Unconventional lessons from academia: research integrity and porn; laws gone wrong; and assumptions substituting for science
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This post is about a few unconventional lessons that have stuck with me from graduate school, where I was studying psychology and law at the University of Nebraska in the early 1990s.
Lesson 1: Some research results can be predicted by researcher name
My very first writing assignment in grad school was to choose a contentious topic in psychology, one researchers disagreed on, and write a critique of the research studies on all sides. I chose pornography—whether or not it was harmful to people or to society—which was being hotly debated at the time. But ultimately, this shocking lesson had nothing to do with porn.
What happened was, when I looked at the pornography research, I found that certain researchers always published studies showing pornography was harmful; while other researchers always published studies showing pornography was neutral or beneficial. In other words, although research findings in the field sharply conflicted, no studies conflicted with the researcher’s usual stance on porn.
How could that happen if the published research was objective? Obviously, something was being gamed. If the true answer was ambiguous (which is what I suspected—meaning porn was sometimes harmful, sometimes neutral, and sometimes beneficial, depending on the circumstances), and all the research was completely objective, then all the researchers would sometimes get positive results and sometimes negative. Were they conducting research they weren’t publishing, if the results were different than the outcome they wanted? Were they designing their studies so as to achieve their desired result? Who was funding the researchers who thought porn was bad? Who was funding the researchers who thought porn was good?
The implications of research that always suited the researchers’ interests became the focus of my paper—because, I thought, why focus on the details of each study, when it was obvious the entire subject smelled fishy?
Granted, it was theoretically possible that all the “porn is bad” researchers were paragons of virtue, while all the “porn is good” researchers were hucksters, possibly funded by Hustler magazine. Or maybe it was the opposite, and the “porn is bad” researchers were the hucksters, possibly funded by the televangelism industry, to try to redirect some of pornography’s millions to its own coffers. But both possibilities seemed rather unlikely.
To my naïve mind at the time, it seemed like an important discovery about the integrity of psychology research—so I was a little taken aback when my professor reacted with total indifference. Struggling to stifle a yawn, he said something like:
“Okay…but where is the analysis of the research on each side? You didn’t really do the assignment.” I think he gave me a B. And he was right—I didn’t really do the assignment.
What had seemed at first like a profound revelation about research integrity, turned out to be just business as usual. That makes perfect sense now, since I know now that all researchers live and die by their funding, and no one wants to pay for, or conduct, research that goes against their interests. Every foundation, whether government or private, has an agenda, and lines of research that don’t suit it won’t be funded.
There were other lessons along those lines in the next few years, because business owners would sometimes contact the school to find graduate students to conduct research for their company, either for free (“for the experience”) or for a modest fee. I applied for one of these positions early on, waxing on about my commitment to research quality and objectivity, like a total idiot. No wonder they never even bothered to send a rejection letter.
Lesson 2: There ought (not) to be a law against it
A lot of people assume that making a law against some undesirable behavior will naturally stop the behavior, or at least reduce it. Unfortunately, not only do laws often not solve the problem, they can actually make the problem worse, or create new and bigger problems.
Drug use and public benefits
An example of laws gone wrong that happened while I was in grad school was an uproar about drug use among people who were receiving public benefits—mostly single women with children. I still hear about similar uproars from time-to-time. A law had been proposed that would require people receiving public benefits to undergo regular drug testing.
I guess the geniuses who came up with the idea never bothered to crunch the numbers, because we calculated that administering such a law would cost far more money than it could ever possibly save. In that case at least, the self-righteous do-gooders who proposed the law were forced to check their moral outrage at the door of reality—but it wouldn’t surprise me if similarly ridiculous laws have passed elsewhere.
Alcohol and drug prohibition
One of the most notorious historical examples of disastrous law was alcohol prohibition, which ran from 1913 to 1933, pitting neighbor against neighbor against the State, until finally the desire for strict sobriety caved in to the reality of human nature. In those days, prohibiting alcohol required a constitutional amendment – the Eighteenth Amendment, which was eventually repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment.
But the historical disaster of alcohol prohibition is dwarfed by today’s so-called ‘drug war’, which is still ongoing after half a century of ‘battle.’ Unlike alcohol prohibition, modern drug prohibition didn’t require a constitutional amendment—just a bald-faced power-grab, commenced by former president Richard Nixon, who bravely declared a war against “public enemy number one” – drugs.
In case you didn’t know, President Nixon was not a crook, nor did he play a crook’s head in Futurama, as he explained in the videos below. Nixon was a politician, which is exponentially worse than a mere crook.
That’s right, folks—it turns out that psychopathic power-mongers who control the world’s financial systems and 90% of its resources aren’t humanity’s biggest enemy after all—it’s the humble drug user, often struggling to cope with a disordered childhood or an otherwise messed-up life, and those damn hippies, with their long hair and odiferous armpits.
Like alcohol prohibition on steroids, the war on drugs has created a booming black market, where drugs are better, cheaper, more plentiful and more easily available than ever before in history.
The drug war is very literally an industry in itself, single-handedly supporting the majority of the US criminal justice system and law enforcement, and creating a massive private market for associated services like mandatory drug treatment, rehabilitation and incarceration in private prisons. The drug war is making a lot of people in very high places very rich, and is effectively subjugating millions to the power of the State via criminal prosecution, while destroying their ability to support themselves and their families.
