agent of the disease.  They were selected not because of their completeness but because of their likely effectiveness at identifying the specific virus which they have in fact isolated the complete RNA sequence of. 

They chose their markers because they are unique enough to distinguish the virus from other lifeforms RNA and also large enough to be easily detected."

Rather than a strawman I think there's a slight infelicity of expression. What they're really saying is that the supposed virus the sequences are part of has not been proven to cause the alleged covid. That's ultimately the point. They link to an article which shows the lack of proof so if you wish to argue causality is shown then you need to argue against what's stated in that article.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/09/scientists-have-utterly-failed-to-prove-that-the-coronavirus-fulfills-kochs-postulates/

 

GoblinCookie writes:
[To Petra Liverani]

OK, let's do this a point at a time.

So you can control the argument in your favor? 

Rather than a strawman I think there's a slight infelicity of expression. What they're really saying is that the supposed virus the sequences are part of has not been proven to cause the alleged covid. That's ultimately the point. They link to an article which shows the lack of proof so if you wish to argue causality is shown then you need to argue against what's stated in that article.

That might even be a good point, were it not for the use of the term 'supposed virus'.  In order to test whether the virus does anything according to Koch's Postulates, we have to first accept that it actually exists objectively.  Of course this is typical conspiricism, since believing in conspiracy theories is the result of mental illness then the result is that conspiracy theorists believe in totally contradictory conspiracies. It is believed here that the virus both does not exist and has not been proven to cause Covid which also may also 'just be the flu'. 

Here are Koch's Postulates according to our unreliable source. 

1. The pathogen occurs in every case of the disease in question and under circumstances that can account for the pathological changes and clinical course of the disease.

2. The causative microorganism occurs in no other disease as a fortuitous and nonpathogenic parasite.

3. After being fully isolated from the body and grown in tissue culture (or cloned), it can induce the disease anew.

Predictably Koch's original postulates (from 1890) are entirely impossible to actually met by anyone, ever which might well have been their whole point (they are the rearguard of ancient medicine against modern medicine).  The postulates are worthless and are themselves riddled with intellectual fallacies, basically they are garbage science because they are garbage logic.  Fortunately as science is self-correcting, Koch's Postulates have as they complain profusely actually basically been jettisoned by most scientists which we will find is very much a good thing. 

1. They start with the notion of the 'disease in question'.  But what and who determines a 'disease in question', we could be looking at a list of symptoms but not all symptoms are unique to a particular disease are they?  If I have a patient with a sore throat and a headache, but have two diseases on my books one which causes a sore throat and the other a headache, how do I prove there is a new disease at all and not just both diseases at once.  There we have the logical fallacy of stereotyping,  the same disease is not always present in the same fashion with the same symptoms in different people, because people are different, pathogens are not themselves identical and randomness is involved. 

Also pathogens do not cause distinct diseases that then have symptoms.  No the pathogens *directly* cause specific symptoms which tend to appear together because they are all caused by the same pathogen.  Yet before you know anything about most pathogens, you need the concept of the disease-in-itself as a stopgap measure.  Koch is inappropriately trying to retain this ancient concept when it is rendered redundant by the progress of medicine. 

There is no Covid-in-itself, there is only the coronaviruses that cause it.  This fallacy is called reification, the treating of the abstract idea (the disease-in-itself) as if it were a concrete thing with a concrete cause (the pathogen).

2. Gibberish.  What does it mean to be a non-pathogenic parasite, how is that even a thing? Argument by gibberish? One Coronavirus being present is not going to cause any symptoms to occur, ten million on the other hand will. 

3. What if it does not survive the extraction process?  And even if you can extract it and it does survive outside the body, it is not exactly ethical to then infect new people with your pathogen.  Moving the goalposts here, Koch decides to demand a standard of proof that for multiple reasons is going to be difficult or impossible to meet in order to continue his rearguard war against modern science (as described above).  Actually Koch is rather analogous to a virus when you think about it, he is inserting 'scientific' sounding principles into science in order to make scientific progress impossible. 

Yet the actual attempt by the conspiracists to translate these principles into demands regarding the Coronavirus, laughably and predictably reveals the level of general ignorance regarding viruses these people possess.

1. Isolation from a human patient’s cells of full-length novel-coronavirus DNA*.

2. Sequencing of the isolated DNA, then determining that the identical sequence is not present in any other virus, and next replicating or cloning the DNA to form a new copy of the virus.

Coronaviruses don't have DNA idiot.  They are asking for hairs off a tortoises back, the thing they are asking for does not exist. 

Then bizarrely they acknowledge this is in fact the case, but rather than simply changing their demand for DNA into a demand for RNA (a demand they know would swiftly be met) they continue with the following pseudoscience nonsense.  

*The virus contains RNA, which it injects into the nuclei of cells. There, the RNA is converted to DNA by reverse transcriptase enzymes.^

The virus does not inject into the nuclei of cells anything.  This virus does not enter cells at all, it injects it's RNA through the cell membrane where it's RNA sequences trick molecular machinery inside the cells into making more copies of the virus on a loop.  The DNA of the cells is not modified as far as I am aware, nor does the virus or any part of it even enter the cell nucleus. 

DNA is used by molecular machinery within the nucleus to make RNA which is then used by molecular machinery to make either strings of individual proteins or other molecular machines (not really different things).  DNA does not directly do anything at all, except act as a means for molecular machines to make RNA which then controls the 'output' of molecular machines within the cell.  The Coronaviruses don't bother with the DNA, they simply hijack the machinery of the cells that would normally process the RNA coming from the nucleus with their own RNA to create more of themselves. 

This is the case for a simple reason.  Coronaviruses are too small to contain enough information to modify strands of DNA, which are thousands of times larger than they are.  

Shawn writes:

One may also look at this 2018 Pew Study entitled "Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News" which may provide some important context regarding how we interpret the information we receive. 

Also, take a look at the article, "They Saw a game, a case study" regarding how two sides interpreted the exact same event. 

Building on the same idea, athough this one regarding how a protest was perceived by different people, see, "They Saw a Protest": Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction

Jason Mathias writes:

I totally agree with the black and white fallacy thats presented here to sew negative discourse about fact checkers. If those spreading misinformation for a living can create doubt about fact checkers then that only helps their business. 

Bias in fact checkers are extremely soft. I think they try to be as apolitical and neutral as possible but it can never be perfectly balanced due to the complex nature of millions of false claims being made daily.