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They blinded us with (junk) science
39 Plays6 years ago
This week we discuss the junk science behind cancerous claims about Round-up, Agent Orange, 1080, and Autism diagnoses, looking at how legal findings do not necessarily tell you anything interesting scientifically. We also cover some shenanigans surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, a 9/11 missing person case, and the latest disinformation from Russia.
Links: That 1080 image - https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rural/2018/08/1080-activism-going-down-the-conspiracy-wormhole.html
Russia poisoners caught on camera - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45454142
Learn more about M's academic work on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories at:
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
Lights! Camera! Acting! Woah! The world's a stage and poor toms are cold. Blue widens and crack thy cheeks for as schoolboys we are to the gods. They kill us for their sport. It's Oligogo on this week's episode of the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy.
00:00:29
Speaker
Tena koto, tena koto, tena koto kator. Welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy called Josh Edison Toko Inua. I don't know how to do that in the third person, so you'll have to introduce yourself.
Patreon and Equipment Upgrades
00:00:40
Speaker
Well, you're just putting a whole bunch of stuff on me now, having been completely unprepared for this quite wonderful Torao Māori greeting that Josh is offering for himself, but not for me, Dr. M. R. X. Denton.
00:00:54
Speaker
And I should be introducing myself in Tareo Maori, because I do know how to do a kind of pipiha to introduce myself, but I'm momentarily drawing a blank, which is very embarrassing, because it is Tareo Maori week here in Tareo, New Zealand. I thought we should just chuck a bit on the front there. We should.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I've just let the entire side down. So it's the end of today's episode, just out of pure embarrassment. Thank you, Joshua, for everything you've done. Indeed. Well, if I were slightly more knowledgeable, I would be able to say not just my name is, but another person's name is. But I can't.
00:01:30
Speaker
Because basically all I can look at you with is all the episode long. With our glorious lighting. It's so light in here. Almost too light, but not. As you may notice, if you're watching the video version and not listening to the podcast, if you do notice it on the podcast,
00:01:52
Speaker
Congratulations. You have superhuman ability to detect light levels via audio. We now have a light rig. Four lights, two of which aren't working at the moment because their batteries have drained whilst we were setting up the episode playing around with
Format Changes and Main Topics
00:02:08
Speaker
the lights. So next week will be four lights. This week we only have two and they have burning my rattlers. My rattlers? My rattlers? Yes, my rattlers and my rattlers. You don't want to know what my rattlers are.
00:02:20
Speaker
As I speak but I will soldier on because I've already spent time in front of an LED light Earlier this week when I was being interviewed for the spin-off TV on the way 2k bug more on that when I see the finished article
00:02:37
Speaker
Yes, and it must be said that this brand new lighting rig was paid for by you, the noble listeners, or at least those of you who are Patreons. Yes, for those of you who are donating money towards the podcast, it is paying for this lighting rig, but will hopefully eventually pay for proper lapel mics, which will make our recording even better, and of course, the creme de la creme.
00:03:02
Speaker
makeup, stage makeup. We are going to get Josh all Caesar Romero and make sure that he's got a nice pasty white face with a grimace. We're going to vaudeville it up in here. I shall be trying to get him to some railroad tracks.
00:03:20
Speaker
Cooling a moustache. Oh, as in railroad tracks do require a certain amount of Patreon support. But if you do want to support us in continuing to improve this podcast, then please throw money towards us. And this week, we're changing things yet again. We are changing the schedule. For the better.
00:03:39
Speaker
Or for the worse. We'll see. And now we're going to do this preamble, then we go straight into the content, and then we're going to end on the news, which is quite convenient, because now we're doing the extended news as kind of a patron update special. We can do the scheduled news, and then we can have a bit of a riff on the news we find interesting we haven't covered in the episode proper.
Roundup Controversy: Science vs. Law
00:04:03
Speaker
So, where normally I would say, well let's get into the news, now I guess we say, well let's get into the episode. Yep, let's look at junk science and the way that evidence plays a role in conspiracy theories about the suppression of junk science.
00:04:21
Speaker
Ah, junk science. See, with a little bit more patron money, we could actually get Ongo Boingo to do some sort of cover of the old weird science movie theme. Actually, I would say that would require a lot of money. I don't think it requires a lot of money to get Ongo Boingo to do anything less bad. Which, you know who Ongo Boingo is though.
00:04:39
Speaker
That was Danny Elfman's band. Really? So yeah, so he's possibly might be outside of our pay scale. He's got ideas well above the station. That's all I'm going to say. He does. Anyway, we're going to be talking about about science, particularly science of the junk variety, particularly junk science as sort of spurred by the legal system.
00:05:01
Speaker
which is not a follower of the scientific method so much as it is not that. A follower of the scientific method. I think you could just end the sentence there. Yes, we're going to be talking about a number of subjects this week. We're going to talk about autism, which is of course a highly uncontentious topic that will cause no feedback whatsoever. 1080, which is really only a contentious topic here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:05:29
Speaker
Orange, which is fairly contentious here, particularly in the region of Taranaki. And of course, our final topic, which is Josh. He doesn't know what we're talking about this episode. A moral.
