The warning was stark. At issue was a privileged class that has long dictated policy despite countervailing public opinion. At issue, the luminary warned, is nothing short of democracy itself. No, it was not the continued rallies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT) to “fight oligarchy.” It was Justice Clarence Thomas rallying his colleagues to fight technocracy, or government by experts. He warned against allowing “elite sentiment” to “distort and stifle democratic debate.” Yet, the story is even more profound of an elite class which succumbed to the Icarian gene and fell to Earth due to hubris and excess.
In his concurrence in United States v. Skrmetti, a case upholding Tennessee’s ban on adolescent transgender treatments, Thomas called for his colleagues to stand against an “expert class” that has dictated both policy and legal conclusions in the United States.
The reference to “experts” is often used to insulate an opinion as self-evidently true on a given question when they speak as a group. It distinguishes the informed from the casual; the certifiably authoritative from the merely interested. Yet, what constitutes an “expert” can be little more than an advanced degree, and the “overwhelming opinion of experts” can be little more than groupthink.
Thomas warned his colleagues that “[t]here are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.”
Indeed, those “good reasons” have become increasingly obvious to those outside of the Beltway. The public saw experts line up during the pandemic to support mandatory uses of surgical masks, shutting down schools, and requiring the ruinous six-foot rule of separation. Many of these rules were later found lacking in scientific support. At the same time, dissenting experts, including the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, were blacklisted, censored, or fired for challenging these views.
We have seen the same orthodoxy on issues ranging from gender dysphoria to COVID measures.
In his concurrence, Thomas lashed out at the virtual mantra in court papers and the media of an “overwhelming medical consensus” in favor of transitioning children. This is often cited as the conclusive judgment of experts as opposed to citizens who overwhelmingly oppose treatments for children, including castration or surgical removal of genitalia. Thomas insisted that “so-called experts have no license to countermand the ‘wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.’”
For decades, citizens largely identified the government with bringing modern approaches to programs eliminating long-standing social ills from poverty to illiteracy to inequality. Roughly 100 years ago, the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt transformed the government’s role in American life. A generation of experts brought new ideas of electrification, education, and economics to the country.
This veneration was furthered by Kennedy’s assemblage of “the best and the brightest” and Johnson’s “Great Society” reformers.
The courts later followed with greater and greater deference afforded to these experts, including the establishment of the “Chevron doctrine” insulating agency decisions from substantial judicial review. The Supreme Court ruled that courts were poorly equipped to second-guess the expertise of agency experts.
The Reagan Revolution challenged those assumptions. Reagan famously told voters that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Over the years, the mystique took on a more menacing aspect for many in the country as they watched academic and scientific groups become more advocates than experts. There seemed to be a shift from making for a better life to making us better people through progressive social agendas.
The result has been a dramatic change in trust for higher education and, by extension, the supremacy of the expert class. According to Gallup, only a third of Americans today have great confidence in higher education and roughly the same number have little or no confidence. That is a drop of over twenty percent in the last ten years.
Other polling shows drops in the trust for state and local public health officials as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The decline of the expert class can be traced to the changes in higher education over the last couple of decades. As I discuss in my book The Indispensable Right, an orthodoxy has taken hold of most universities with a purging of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty. Within these ideological echo chambers, appointments, publications, and grants often seem to turn on conclusions that favor political agendas.
Over the years, dissenting faculty members have been forced out of scientific and academic organizations for challenging preferred conclusions on subjects ranging from transgender transitions to COVID-19 protections to climate change. Some were barred from speaking at universities or blacklisted for their opposing views.
As shown during COVID, many of the exiled experts were ultimately proven correct in challenging the efficacy of surgical masks or the need to shut down our schools and businesses. Scientists moved like a herd of lemmings on the origin of the virus, crushing those who suggested that the most likely explanation is a lab leak (a position that federal agencies would later embrace).
Scientists have worked with the government in suppressing dissenting views. At the end of last year, The Wall Street. Journal released a report on how the Biden administration suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab leak theory, as dissenting scientists were blacklisted and targeted.