The impact of a drug war collapse would be monumental, so even though it has finally relaxed in some states when it comes to marijuana, don’t expect this highly successful war against the People, at both the federal and state level, to end soon—if ever. It hasn’t actually even strictly “ended” for marijuana and alcohol, since the recreational use of either is routinely used to revoke probation for any crime, whether drug- or alcohol-related or not.
I know some people approve of the drug war because they consider drug use wrong, and they assume the ‘war’ reduces it, or is morally justified. Perhaps they even have a sincere (but seriously misguided) belief that criminal prosecution ‘helps’ people with drug problems. When I was doing criminal defense work, it was common for friends, family and jurors of someone convicted of a minor drug crime to say sympathetically, “Maybe now he can get the help he needs,” totally oblivious to the fact there was virtually zero chance of it, and it was far more likely things would get worse for him.
Most believers in the drug war, in my experience, haven’t considered the millions of lives, families and careers that have been destroyed by the drug war. They haven’t considered the children whose parents have been imprisoned or gunned down in the drug war, or the parents who are unable to support their children due to a criminal record from the drug war. They haven’t considered what better uses the hundreds of billions (or is it trillions?) of dollars spent fighting the drug war might be put to improve the human condition. They haven’t considered the monumental failure of the drug war to reduce the availability or use of drugs after 5 decades of allegedly trying. They haven’t considered who is really benefiting from the drug war—and IMO, it is not the People.
Lesson 3: The vaccine agenda is driven by assumptions, not science
One of our projects in grad school was to design laws, policies and propaganda to promote vaccination. We didn’t call it propaganda, but it clearly was—it was designed to market vaccines—to consciously and subconsciously persuade people to get more vaccines.
There was no discussion of the integrity of the science behind vaccination—even though, as part of the program, we were evaluating the integrity of research in other areas. No one seemed to think it was necessary, and I don’t recall having any awareness at the time that any real opposition to vaccination even existed, except perhaps among the insane or ridiculously ignorant.
There were a few risk-related discussions that I recall. One was about the idea that vaccination always carries some risk of serious injury or death, although, we were told, it was minute. Nevertheless, parents who are aware of that risk will be inclined to avoid it for their own children. Instead of vaccinating, they will rely on other parents vaccinating to protect their own children. Our job was to get these reluctant parents to vaccinate. After all, if all parents opted out of the risk of vaccines for their own children, there would be no vaccination, and millions of children would start dying and being crippled by polio. Because everyone knew vaccines were safe and effective and saved lives—no scientific evidence necessary.
With the information I know now, I can immediately recognize this ‘knowledge’ as deceptive propaganda. The data shows that deaths from once deadly diseases declined by 95% or more before a vaccine even existed—and declined as well for diseases for which there has never been a vaccine. What’s more, there is no scientific evidence establishing that any disease for which there is a vaccine is contagious from person-to-person, or scientific proof that any vaccine protects against transmission of any disease to others. The result of this propaganda, which we accepted as fact without any investigation, was that we could ethically justify, in our own minds, covertly manipulating people to get vaccinated, because it was for ‘the greater good’.
That’s the first assumption driving the vaccine agenda: that covert manipulation of the public to increase vaccine uptake is just fine, even if it involves some degree of deception.
This covert manipulation was seen all over the world during the COVID19 terror event, with public health leaders like Rochelle Walensky and Anthony Fauci assuring us that vaccination would stop the spread of COVID19 and protect our neighbors and loved ones—a claim that had no scientific support whatsoever at the time, and still doesn’t, but was nevertheless widely believed.
This widespread unquestioning belief in anything vaccine is due to the fact that, although most people, even young children, can easily recognize product commercials, and respond with appropriate skepticism and detachment to their claims, they don’t understand that the vaccine-related article they just read, or the public service announcement they just heard, or even the vaccine commercial they just saw, was actually a vaccine sales pitch. Therefore, people don’t respond with the appropriate skepticism and detachment to the claims, and instead interpret the vaccine propaganda as sound medical advice.
As a student, I thought I was helping save the world by encouraging vaccination. We assumed the vaccine agenda was based on an overwhelming amount of solid scientific evidence. It’s a false assumption, but most people make it, because it’s the result of the standard vaccine indoctrination process we’re all subjected to from cradle to grave.
That’s not an excuse for my role in designing pro-vax propaganda—which is not excusable at all—I’m just pointing out that this false assumption of extensive scientific support for vaccination is a major component driving the vaccine agenda.
For all the clever imaginations diligently working on vaccine propaganda behind the scenes all these years, there is still a rather limited list of go-to pro-vaccine talking points. It includes old standbys like, “Vaccines have saved millions of lives!” and, “Do you want babies to die?!” and the more dire, “We have to stop the spread of dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation!”
It always cracks me up when someone throws one of the standard pro-vax propaganda talking points at me, apparently assuming I’ve somehow never heard it before, and will therefore be swayed by its incredible persuasive power. Amazingly, this has even occurred with people who are familiar with my educational background.
“There are literally hundreds of scientific studies supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccination!” says an industry troll with faux astonishment at my ignorance. Right. Mr. Troll probably even has an impressive-looking list of citations, too—just don’t look at them too closely. Because if there’s one area of research besides pornography where you are guaranteed to see oodles of finagling to achieve desired results, it’s vaccine research.