00:05:46
Speaker
No, no, no. We've got autism, we've got T and 80, we've got Agent Orange, we've got Roundup. Which is actually the motivating thing which is causing the episode, the Roundup thing. So Josh, you say the last topic and I'm looking at the end of our list. No, I said the fourth topic. Not the last. The fourth. Fine. The fourth topic, which is the first topic, which is the topic of Roundup.
00:06:07
Speaker
I'm glad to see you're now with the schedule. Take it away, Mr Addison. Okay, so Rounder, I don't know how international that is if it's called something in other countries, but here at least, Roundup is a herbicide. So it's reported as being Roundup in all of the American press, so I'm assuming it's called Roundup there as well. Because I still don't have a tablet, I have these really handy little note cards which have things so that when Josh says the name of, I can say,
00:06:37
Speaker
Agent Orange! Autism! Yes. So, I mean, it's a herbicide, it's poisonous, right? Nobody's denying that it's probably not a good thing to put into your body. But there have been charges that simple exposure to it can be carcinogenic.
00:06:56
Speaker
Roundup was made by good old Monsanto now called Bayer. I think Monsanto was bought out by Bayer. So Roundup was created and developed by Monsanto. Bayer now owns Monsanto and by extension own Roundup and by extension would be legally liable for anything caused by Roundup.
00:07:20
Speaker
So I believe this is going to be the theme for this episode. The scientific evidence as to whether or not simply being around Roundup can cause
Agent Orange and Legal Outcomes
00:07:31
Speaker
cancer is not good. But on August the 10th of this year,
00:07:36
Speaker
Which is why we're talking about it now. A jury in California awarded Dwayne Johnson not, and I can't stress this enough, not Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as The Rock, but Dwayne Johnson $289 million in damages.
00:07:53
Speaker
Mr. Johnson had brought charges against Monsanto or Bayer, based on the claim that he had developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma because of his exposure to Roundup. He worked as a groundskeeper, so obviously was around weed killers quite a bit.
00:08:09
Speaker
developed non-helchkins lymphoma, claimed that the active ingredient glyphosate, or glyphosate, I'm not sure if that's a typo or simply my scientific illiteracy, that is a carcinogen. Now, that's the claim, the courts accepted this claim, but that's not, does science tend to disagree? Yeah, so there's been quite a lot of reaction by the scientific community saying, well look, we've done
00:08:37
Speaker
meta-reviews, which are reviews of scientific evidence in total. So you take a whole bunch of individual reports and you produce a meta-review based upon those reports. And the science seems to be quite clear. Yes, don't drink Roundup. That would be a really, really bad idea.
00:08:56
Speaker
But the idea that it's a contributing cause towards cancer really isn't particularly clear at all. But what seems to have happened here is that the court in the US unusually have taken a leaf out of the WHO, who in 2015 put Roundup as being a potential carcinogen. So they put it on a list at the time, saying that Roundup may well be carcinogenic.
00:09:25
Speaker
Now, this particular 2015 report was contentious at the time. So the person who authored the report has been accused of being very selective with the way they use the evidence, ruling out particular samples that would indicate that Roundup is not carcinogenic and only focusing on a subset of the data. And so in 2015, the scientific community said
00:09:49
Speaker
we don't think the WHO should have done this, but the courts in California have taken the WHO warning and used that in court to basically crucify, not literally, only figuratively, although if only we lived in a world where we could crucify members of large corporations.
1080 Poison and Conspiracy Theories
00:10:11
Speaker
If only we lived in that world. What a world that would be. Crucified Monsanto
00:10:17
Speaker
and juries have awarded this Dwayne Johnson a princely sum for a cancer which may not have been caused by Roundup at all. So what's been happening here, Joshua? Well, kind of two things potentially, and these are things which I think we will be coming back to again and again over the course of this episode. One is that courts and juries in particular are not scientists. They're not actually experts.
00:10:47
Speaker
in the issues that are being discussed. Another is that the, what do you call the evidentiary grounds for a legal ruling are different from those for a scientific ruling. So in terms of a court case, often it's sort of balanced probabilities, it's sort of
00:11:07
Speaker
Do we think this could have been the case where science is a lot more, you know, we want proof that this is definitely the cause, we can show this is the cause of agent, this is how it's happening, so on and so on and so forth. So there's a much lower standard of proof in court cases, so that's how these sorts of things can happen. Especially though, in a case like this one where you have, you know, a humble groundskeeper versus a giant global nega corporation, there's also the fact that juries will, you know, like to side with an underdog and so on.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yes, which is understandable. We both hate corporations and everything that they stand for. And thus, if someone says something bad about a corporation, we'd like you to go thumbs up. That's a good thing of you to be saying. But sometimes that kind of natural inclination to hate people in power can sometimes bring us a ride or, as a Brit would say, come up a cropper. Come up a cropper or come a cropper?