When experts within the Biden Administration found that the lab theory was the most likely explanation for COVID-19, they were told not to share their data publicly and were warned about being “off the reservation.”
British pediatrician Hilary Cass published a review for NHS England that cast doubt on gender-identity treatments for children and young people. The research reportedly led to an aggressive campaign by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to suppress the results.
The gravitational pull of social agendas has overwhelmed not just scientific judgment but common sense. For example, there has been a push to treat gender as a socially constructed myth.
A University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor declared that you cannot tell the gender of an individual from their bones – a widely ridiculed assertion.
The editor-in-chief of Scientific American Laura Helmuth made her own contribution to gender ideology by tweeting out a statement with a 2017 article in Audubon Notebook stating “White-throated sparrows have four chromosomally distinct sexes that pair up in fascinating ways. P.S. Nature is amazing[.] P.P.S. Sex is not binary.”
Various experts cried fowl and noted that her point was ideologically driven and scientifically absurd. (Helmuth later resigned after posting a profanity-laden attack on social media calling Trump voters “fascists” and bigots).
In many cases, dissenting views on social or political issues are treated as disqualifying for any research.
At Cornell, professors signed a letter denouncing “informed commentary” critical of violent protests as racist.
In 2020, Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the prestigious Journal of Political Economy and the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, criticized Black Lives Matter and the movement to defund the police. The response was a campaign to remove Uhlig from the Journal. Writers like economist Paul Krugman insisted that he was now “yet another privileged white man” attacking the”less fortunate.”
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center removed Associate Professor of Medicine Norman Wang from his position as Program Director of the Electrophysiology Fellowship after he wrote an article in a peer-reviewed journal questioning the use of affirmative action in medical schools admissions. (Later, the Supreme Court would declare such use of race as unconstitutional race discrimination).
Another controversy arose in 2024 just before the Supreme Court considered access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used for abortions by mail. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk relied on two studies that showed harm from the use of the pill.
The Sage journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology was widely criticized by abortion advocates for publishing the studies. One month before the oral argument, the studies were conveniently retracted and a review published that found the conclusions “invalidated in whole or in part.”
Justices and judges will often take favorable studies as gospel in supporting their legal conclusions. In her dissent in the University of North Carolina affirmative action case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson triggered a controversy in citing a 2020 study from a friend-of-the-court brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Jackson claimed that race-based admissions “saves lives” because having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood of the survival of high-risk Black babies. The claim of the brief and the flawed methodology of the study was shredded by critics.
The fact is that it is easy to produce near uniformity of experts since most universities now run from the left to the far left. The combination of biased hiring practices has left most departments with few or no conservative faculty members. As a result, the media can report that liberal positions are supported overwhelmingly by “experts.”
For example, it is now common for the media to report signed letters or petitions of law professors denouncing conservative positions or rulings. It rarely mentions that most law schools have only a couple of conservative faculty members. It is like getting a pro-papal petition from the College of Cardinals. Nevertheless, the coverage leaves the impression that opposing views on transgenderism, gun rights, or other subjects are absurd and rejected by virtually all “experts.”
Both the courts and the public, however, appear to be losing their awe for the expert class. The Supreme Court recently tossed the Chevron Doctrine and called for courts to resume their prior scrutiny of agency decisions.
None of this means that courts or the public should disregard science or experts. Indeed, many experts still follow core principles of unbiased inquiry and discourse. However, good science requires open inquiry and a diversity of viewpoints. Citizens are rejecting science by plebiscite, the self-authenticating petitions where academics purported to speak for an expert class.
The expert class lost the public when they replaced objectivity with orthodoxy. No matter how many experts claim that gender is a social myth, the public is not likely to dispense with reality. The rise and fall of the expert class is a story of the costs of arrogance and excess. Higher education has created a privileged class of social warriors who abandoned core principles of neutrality and objectivity in research. It is an Icarian generation of scholars who flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth in the eyes of the public.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court. He is the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” and the forthcoming Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster 2026).
America must terminate Toxic Femininity.
