We have all heard of “The Fog of War’. I believe it was first popularized during the war in Vietnam by Robert McNamara.But “The fog of data” has now become an even greater problem-often leading to many forms of misery and miscalculation including war!
C.G Jung noticed this problem more than 50 years ago .He said “Many scientific-minded persons”( now he could say almost all scientific-minded persons lol) have even sacrificed their religious and philosophical leanings( of course -they have embraced the new religion of Empiricism) for fear of uncontrolled subjectivism. By way of compensation for the loss of a world that pulsed with our blood and breathed with our breath(who needs blood and breath when you have facts?!),we have developed an enthusiasm for facts-mountains of facts far beyond any single individual’s power to survey(Ever noticed lol ?)We have the pious hope that this incidental accumulation of facts will form a meaningful whole”(and by extension an effective decision-making process). Nothing could be further from the Truth! Reference: Psychology and the East, Princeton University Press 1975) Couldn’t have said it better myself lol.
So,.. if we take the time to follow what our “scientific, evidence- based” “decision -makers do, we will discover the following stages of the process;
1-The Accumulation of Data-any and all data-relevant and irrelevant, some of it in the form of charts, others in graphs all organized in a way to allow numerical and statistical analysis.
2-The data is the “crunched” analyzed meticulously by experts and statisticians and epidemiologists and an army of modern intellectuals and technocrats.
3-From this process is generated a few concepts and theories which then become articles of faith(e.g. “Vaccines are safe and effective” or “man-made climate change due to burning hydrocarbons.” ) articles which are no longer to be questioned or challenged for fear of being denounced as anti-vaxxers or climate change denier.
4-From this toxic soup of procedures, principles, rules and regulations and protocols are laid down(vaccine mandates ,limiting the production of hydrocarbons etc,.)Nothing is to be challenged or put into question any longer. These have become religious catechisms.
Poor old Francis Bacon, the discoverer and promoter of the Scientific Method, must be rolling over in his grave lol. This is not at all what he intended. His protocol also involves four stages-but very different from what is called “science ” in the modern world. Let us have a look at them:
1- Observation; This required an insightful observation in the course of one’s regular work. So seeing that mould could kill microbes led to the development of antibiotics like penicillin. And noticing that animals with pancreatic pathology had sugar regulation problems led to the discovery of insulin. None of this is based on data collection. It requires subtle ,inspired observation not obsessive fact-checking.
2-Hypothesis.From this observation one can develop a plausible connection that needs to be explored and investigated .Not a fixed theory that one defends by manipulating,suppressing ,hiding and even inventing(as in the famous Lancet article on hydroxychloroquine) data.
3-Experimentation With an open mind trained in objectivity and with no comnflicts of interest,one then designs an experiment to test out one’s hypothesis .This is about testing out theories not operationalizing pre-set ones!
4-Conclusion: One generates a conclusion based on the experimental data -always tentative, always subject to being disproved and always open to further research. A far cry from what is happening in modern profit-driven” science”
This model can be used effectively in many areas of our life, including (God forbid lol) in medical practice where in fact each patient is a new experiment requiring the doctor to actually sort out the specifics of each case . But we have strayed so far from the original model! Now instead we have protocols and procedures and algorithms which MUST be applied as “the standard of care” for fear of losing our jobs and our livelihoods. God help us!