00:12:04
Speaker
I can have a cropper once, but I'm not allowed to talk about that. That's true. And that was also a groundskeeper. Didn't cause cancer, though. No. That was salacious. No. What? Yes. Now, but where it feeds into conspiracy theories, of course, is that
00:12:20
Speaker
There have been these sorts of conspiracy theories around many of the things we're going to talk about today, but ground up among them, that these sorts of things, they are carcinogenic or poisonous or what have you, the companies that make them know that they're carcinogenic or poisonous or what have you, but they've been covering it up. And so that's where the conspiracy theories come in. And so when a ruling like this comes along, that allows your conspiracy theorists to jump up and say, ha ha, look, this proves my conspiracy theory right. Yes.
00:12:51
Speaker
vindicated me. Yeah, so basically what you have here is a classic case of there's always been murmurs about the carcinogenic properties of Roundup, which Monsanto and then Bayer have always denied. As soon as you get a court case like this, people say, ah, it's been proven in a court of law that Roundup causes cancer, epsi-facto, it causes cancer. I'm doing my Alex Jones impression now. I should be louder for that really. I thought it was David Mitchell, to be honest.
00:13:20
Speaker
That would be more whiny. So does that come across more whiny than I read? Yeah, more whiny than psychopathically, sort of. I used to do a jizz from Peepshow now. You just don't understand me, man. You just don't understand me. I put all my effort into this, you don't understand me at all. That's true.
00:13:41
Speaker
Thank you. Anyway, so you get these situations where people go, it's been proven in a court of law, but the thing to note here, as Josh pointed out, courts of law do not decide scientific matters, they decide where legal responsibility lies. And legal responsibility is at a much lower threshold than actual proof of harm in a scientific setting.
00:14:05
Speaker
So this kind of fits in with the they're covering it all up while scientists go, well, no, they're not covering up anything because a legal decision says X doesn't mean that X is true. It just means that legally these people have been found responsible for something which there's no determinate cause or pathway for.
Vaccine Injury and Anti-Vaccine Movement
00:14:24
Speaker
And then of course once you get one case that sets precedent for others. I believe there have been numerous rulings where women have taken various manufacturers to court claiming that their silicone breast implants gave them breast cancer. Now the science is again not really on board with that but more than once and on multiple occasions courts have found for the plaintiffs in these cases.
00:14:50
Speaker
And again, it's that same sort of thing. It's different standards. It's, again, sort of your underdogs. It'll be an individual taking on, if not a giant corporation, then at least the medical institution or doctors who are generally surrogate authority figures and so on and so forth. Perhaps we should move on, though, to some of the other... Well, yeah, so let's talk about Ancient Orange, which is a kind of
00:15:15
Speaker
local issue, although it's also, again, a US issue. So Agent Orange has used another herbicide that was used quite extensively in Vietnam. I always get my Southeast Asia complex mixed up. Its actual name is, I'm going to attempt this, and usually my attempts at this go very, very badly, is 2,4,5-trichlorophenyloxyacetic acid.
00:15:44
Speaker
Sounds about right to me. Yeah, and it was for a period of time manufactured in the Taranaki region of the North Island of Aetoro, New Zealand, and at the time it was being manufactured there was a noticeable uptick
00:16:03
Speaker
in birth defects in that region, which had led for a long period of time people theorizing that Monsanto, once again, is covering up the fact that Agent Orange causes birth defects. And of course this wasn't aided in any way by the fact that Monsanto paid out to veterans of the Vietnam War in the US
00:16:29
Speaker
not actually substantial, but they paid out compensants for long-term illnesses accrued apparently due to that war, apparently due to Agent Orange.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a tricky one. There's a lot of statistical data, a lot of anecdotal data. My father-in-law served in Vietnam, and he reckons that he and every man he served with have cancer. But it should be said that they are all in their 60s and 70s now, so it's not beyond the realm of
00:17:07
Speaker
probability, but still it is a bit of an eye opener. And again, we have a statistical rise in the number of birth defects at the time. I believe from a scientific standpoint that's simply just been thought of as a bit of a blip. Yeah, so there actually has been an investigation by public health professionals in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:17:32
Speaker
looking at that brief uptick in birth defects in the Taranaki region at the time and said, yes, it is true there was an uptick, but it does appear to be a statistical blip because at other points in time there's a higher incidence rates in other parts of the country where aging orange wasn't being produced.
00:17:53
Speaker
And there are also a bunch of other health-related reasons to think that these birth defects might be part of that population generally, rather than the introduction of a contaminant, which gets us back to the whole Vietnam War thing, which is once again, these are people of a particular age, from a point in time where maybe people weren't looking after themselves in the same way we are now,
00:18:19
Speaker
in a medical system that wasn't quite aware of the kind of illnesses people can suffer from. So it can appear that there's a generation of people with illnesses associated with a particular conflict.
00:18:32
Speaker
But in comparison to people of their age that weren't in the conflict in the first place, their symptoms actually don't appear to be all that abnormal.
