My family is one of chemists. My grandfather started his studies at the University of Nuremberg in chemistry before being called up to serve in Germany artillery in World War I. My father took his bachelor's and master's in chemistry in Sydney, Australia, and his Ph.D. in the same at Northwestern University. He taught medicinal chemistry at the University of Illinois for 42 years. There wasn't a pharmacist in the state who was not a former student. Even when my folks retired to Vegas, there were a couple of former students who also had made their way there and, of course, remembered Professor Bauer.
Growing up in a house of science, I too followed in the same path. I took a bachelor's in biochemistry from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Wisconsin. I have great pride that the latter degree was from the School of Agriculture, because that's where all of biochemistry started. I always find it fascinating to read the history of scientific discoveries. The things we take for granted at some point were great mysteries, and there was that eureka moment when something not understood became clear. Whether it was the discovery of the composition of atoms or the identification of vitamins and their role in health, each discovery was a watershed event in our better understanding and improving our world. For a long time, it was not known that enzymes were a form of protein that can perform catalytic activity in breaking down or building up cellular components. It was thought that some element transiently associated with a protein did the work. An American scientist was the first to grow crystals of an enzyme. He went to Uppsala, Sweden, which at the time was a hotbed of biochemical research. He went to the front door of a top scientist and announced that he had grown crystals of an enzyme. The fellow said, "Yes, yes, wait here," as he called the police. He was sure that he had a loon on his front door.
The perversion of science is nothing new. Throughout history, scientists and others have bent scientific norms and outcomes in order to push ideologically driven goals. In order to justify one's position or behavior, all he needed to do was whip out some graphs or statistics in order to claim that unbiased science was on his side. While the trend is not new, the rate of scientific malfeasance would seem to be increasing. All of COVID, from soup to nuts, involved bad science, manipulated results, and false conclusions. No one should take a scientific conclusion as truth without looking into the matter fully.
The latest case of science run by politics comes, not surprisingly, from England. It has been reported that the British government is sitting on research that ties "excess deaths" post-COVID to the COVID vaccines. In many European countries, the number of deaths after the pandemic was far in excess of what long-term models suggested there should have been. What could have been the cause of such extra death? Mark Steyn and others reported a while back on the phenomenon and suggested that the one thing that was given to millions and millions of Europeans was the COVID vaccine. And apparently, the U.K. has data supporting this hypothesis, but it refuses to release the information. The justification for not releasing the work is that it might lead to "distress or anger" in the relatives of the deceased. So thoughtful! Maybe the U.K. doesn't want to release the data, as it might lead to lawsuits and the publication of a lot of very unimpressive scientific shenanigans? It has been suggested that the data originally shown by the manufacturers of the vaccines were not for the versions of the vaccines given to the public. Does the U.K. government want to revisit the engineering of COVID by American and Chinese researchers? In the name of quiet, it will just sit on the data and hope that the storm will blow over. Where are the scientists who performed the studies? Why aren't they risking imprisonment in order to let the people know that their government killed their loved ones with half-baked chemicals forced upon the general public? Everything with COVID was a lie: its source, its threat to children and healthy individuals, distancing, masks, and finally the vaccines. We were told that the vaccines would be the end of the pandemic, but people kept getting the virus, and the vaccines seemed to be causing death and illness beyond any other vaccine in history.
Having grown up in a house of science and done research in labs more focused on basic research than cash cow drug discovery, I had a very noble view of science as a way to better understand our world. Then, one day, I attended a talk in Madison where a guy was discussing AIDS, which at the time was still raging. In one slide, he put up a single word in capital letters: AID$. He explained that if you want research money, then do AIDS research. This was an eye-opener. Later, also in Madison, the university was involved in a kerfuffle over Vitamin D. Vitamin D was a major source of cash for the University of Wisconsin. One of the top researchers was in the biochemistry department at the time. He was given a paper to referee on a new way to synthesize the vitamin. There were accusations of stealing, and the feds had to come in to investigate. In the end, the professor was exonerated, but I will never forget that part of the investigation found that the Wisconsin lab was unable to synthesize a key intermediate. But when some material fell on the floor, after it was picked up, the new intermediate was present.
The vast majority of scientists in government, academe, and industry do honest work with the goals of understanding our world and making it better. Every day, we benefit from an endless number of scientific breakthroughs that have made our lives safer, more comfortable, and more productive. While most scientists are straight-shooters, there are unfortunately those who use science as a mask for personal enrichment or advancement. Look at those who bent data to convince us that the world was heating up. They would put temperature probes near the tarmac of an airport—yeah, that's a real representative data point for local temperature. Look at Anthony Fauci, who was the head of an NIH division. He did everything to distract from the simple fact that the engineered virus exited the Wuhan institute and started a worldwide pandemic. He used his position to push a false narrative on the origin of the virus. He sold us on masks while privately writing that they do nothing. When pressed by Congress, he could offer no scientific basis for the six-foot separation rule. People associated with Fauci misspelled words and used private email in order to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) searches. This is science? Count me out.
One of the great challenges facing research scientists has to do with goals. When one files a grant request, he puts forth a program that should lead to a desired outcome. He is funded on the basis of the claim. What happens when the research points to the opposite? What happens when things don't go as planned? The good scientists note their outcome and explain any discrepancy. The lowlife researchers massage the data to make it look as if they have succeeded. One biotech company tried to reproduce the results of 40 "hot" research papers. It claimed that it succeeded with only ten. Science is no better than its practitioners, and in our age, that's a very scary idea.
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