by Carl V Phillips
It is one year today that we started this blog. The mandatory basic stats for such a post:
- 159 posts
- Just under 90K page views
- 985 comments
I was really hoping for 100K views, but disappointment is my penance posting almost nothing for two months of that. Besides, I will just assume that the difference was covered by those reading on feeds or reblogs, or those reading more than one post when visiting the homepage. :-)
I do notice that some of the oldest posts, some of which are quite significant, accumulated less than 200 views. I will try to do some archive revisits.
More important than the basic stats is that I think we have put the fear of Truth into quite a few people by calling them out on their lies. Several of them got very quiet. This blog is just one little corner of that effort, of course, but the combination of effective archiving and search (unlike chat networks), credibility, and being willing to directly confront the lies (unlike most other credible blogs) give it a unique niche. And, yes, I have kind drifted away from focusing on the Lies, and I should probably make an effort to start back on them. The archive project will help with that.
And who knows, maybe there will be fewer lies during the next year.
(kidding)
Tobacco harm reduction, anti-THR lies, and related topics 
Congratulations Carl! :)
You should also realize that for at least your shorter blog entries (like this one) the entire message can be viewed in the notifying email. So if someone reads it but has no particular response they won’t come over to the page.
WUWT builds its page views by only sharing the first paragraph or two of its topics each day. If you want to read the entire thing you need to visit the page.
– MJM
I am sure everyone is thanking you for giving me an incentive to write longer posts :-)
Thanks for all you’re doing Carl Phillips !!! Cheers.
Dr. Carl Phillips:
Every blog post I have read, sometimes rarely, it gets a little over my head. Your intellect and command of the language is impeccable. Your wit and dry humor, truth sayerism is enlightening and accurately informative. For all you do and joining CASAA you have me knowing another year will be most interesting and before hand worthy of much praise. Thank you. (Lisa)
Gosh, Mr Phillips, you have been busy over the last couple of days!
It does not surprise me that the seeds of ‘truth’ sown by yourself and Dr Siegel fall upon stony ground. It does not surprise me because the seeds of untruth were sown many years ago. The seeds of untruth were sown when the scientists gave way to the epidemiologists, who gave way to the propagandists, who sought the money. This template has been copied by anti-alcohol bottom-feeders, anti-sugar bottom-feeders, etc. Is it not so simple? As an example, here in the UK, we have been subjected every day, for God knows how long, to ‘five-a-day’ adverts on TV for any and every possible combination of fruit juices that you can imagine. [In case you do not know, the Government paid for adverts on the TV advocating that people take at least one portion of fruit and vegetables at least five times a day]. All this unscientific stuff was based upon the lie that human beings cannot survive without fruit and vegetables. These ideas were promulgated, in the first instance, by the psychopaths in the UK Health Department. When I say psychopaths, I mean it. Only psychopaths would wish to impose a ‘one size fit all’ paradigm BY FORCE. Commerce took advantage, and the advertisers did the rest – to make money.You cannot blame the advertisers and commerce. The people to blame are the scientists, who stood by, nay, encouraged these fake practices, for their own financial ends.
It is a sad truth that Science itself is now distrusted, because no one can now distinguish between Science and Propaganda.
And yet, the propaganda has already been judged. I have mentioned before the ‘McTear Versus the Imperial Tobacco Company Case’ which took place in Scotland, and ended only in 2005, which is not very long ago. The Tobacco Control Industry brought a lawsuit against Imperial Tobacco, claiming that it was the smoking of tobacco which caused Mr McTear’s lung cancer and death. What was remarkable about this Case, and was pointed out in no uncertain terms by the Judge, Lord Nimmo Smith (the Case was brought in the Scottish Supreme Court), was that the Tobacco Control industry BROUGHT FORWARD NO EVIDENCE THAT SMOKING CAUSES LUNG CANCER. The final results of the Doctors Study had been published, and Richard Doll gave evidence as an expert witness, but TC DID NOT DARE to produce the Doctors Study as evidence.
Why not? The only reasonable answer is that TC HAD BEEN ADVISED NOT TO by their legal team. I do not know why that should be so, but I can imagine that there have been so many false epidemiological links in the past that any such study is suspect. Further, the study itself, despite its size and the ‘quality’ of its subjects, was full of uncertainties.
I hope that you do not mind if I give a link to my summary of the Case and to the actual judgement (my summary is about 60 pages and the judgement is about 600 pages):
http://boltonsmokersclub.wordpress.com/the-mctear-case-the-analysis/
IF it is true that smoking is as dangerous as it is said to be, then ecigs are the greatest invention of all time, in terms of ‘the cure for’ diseases which cause death. (The nonsense of that statement should be rather obvious)
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May I venture a solution to EVERYTHING?
My suggestion is that everyone should be encouraged to wear A MASK whenever they venture outdoors. Nay, they ought also to wear a mask indoors also. The reason is that dangerous particulates are in the atmosphere and we breath them second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, every day of our lives. Think how many lives could be prolonged thereby!!!
Junican, you wrote, “It is a sad truth that Science itself is now distrusted, because no one can now distinguish between Science and Propaganda.”
Very very true. I warned about this in Brains, p. 100:
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“To change the definitions without adequately informing and educating the public as to the nature of those changes was the same as simply propagating lies. More than that, it was the equivalent of terrorizing people “for their own good” (at least as their “good” was seen by their doctors….) Inevitably, people will become aware of this duplicity: their faith in the medical pro-fession and in the health advice given to them by their doctors will be tainted beyond recovery. How many lives will be lost in the future because patients will no longer believe ANY of their doctors’ diagnoses or will re-fuse to heed sound advice in situations of dire medical conditions where following such advice can be vital?
How many will slough off more general advice about safe sex, proper use of medications, or the importance of improving one’s diet or losing weight because of a general skepticism developed and encouraged by doctors’ constant emphasis on advice to quit smoking? It is impossible to say for sure, and it’s even quite possible that more lives will be saved by these definition-deceptions than will be lost, but the one fact that we’ll know for sure is that the truth and a patient’s faith in their physician will have been undermined.
Playing with language as a tool for large-scale behavior modification is dangerous. When such play occurs in an area where decisions concerning imminent life and death are made, it goes beyond dangerous: it becomes outright criminal.”
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And I think this has become more and more true in the ten years since I wrote it. The Antismokers are responsible for a good bit of the skepticism of and the strength of the attacks on things like the WHO and “yellow rice” etc: They provided the soil and fertilizer.
– MJM
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