Science vs. Legal Misinformation
00:18:42
Speaker
Q now, the people who fought in Vietnam all know Vietnam vets writing in to say that we're getting this completely wrong. Yeah, no, I don't actually know. Where is the science when it comes to Agent Orange? I wasn't aware that science has ruled out the idea that it could be carcinogenic. I just, I don't know. I don't believe it has been
00:19:01
Speaker
again, conclusively proved. But we get back to the court cases again because, as you say, the American courts have paid out a settlement to a group of American Vietnam War veterans. Now we should point out these settlements were not due to a jury result. These settlements were before anything went to court. Yes, so here we have another factor in the legal system, of course, which is
00:19:24
Speaker
Corporations paying to make things go away, whether or not Monsanto believed they could prove or disprove whether or not their Agent Orange had caused cancer. It's still not a good look for a corporation to be pitting itself against a bunch of Army veterans.
00:19:44
Speaker
And so you get these cases where they are more than willing to pay a sum, which would probably be a fair amount less than what the damages would be if they actually went all the way through a court case and they're willing to pay this amount out to simply make the case go away. But that can still again be jumped on by the conspiracy theorists and say, well look, here we go, we've got proof. We've been telling you it caused cancer and that they knew and that they'd been covering it up. And here we go now, it's all come out and washed.
00:20:12
Speaker
Shall we move on? Yes, we have more. We may be repeating ourselves somewhat, but it's interesting. Well, this particular one we've actually talked about a lot, which is 1080. The poison that is almost entirely used here in Aetoro, New Zealand, because it's a very way to get rid of pest species in
9/11 and Conspiracy Theories
00:20:32
Speaker
our country, because it's a poison which by and large targets mammals, and mammals are, apart from three species of that and some aquatic lifeforms,
00:20:43
Speaker
introduce species which are pests in this country. We are a nation of birds. We sure are. And we are also a nation of cat owners and dog owners who like nothing more than chasing and eating birds and also destroying their nests.
00:20:59
Speaker
And we've also introduced a whole lot of predators like possums and rats, which also enjoy a bit of the old bird eating. And 1080 is a very effective way to get rid of these mammals from our bush. But that hasn't stopped people from claiming that it's all part of a large-scale conspiracy
00:21:20
Speaker
to destroy the human race. In fact, if you can, when you do the video here, pop out that lovely infographic from Facebook about the rationales that people have
00:21:31
Speaker
for believing that 1080 is a bit of a conspiracy. Yes, a local here started going around the various sort of Facebook groups, message boards to
Brett Kavanaugh and Conspiracy Involvement
00:21:42
Speaker
see what people were actually saying about 1080 because a lot of people will claim that what is said about 1080 that it targets mammals and is therefore harmless to the native bird life, which is what we're actually trying to protect. They'll say those things aren't true.
00:21:56
Speaker
They'll say that it is harming native bird life, and there have been various cases of them showing dead birds, which, what was the case a little while ago? They had a bunch of dead kiwi, which had actually, they claimed to have been killed by 1080, but what was the real deal there? They're being run, they're being run to kill or something. And then just recently they dumped a bunch of other native birds on the steps of parliament, which were all shown to have died of blunt trauma. So, roadkill or who the hell knows what else. But anyway.
00:22:23
Speaker
But when you actually delve into it, it's not just that it's a lot more poisonous than people think. Oh, and of course then you get the case that hunters will go out into a bush where it will be signposted if 1080 poison has been dropped in those areas. But they'll go out there, a hunting dog will eat some 1080 poison, it will die.
00:22:41
Speaker
And they'll say, that's terrible, to which people reply with, yeah, yeah, dogs and mammals, it kills mammals. There were signs up saying, don't bring your dogs in here. And reach into the bush, they put in TMATM, you're not allowed to take your pets into it. So it's not as if it's a drastic conspiracy to kill the mammals off. The government goes, look, we know the mammals are going to die. That's why you're not allowed to take your dogs in there when you go hunting.
00:23:03
Speaker
But I don't think you're
Russian Disinformation Tactics
00:23:04
Speaker
allowed to go hunting in regions where there are 1080 drops anywhere. Although what's great about this particular graph is the variety of different theories related to it. One thing that 1080 apparently is used for is to kill inner earthers. Oh, so much, so much. Which I assume, I assume because they must be cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers, or chuds, as they're well known. Surely we want 1080, because as we know from Chud 1,
00:23:31
Speaker
No, Chud is redeemable. Chud 2 is not canonical. Because Chud 2 the bud, he's a good Chud. That isn't true. Then you've got, it's been used by UFOs. I'm not quite sure how that one works, but someone has made the claim that maybe it's an experiment by UFOs to control the human population.
