The Precautionary Principle

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light? If you have a personal favorite theory, that is in someway related to the Electric Universe, this is where it can be posted.
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Brigit
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The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Brigit » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:10 pm

I noticed a discussion on another thread that in the end reduced to an argument over the application of the Precautionary Principle.

On the one hand, a poster made a case that the actual science behind a particular scientific theory was highly questionable. On the other hand, the respondent made the argument that nevertheless, if there was any risk that the scientific theory was correct, then actions must be taken quickly and without waiting for scientific objections to be resolved.

This is known as the precautionary principle, which "states that if a product, an action, or a policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, protective action should be supported before there is complete scientific proof of a risk."
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

Cargo
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Cargo » Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:06 am

This part really throws me:
"any risk that the scientific theory was correct"

There is a Risk if a theory is correct/right/true? What risk and to whom, seems to be a good question. I can imagine many on the BB side who are at great Risk.

I'm gobsmacked wondering about what 'actions' means while 'without waiting for scientific objections to be resolved'. ;)
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes
"You know not what. .. Perhaps you no longer trust your feelings,." Michael Clarage
"Charge separation prevents the collapse of stars." Wal Thornhill

jackokie
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jackokie » Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:16 pm

But if the scientific theory is questionable (i.e., poor execution of scientific method and/or doesn't match observations / experience), then how much confidence should there be that the correct mitigating action has been identified? isn't it possible that the action taken to mitigate the risk will pose an even greater risk? The cure worse than the disease?
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

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JP Michael
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by JP Michael » Wed Feb 17, 2021 11:21 pm

jackokie wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:16 pm The cure worse than the disease?
Otherwise known nowadays as the COVID-19 Vaccination Program.

jacmac
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jacmac » Sat Feb 20, 2021 1:09 am

jackokie:
The cure worse than the disease?
JP Michael
Otherwise known nowadays as the COVID-19 Vaccination Program.
I don't know about you JP, but I'm taking the Precautionary route.
494,000 dead (in U S) is convincing evidence for me.
Jack

jackokie
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jackokie » Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:00 pm

Just to be clear, I had in mind things like the proposed cures for AGW. But jacmac, your count of 494,000 COVID-19 deaths brings up another issue: The accuracy of the data collection that went into that number. As far back as last summer there were reports that people who died from underlying issues were classed as COVID-19 deaths if they tested positive for C-19. Given how many false positives some of these tests return, that's a lot of room for error. The most egregious instance I heard about (and perhaps it's apocryphal) was the young man killed in a motorcycle accident who was counted as a C-19 death.

It's unfortunate that COVID became so politicized, as shown by the Hydroxychloroquine controversy. There was and is a lot of "pandemic porn" in the news. The website https://c19study.com lists 207 trials involving over 183,000 patients showing that HCQ is effective if given early in the course of the disease, especially if given with zinc and/or Azithromycin.

Yet today I found a News Medical article about a review of 14 studies that states "Hydroxychloroquine does not reduce deaths from COVID-19, and probably does not reduce the number of people needing mechanical ventilation, state the authors of a new Cochrane Review. In addition, they note that no new trials of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for treating COVID-19 should be started."

"The public demand for a COVID-19 cure fuelled (sic) speculation that the drug might be effective, but this was based on unreliable research that did not meet the inclusion criteria of this review. The then US President Trump declared chloroquine a "game-changer" about a year ago, leading to global demand and confusion. The research community rapidly organized large trials which demonstrated no evidence of effect, and these trials are summarized in this review." (bold added)

"Authors based in India, South Africa, and the UK (LSTM, the University of Liverpool, Royal Liverpool University Hospital Liverpool) undertook this systematic review of studies that used chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for treating or preventing COVID-19 disease. They searched for studies that examined giving chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to people with COVID-19; people at risk of being exposed to the virus; and people who had been exposed to the virus."

I've included much of the article because it illustrates a serious problem not only for medical research, but also other branches of science, including astrophysics and cosmology: Clinical trials are the tried and true method of doing medical research, and deservedly so, but in a crisis the strict protocols and time consuming processes get in the way. The c19study.com site includes some trials, but it is mostly concerned with retrospectives of outcomes of clinical and hospital treatments. It seems clear that for a great many involved in medical research, only clinical trials can produce valid results; data from any other source is not even considered. This institutional rigidity was deadly for far too many people. We see the same kind of rigidity in astrophysics and cosmology. Fortunately, it's not currently life threatening, but once there are a lot of people zipping around in space it could be a different matter.
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

jacmac
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jacmac » Sun Feb 21, 2021 4:51 am

jackokie
your count of 494,000 COVID-19 deaths brings up another issue: The accuracy of the data collection that went into that number. As far back as last summer there were reports that people who died from underlying issues were classed as COVID-19 deaths if they tested positive for C-19. Given how many false positives some of these tests return, that's a lot of room for error.
Has there been inflation of Covid death numbers, perhaps.
On the other side, what about many people dying without a test at all who had Covid symptoms. They are not counted.
When the hospitals across the country are swamped with sick people who can't breath because something is ravaging their lungs
do you say "don't count him he is obese, or don't count her she has a weak heart" ?
All these deaths can be compared to the average numbers of deaths without Covid present in past years,
and a very large difference is evident.