00:23:54
Speaker
It is of course part of the New World Order, but the best one, the one I'd never heard before before looking at this graph, apparently JFK was killed because he was going to reveal the secret of 1080.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah, so they actually, it's well, well beyond it's being more poisonous than people think it is. If you start looking through the anti-1080 boards as this person did, they managed to tie it to pretty much every conspiracy theory on the
Conclusion and Teasers
00:24:25
Speaker
run. The pie chart, for those of you listening who do not get to see the graphic here... There will be a link in the description for the podcast. Indeed.
00:24:35
Speaker
The pie chart lists the various rationales of what 1080 is really for. The highest one, 32% of claims were your agenda 21 new world order stuff. It's for
00:24:47
Speaker
population control, it's the dropping 1080 poison in the middle of the bush where people go to kill off the human population. I'm not sure how that works. It gets into the water supply or something. Now, there's sort of these things I've been thinking about for a while. So when I got back last time and voted in the general election, I noticed that there was running in the North Shore and only the North Shore, a person by the name of Miriam running for the logic.
00:25:17
Speaker
party. I like logic. So I had a quick search on my phone to find out what the logic party is and it turns out to be basically an anti 1080 party with a whole bunch of other anti scientific positions.
00:25:32
Speaker
Now Miriam having failed to get elected to parliament in that apparently the logic party which once again only ran on the North Shore and didn't run as a party but only a candidate for a party so there's no way to vote for the party and the party vote.
00:25:47
Speaker
got something in the realm of six or seven votes, so not quite enough to get into parliament, or enough to even be statistically significant on any particular metric. But she has a YouTube channel, and that YouTube channel's all about the evils of 1080,
00:26:05
Speaker
and how water has memory, and how 1080 kills the cells, and also destroys the soul. And the thing is, part of me wants to investigate this and talk about it, but the YouTube channel only has about 100 subscribers, and it seems that basically she only merits a sort of footnote in a discussion, despite the fact that
00:26:26
Speaker
In a few weeks ago, she was encouraging gangs like the Mungrabob and the Headhunters to attend an Auckland council meeting.
00:26:36
Speaker
to disrupt a 1080 drop. So actually encouraging violence to get the council to step in and stop 1080 from being dropped in the bush. Anyway, so that's, there's more though, not just Agenda 21, we've got controlling the world, 1080, the purpose of 1080 is to control the world through affecting the food supply,
00:27:01
Speaker
to allow people to mine Department of Conservation land. I'm not sure, are they claiming they're going to kill off all the animals so they can then go and... Yes, so basically animals are dead, there's no reason to protect that land anymore. Ah, that it's just some sort of money-making scheme involving the government slash new order slash Illuminati. They want to kill all the people so that they can then sell the land that the people lived on.
00:27:24
Speaker
We're getting now into the smaller 6% and 4% of responses, so these aren't the major ones, but eugenics projects to create a master human race, again, so I assume that's targeted poisoning, a money laundering scheme involving the government, and yes, it's just on and on and on. People, they want to control our land, our water, our mineral assets, and so on and so forth, and to do that they need to kill off people, and so that's what poison's for.
00:27:54
Speaker
Now the thing to note, which ties into our previous discussions, is that it is true that 1080 does on occasion kill birds.
00:28:06
Speaker
So if a certain amount gets into the food supply, for some birds that can be tragic. It's also true we've modified the recipe for 1080 to make that less likely. So 1080 say proponents, anti-proponents, 1080 adversaries. What's the word I'm looking for? People against 1080. Aggresses? No, I don't know. What's the opposite of proposed?
00:28:31
Speaker
I don't know. 1080Mtakenist haters. We'll go, look, it does kill birds, and that's been covered up, but the Department of Conservation has always been very honest. Yes, it does kill birds on occasion. It's just that it's so good at killing predators.
00:28:50
Speaker
and so bad at killing birds, and predators are so good at killing birds that we're willing to take a few acceptable losses to preserve the stock as a whole. It is for the greater good. For the greater good. For the eating of humans. Now, so that's round up Agent Orange 1080.
00:29:16
Speaker
Autism. Yeah, let's talk about something uncomfortable. So autism and of course the links between vaccine and autism now We've talked about the anti-vaxxer stuff in the past. You all know the deal Basically Andrew Wakefield 1990s dodgy research struck off didn't make a difference boys to men chart Charlie Sheen Jim Carrey
00:29:40
Speaker
I don't know. Jenny McCarthy. Yeah. I thought you were going somewhere. I said, why not tell the boys to men? I don't know. 80s and then vaccines. Because then you got to Jim Carrey. And Jim Carrey at least used to go out with Jenny McCarthy. I don't know if there's still a couple. And then Jenny McCarthy, key anti-vaxxer. I thought there was some grand scheme. Carrey is still a generation rescue person. What is generation rescue? That's the people who claim we have to rescue children from the effects of vaccines. Have you heard that one?
00:30:10
Speaker
But, but, so the science is actually fairly unequivocal on this. There has been no link found. The studies which claimed that a link had been found between vaccines and autism has been thoroughly discredited. They were in fact fraudulent. The active ingredient was thymurasol. Was that the one that was the thing that supposedly was the active ingredient that caused it? I don't think it's used in vaccines anymore. Mercury, which is another one I don't think is used in
00:30:37
Speaker
vaccines anymore, or at least not the way you think it is. It's not like they put an eyedropper of mercury into it. It's just mercury as a chemical element is involved in some of the chemicals in the same way that poisonous chlorine is part of table salt. And also, mercury is part of most of our water suppliers as well. But
00:31:00
Speaker
there have been times when the legal ruling has gone the other way. Yes, so here we get into the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which also created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which for some reason is actually abbreviated as VICP. I suppose they just want to put national in there.
00:31:26
Speaker
This is like the World Series in the US, isn't it? Which is a no-fault compensation system. So basically what happened in 1986 was that vaccine makers were getting spooked by claims against vaccines because on occasion vaccines do cause fairly severe reactions.
00:31:48
Speaker
There's a kind of fit that children have for up to two minutes when they get a vaccine, which is quite rare, but is apparently quite disturbing to watch. And every so often, vaccines also cause brain trauma. I want to say the actual technical word here, but I know I'm going to stumble on an encephalopathy. Encephalopathy, yes. That was almost what I said. Almost what I said.
00:32:15
Speaker
And so the compensation program was set up to basically be in low fault systems funded by a trust administered by the American government whereby if a child was injured by a vaccine, the compensation program would pay out and it would insulate the vaccine makers from what they took to be the fictitious litigation.
00:32:38
Speaker
The problem is, every so often a child with ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, gets a payment, and then this is used as proof positive that the government has admitted that vaccines cause autism, and thus there's a major cover-up going on.
00:33:00
Speaker
But it's not as simple as that. So, I mean, yes, as we say, adverse reactions to vaccines are real. They happen. They're statistically rare to the point that, I guess, much like with the 1080, the overall benefits of having a vaccinated population well outweigh the unfortunate occasional side effects.
00:33:26
Speaker
But when it comes to autism, the science isn't there, and yet, so let me get the actual quote here. So this particular quote, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has ordered millions of dollars to at least four children with autism for quote, pain and suffering.
00:33:43
Speaker
a lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars. And so people jumped on that. Look, your anti-vaxxers said, look, here we go. We have a court ruling. They said that vaccines caused autism. And yet the government can use deny to deny that. So that must be a cover. It must be a conspiracy. But the actual judgment of this court, although it awarded money to these children, was not that vaccines cause autism.
00:34:09
Speaker
The findings of this particular court were that the MMR months, measles and rubella vaccine, admitted to the children, caused vaccine-induced encephalopathy. It's usually anopathy, isn't it? Encephalopathy.
00:34:23
Speaker
which is, again, one of these known adverse reactions to vaccines, which was found to be unrelated to the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. So these children had vaccines, they'd had reactions to them, they were compensated for it, they also had autism, but the two weren't connected, or at least were not found by the court to be connected.
00:34:48
Speaker
But, of course, that's not going to stop the anti-vaxxers. Even then, I'll just say, oh, I don't know. I have the hiccups all of a sudden. Maybe it was that vaccine I had this morning.
00:35:00
Speaker
your breakfast. Wait an hour. No, I have a vaccine as my breakfast. Oh, I'm not entirely sure I have proven that at all. But yes, what we have here is a classic situation whereby you have two correlated events taken to be causal. But of course, any anti-vaxxer with their salt will go, no, no, no, no, no. You see, autism is a form of brain injury.
00:35:26
Speaker
it's so effective the vaccine cause the brain injury and autism is a brain injury. It must follow the vaccine cause the autism which is brain injury because anti-vaxxers don't take it that ASD is a developmental issue rather than one which is caused by environmental factors.
00:35:51
Speaker
So there's a lot of muddy in the waters between cephalopathy and autism. They sort of treat the two as being interchangeable so that a court ruling that a vaccine did cause cephalopathy is then passed upon to say that a lot of this court ruling said that vaccine caused autism.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so in fact, even in this case, like in the previous ones where we found we would look at court cases finding a certain thing that wasn't actually backed up by the science and said simply because courts and science work differently and have different criteria for how they rule on things. In this case, even the science actually doesn't contradict the legal ruling. It's simply that people have been taking a scientific sounding ruling and twisting it to suit their own agendas.
00:36:39
Speaker
Isn't that terrible people twisting things to their own agenda? I would never do such a thing. No, you wouldn't. No, because I have no agenda. You also have no science. No, so I'm perfectly immune as though I've been vaccinated against science. I like the way you made that transition. Yes.
00:37:00
Speaker
What can we say about all this, then? Well, the first thing to say is that just because something is decided in a court of law does not tell you it is scientific fact. There is a difference between scientific reasoning and legal reasoning, where the evidential threshold for a judgement under the law
00:37:19
Speaker
is quite a lot lower than the threshold for a judgement under science. In the legal setting we are very, very risk-averse, and thus will take some evidence as being probable cause.