I am 78.
I'll take my a day or two being blah from the vaccine against the real possibility of dying any day.
The cure is not worse than the disease for me.
My risk/benefit analysis says take the vaccine.
I am being Precautionary :)

Cargo
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Cargo » Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:55 am

What happened to the science though? There is no scientific evidence for COVID beyond computer simulation. It has never been isolated.
All numbers for "cases" and "deaths" are completely irrelevant and unworthy for whatever c-virus happens to be floating around at any given time, year after year. The world has been conned by the 'vid', just my humble opinion.
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes
"You know not what. .. Perhaps you no longer trust your feelings,." Michael Clarage
"Charge separation prevents the collapse of stars." Wal Thornhill

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JP Michael
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by JP Michael » Sun Feb 21, 2021 8:45 am

jacmac,

I didn't want to derail this thread with discussion about CV-19, but when Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis puts the danger of CV-19 the same as a annual influenza, a statistic agreed upon by the WHO, you know there's a problem with the public narrative.

You might want to think more carefully about the risk of people in your age category dying within 48 hours of vaccination.

Even former Pfizer head of respiratory pathogen research Dr. Michael Yeadon is warning people not to take the vaccine. Eminent microbiologist Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi has said much the same thing.

See also Del Bigtree, Nursing Home Nightmare, where he uncovers information that nursing home deaths in the UK tripled after the vaccine program commenced there. All such deaths were, of course, blamed on COVID, not the vaccine itself.

The precautionary principle has been utterly thrown out the window with CV-19's insane and irrational lockdowns, mandatory masking and experimental gene therapy 'vaccines' which have usually resulted in antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE - this is where the vaccine enhances a virus' ability to cause illness and death) in animal studies:
Lee et al. wrote:Going forwards, it will be crucial to evaluate animal and clinical datasets for signs of ADE, and to balance ADE-related safety risks against intervention efficacy if clinical ADE is observed. Ongoing animal and human clinical studies will provide important insights into the mechanisms of ADE in COVID-19. Such evidence is sorely needed to ensure product safety in the large-scale medical interventions that are likely required to reduce the global burden of COVID-19.
Guess which studies were skipped during Operation Warp Speed?

jackokie
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jackokie » Sun Feb 21, 2021 5:57 pm

jacmac

I'm two years older than you, and believe me, I understand your concern about Covid 19. But Cargo has an excellent question: "What happened to the science though?" We are each responsible for our own welfare, and I have no intention of criticizing your decision to get the vaccine, I'm going to wait to see how things shake out. The problem I'm looking at is the terrible job our institutions did in dealing with the crisis. The CDC is emblematic of these failures; the initial word from the CDC was there was little risk from Covid 19 . From

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news ... 435762001/

"The week America lost the fight against the new coronavirus, the nation’s premier health agency promised local officials it had the virus under control. It was the third week in February. Senior leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly brushed off calls to take COVID-19 more seriously. They dismissed concerns from Minnesota to Hawaii that their plan to contain the outbreak by screening overseas travelers was riddled with inconsistencies."

"The CDC missed the early spread of the new coronavirus, blinded by its own decision to limit screening for the virus after its initial testing kit failed. That was one of the agency’s most consequential scientific errors."

Please read the entire article.

The other huge failure was the media's political bias, manifested in two ways: 1. Trumpeting the dangers of Covid 19 at every opportunity, while ignoring the dangers to life and health posed by the draconian measures imposed at the state level. One important story that was kept out of the news was that the percentages of covid cases and deaths were higher in the strict lockdown areas. 2. There was a great deal of evidence that Hydroxychloroquine had the potential to alleviate Covid symptoms. Several doctors who treated Lupus and other auto-immune diseases, and thus had prescribed HCQ for their patients for years, reported great success in treating Covid symptoms. But because President Trump had touted HCQ there was major pushback that distorted the story.

Why bring all this up? First, because sooner or later we're going to face another crisis - another pandemic, or heightened solar flares with Carrington Event potential, or the Yellowstone caldera becoming active.... The potential loss of life, or even our survival, will largely depend on our institutions to identify problems and disseminate the necessary information. Second and more immediately, the disfunction we see in astrophysics and standard cosmology is abetted by the same lack of scientific rigor and pop-sci approach towards things celestial. We shouldn't tolerate it.
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

jacmac
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by jacmac » Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:22 pm

JP,
Yes we are both responsible for our own welfare.
<moderator edit>
JP:
One important story that was kept out of the news was that the percentages of covid cases and deaths were higher in the strict lockdown areas.
That does not ring true to my memory. Early on the large urban areas had more cases; true. They initiated "lockdowns" partially because of the lack of Federal guidance and help, and because it was what they could do in the face of very active viral spread. I was aware of the lack of press discussion that the spread seemed to be high among household members. It is difficult to come up with a great plan when half the country is in serious denial.
When the virus did spread to the more rural areas ( thus the entire U S ) the death rates in the anti "lockdown" controlled states were about 3 to 4 times greater. For awhile my state, Arizona, was one of the worst places in the world.
I am happily surprised at the rapid reduction of cases nationally since early January.
Lets hope it continues.
Jack
Last edited by nick c on Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Political comment removed

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JP Michael
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by JP Michael » Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:39 pm

jacmac wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:22 pm I am happily surprised at the rapid reduction of cases nationally since early January.
It was after the WHO issued a memorandum, directing PCR testing laboratories to use cycle thresholds of 30 or less. Prior to this, cycle thresholds for RT-PCR testing was set between 38-45 cycles (depending on country). Remember that these tests are exponential; each cycle multiplies available genetic product by 2. The difference between 2^30 cycles and 2^38 is massive. To see why high cycle thresholds are a problem, see here. The world's leading PCR experts have repeatedly said that cycle thresholds of 30 or more (even 25 or more) result in majority false positives, otherwise known in the media as asymptomatic cases (people with a positive test but no symptoms of COVID illness whatsoever - they are just PCR false positives, nothing more nothing less).

It's a controlled clown show, sadly.

Brent72
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Brent72 » Fri Feb 26, 2021 12:43 am

I agree JP.
In the Australian context, (and I'm sure this is true for many other countries), the average age of death with Covid is consistently 1.7-1.8 years above the normal life expectancy. In other words, people are living longer and fewer people are dying. This is borne out in the annual mortality statistics for the state of Victoria (Australia); total deaths in 2019 were 43,944. Total deaths in 2020 were down to 41,147 - a decrease of 6%. People died with the virus and not from it. In Australia Covid-19 has had no impact on mortality rates, and therefore meets no definition of “deadly.” You might argue that the lower death rate has been due to the lockdowns. The stats show that of the 25,279 'infections' in people under 70 years old, only 58 (0.2%) died. To put it simply; for every 1000 people under 70 who get Covid, only 2 of them die. I'll bet those 'deaths' had serious underlying health conditions also.

And yet the government in Victoria continues to impose harsh lockdown measures, which have thwarted millions of young people's education, ripped families apart, increased the incidence of mental health problems and suicide, and destroyed small businesses. Governments benefit from people being dependent on the system, being uneducated and afraid, and doing what they're told.
Not only that, but governments have prevented doctors from prescribing clinically proven cures such as ivermectin. Almost unbelievable. The reality is that the healthcare system doesn't benefit from people being healthy, it benefits from people being sick. (Just ask big pharma).

The most grievous virus over the last 12 months has been the worldwide spread of deliberate misinformation and authoritarianism.

Brent72
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Brent72 » Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:25 pm

Prof Robert Dingwall talks about the Precautionary Principle in relation to Covid in the UK (from about 8:00):
https://youtu.be/YHRwsBNKuM4

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Brigit
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Re: The Precautionary Principle

Unread post by Brigit » Tue Mar 16, 2021 7:08 pm

All excellent points, of course! (:

In a way, I have nothing to add -- except in the chronological order of things.

The Precautionary Principle at first blush may appear to offer a bit of security in a time of extraordinary innovation, or in cases when we face a new problem. "Act now, and work out the details later," becomes the default policy. In other words, if something might be harmful to human health, it is better to err on the side of caution and quickly act to mitigate the threat.

The two most visible applications of the Precautionary Principle in science are GHG and C-l9, as has already been pointed out. And in both cases the science and predictions are reliant on and completely carried out with computer models. That is not a bug, that is a feature of the Precautionary Principle.

In both cases, there is a computer model that is central to modeling the scientific data. These models are then utilized to make projections of future events, and these projections are used by politicians to respond. And it happens that in both of the cases mentioned above, drastic changes to nearly every aspect of society are recommended to avoid the modelled outcomes.

Those of us who are more process-oriented are already experiencing some respiratory problems at this point in the argument! We are finding ourselves surrounded by people who are rushed to pull the trigger on some policy, but in most cases have either not understood, or, have not been honest about this fact: they and the politicians are using a computer model to guess at both the science and the future.

The computer model for the most recent global outbreak was produced by Neil Ferguson; it was immediately used by politicians world wide on c....actnow org to impose varying levels of societal Loch Downe. Overnight, emergency powers were appealed to by politicians, and, shockingly, quarantine was imposed not on the sick, but on the healthy. Responses ranged from governmental stay-at-home orders, applications for permits to leave home, and extremely high fines for violators in France, to milder restrictions within some states in the US. But all governments were using the same output from Ferguson's model.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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