00:37:37
Speaker
whilst in the scientific realm, we tend to be very, very on the what does the evidence actually say and go, well, we need a really high threshold before we're willing to make any definitive conclusion of a causal link between the two things. And so what's interesting here is the difference between a legal conclusion versus a scientific conclusion.
00:38:05
Speaker
So that's about all there is to say, I think, on this particular topic. Don't confuse your legal rulings with your scientific evidence, and you won't muddle up your conspiracy theories. Well, you probably will. Don't drink Roundup. No, don't drink Roundup. Or Agent R, and don't consume 1080, unless you're a bird. Well done if you're a bird, if you're watching or listening to this.
00:38:27
Speaker
it is going to cause you a rather violent demise. And also, please do vaccinate your children. Please do, yes. So, having come to the end of the main section of this podcast, we are now on a dramatic break with tradition, going to go on to the news. We are. It's time to find out what's been happening this week in Conspiracy Theory News. Breaking, breaking, conspiracy theories in the news.
00:38:58
Speaker
Now, of course, this week isn't just multi-language week. It also sees a highly significant anniversary of a terrible and earth-shaking event. Yes, the birthday of our friend Nick, who was born on September 11. Happy birthday, Nick.
00:39:12
Speaker
True, but we have done that joke numerous times before. More relevant for our purposes is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. As a Conspiracy Theory podcast, we can't let this go without commenting on it, but, well, is there any actual news about it this year?
00:39:33
Speaker
Eh, not that I've seen. Trump said some silly stuff about it, but what's new there? Uh, otherwise, truth is gonna truth. But, um, I'm not aware of any new developments on the conspiracy front. Well then, hold on to your hats. Uh, ooh, okay. I'll just go in first. You see, 9-11 might have been a front let a doctor disappear.
00:39:59
Speaker
Be still, my beating heart. Well, no, not really. It's more likely that Saneer and Philip might have used the chaos of that day in New York to leave her old life behind and start afresh. Officially, you see, Dr Philip died a hero that day, likely helping out at Ground Zero and dying along with the other rescuers who perished that day.
00:40:22
Speaker
But unofficially, there are questions as to whether she was even there that day, given that the last time anyone reported seeing her was the day before, and there is security footage from the apartment in which she lived in which a Dr Philip shaped figure entered the lobby at the time of the attacks.
00:40:42
Speaker
Okay, well this is certainly a 9-11 story, but is it a 9-11 conspiracy theory? Well, maybe! If you redefine 9-11 conspiracy theories as being theories about conspiracies, which occurred on September 11, 2001, and aren't related to terrorist attacks or false flag operations,
00:41:04
Speaker
You might call this the Andy Bichago of 9-11 hypotheses. That's an in-joke dating back to the last U.S. presidential election, you listeners? Yes. Doris Danes, Doris Danes. Now, Dr. Phillips was not having a good time with it.
00:41:19
Speaker
what with issues at work and relationship dramas with her partner. So there are reasons to think that maybe she used the events of that day to simply disappear. Indeed, whilst initially she was listed as a deceased first responder in the aftermath of 9-11, a police investigation and medical examiner's report removed her from that list on the basis that there was no reason to think she died that day given she disappeared a day earlier.
00:41:49
Speaker
But her family and husband fought that decision, and so for the time being, she's definitely not on the run, and they are definitely not covering that factor.
00:42:00
Speaker
Well, that was more of a story for this year's 9-11 anniversary than I was expecting. Moving on, more Brett Kavanaugh and one of my favourite topics, the death of Vincent Foster, one of the many supposed hits from the Clinton Kill List. Ah yes, a classic case. There have been a number of stories over the last week about Kavanaugh's time at the office
00:42:21
Speaker
of independent counsel when he was an independent counsel working with Kenneth Starr on the infamous Whitewater investigation, and how Cavanaugh both peddled and didn't peddle conspiracy theories about the death of Foster.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yes, Kavanaugh has shown himself to be the Schrödinger's cat of jurists being able to answer and not answer questions all at the same time. How he does it? Nobody knows. Well, except for the possibility that he's a trained legal mind who realizes that actually stating his deeply held beliefs might be anathema to the nation as a whole.
00:43:02
Speaker
But anyway, Star's predecessor Robert Fisk looked into the claim that Foster, who committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park in 1993, hadn't reality been murdered as part of a White House cover-up related to white water. Fisk's conclusion was that the story was nonsense, and the most likely explanation was suicide, especially given Foster's known mental health issues at the time.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yes, this was reiterated by several other reports at the time as well, but when Starr took over the Whitewater investigation, a young Cavanaugh encouraged Starr to reopen that aspect of the investigation. This was despite the fact
00:43:44
Speaker
Kavanagh himself claimed in memos to think the Foster had in fact committed suicide. So why reopen the investigation? Why indeed? For three years, at a cost of $2 million, Kavanagh investigated a conspiracy theory he did not think was warranted.
00:44:01
Speaker
looking into non-existent Swiss bank accounts, having the White House carpet forensically investigated, and questioning Hillary Clinton, obviously, about a purported affair with Foster. And all because he had certain right-wing sources like Reid Irvine, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, and Christopher Ruddy, who were spreading spurious stories about Foster, the Clintons, and Foster's death.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yes, which raises the question. If his predecessors and other independent reports said this theory was unwarranted, why did Cavanaugh insist on reopening that investigation when he agreed with those reports? Why, you'd almost think he was peddling a conspiracy theory for non-partisan reasons!
00:44:50
Speaker
Which, true, would be quite the scandal. Finally, what is an episode without some disinformation from our friends at Russia Incorporated? Buy one packet of disinformation and get a topless pewson calendar free. Buy none and they'll send you two. That's a threat of a bomb bargain.
00:45:10
Speaker
And what a threat it is. Yes, the UK has released security photos of the two suspected Russian agents they think poisoned Skriples, which for watches at home, Josh will throw up on the screen right about now. I'll throw the pictures up, I'm not going to throw up onto the screen. Podcast listeners can check out a link in the article in the show notes.
00:45:32
Speaker
So, assuming you're looking at these pictures right now, what we're seeing here are two photos of purported Russians walking through some corridor at exactly the same time, according to the timestamps, which is physically impossible given they do not appear together in the same photo. Photoshop, surely.
00:45:51
Speaker
Russia has also been memeing the screepal poisoning laughing at an image of the two suspected poisoners in Wiltshire by pointing out that if they are carrying Novichok, where are their hazmat suits? Indeed, they followed that jab up with a photo of chemical weapons inspectors dealing with Novichok, who were of course covered head to toe in safety proportions.
00:46:14
Speaker
This is, however, all disinformation on Russia's part. The suspected poisoners wouldn't need hazmat soaked if another shot was in a sealed container. The photo of the precaution weapon inspectors is based around them dealing with a contaminated site, rather than transporting the chemical itself.
00:46:34
Speaker
Yes, but more importantly, the photo of the two suspected poisoners isn't an obvious photoshop. It's security footage from the Gatwick non-return gates, which stand side by side. And so when you think about that, it's quite possible that two men travelling together would pass side by side through two such gates at the same time.
00:46:55
Speaker
Indeed, the angles in both images are different, which indicates different corridors, which supports the UK's version of events rather than rushes.
00:47:04
Speaker
Now, none of this says the UK's story is the one true correct account, but it is telling that Russia is doing its best to cast scorn on that particular investigation by spreading disinformation. So a lot like the Vininko case, I'm sure there'll be more to say on this soon. And by soon, expect a proper inquest in the next five to ten years. Yes, if the UK survives that long post-Brexit.
00:47:32
Speaker
But for now, that is enough news from us. After the episode, we will be discussing Denver Airport's remodeling, and how they are poking fun at the conspiracy theories surrounding that remodeling. We'll touch upon the whole Zena Bash white power hand signal again,
00:47:49
Speaker
and discuss Alex Jones and his termination not just from Twitter but from the Apple App Store. They will be going up as patron content which you can access for as little as a dollar a month via our Patreon page or the Podbean patron service. Just look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. And that basically is the news. That is the news and, because of our brand new way of structuring things, that is the end of this episode.
00:48:17
Speaker
unless you happen to be one of our patrons, in which case you'll get a little bit more if you choose to listen to it. And what more you will get. We don't know because we haven't recorded it yet. But we're going to do that right now. We are. So, to all of you listening to this main part of our podcast, we say, Heirera, Heikoneira. Never quite sure what the difference between those two is. See, normally both with greetings and farewells, you'll need to say it three times. And so saying it in
00:48:45
Speaker
two or more different ways as part of the reiteration. So let's say we go haere mai, haere mai, haere mai. Often saying nu mai and things like that. It's a way of kind of saying the same thing three times. It's customary but showing variance. I see. All I know is haere mai is what you say
00:49:04
Speaker
to the people who are departing and you know horror is what you say if you are the one who is departing that they've opened in goodbye. But as we are staying here, I don't know. And all I can think of now is Beatles lyrics. You say hello. I say goodbye. Hello, hello. Goodbye, goodbye. You're just trying to work into the reference to John Lennon and Paul McCartney wanking at each other, aren't you?
00:49:29
Speaker
I am now. Oh, and when the lights have just gone off, which in case the episode is in fact over, because they're turning off the lights around us as we speak. So we better rush before it goes completely dark. Goodbye. Adi ra. You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy.
00:49:48
Speaker
It is written, researched, and performed by Josh Addison, aka monkeyfluids, and MRXtenteth, aka Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean, and Stitcher.
00:50:09
Speaker
It can also be watched on YouTube. Just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, or, if you happen to be technophobic, consult the auguries. You can support the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy via our Patreon page, as listed in the podcast description, or just by searching for us on Patreon.
00:50:31
Speaker
You can also support us via the Podbean patronage system, if that is more your style. You do you. If you want to get in contact with us, why not email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com, or find us on Facebook. And remember, it's just a step to the left.