On a related note vis a vis “experts”, SCOTUS told Planned Parenthood to collect their “pay for slay” revenues somewhere else than South Carolina. Cue the screaming Cat ladies of America!!
🙀
Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 23–1275. Argued April 2, 2025—Decided June 26, 2025
Congress created Medicaid in 1965 to subsidize state healthcare for families and individuals “whose income and resources are insufficient to meet the costs of necessary medical services.” §1396–1.
Medicaid offers States “a bargain”: federal funds in exchange for compliance with congressionally imposed conditions. To participate in Medicaid, States must submit a “plan for medical assistance” satisfying over 80 conditions in §1396a(a). If a State fails “to comply substantially” with any condition, the Secretary of Health and Human Services may withhold federal funding. §1396c.
This case involves the any-qualified-provider provision in §1396a(a)(23)(A), which requires States to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance . . . may obtain” it “from any [provider] qualified to perform the service . . . who undertakes to provide” it. The provision does not define “qualified,” leaving that to States’ traditional authority over health and safety matters. The question is whether individual Medicaid beneficiaries may sue state officials under 42 U. S. C. §1983 for failing to comply with the any-qualified-provider provision.
Section 1983 allows private parties to sue state actors who violate their “rights” under the federal “Constitution and laws.” But federal statutes do not automatically confer §1983-enforceable “rights.” This is especially true of spending-power statutes like Medicaid, where “the typical remedy” for violations is federal funding termination, not private suits. Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 273, 280.
The district court granted summary judgment for plaintiffs and enjoined the exclusion. The Fourth Circuit affirmed. This Court then granted certiorari, vacated, and remanded in light of Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion Cty. v. Talevski, 599 U. S. 166, which addressed whether another spending-power statute created §1983-enforceable rights. On remand, the Fourth Circuit reaffirmed.
Held: Section 1396a(a)(23)(A) does not clearly and unambiguously confer individual rights enforceable under §1983.
95 F. 4th 152, reversed and remanded.
GORSUCH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. JACKSON, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1275_e2pg.pdf
It is instructive that Justice Jackson told us “I’m not a biologist”. And yet she seems to have a penchant for providing us with over the top verbose opinions about everything, fueled largely by bluster and incoherent rants. She must fancy herself to be an “expert”.
Memo to GOP in Congress: refer everyone and anyone to DOJ that was involved in Joe Biden’s “auto-pen” scandal, and auto-correct the “not a biologist” off of SCOTUS.
Science is good at explaining or predicting the odds of natural outcomes but it contributes nothing to human values which are required for private and public policy decisions. For example, it took large numbers of scientists and engineers to devise and build a nuclear bomb during the WWII Manhattan project. And even though some of the “expert” scientists and engineers working of the project opposed the use of the bomb, it was not the “experts” place to do so but rather President Truman who decided based on his values and situational assessment. That is how it should be. The mantra “Follow the Science” misses the necessary step of political representatives using their values (and constituents values) for making decisions to address scientific findings demanding to be addressed by a public policy.
It is the responsibility of the experts to communicate the situation to the public and perhaps to propose solutions. Take for example Climate Change. We have not had any serious public debate on Climate Change or what to do about it even after Joe Biden declared it to be an “existential crisis” without ever addressing or justifying this to the public. There could be any number of responses to anthropogenic climate change but it seems that the scientific “experts” were advocating a “net zero” carbon emissions target date of 2050 without considering the enormity of this endeavor or alternative approaches. We need to get back to human values in decision making and have the experts go back to working in their expertise.
Scientists and experts know a lot about fields that are narrower and narrower as time goes on. They may be able to predict what the effect on their field of interest might be from any action or policy, but their focus is concentrated on that one aspect of the problem. There are always other costs and factors to be. considered. It is the job of a politician, or statesman if you prefer, to collect expert opinion on all aspects of a problem and balance the pluses and minuses to form the best policies.
Arnold Nordsieck
A minor quibble
In MOST cases it is not our political representatives that get to decide our values.
It is each of us as individuals.
Actual universally shared values – values that meet Kant’s categorical imperative are the foundation of the social contract and the legitimate domain of government – such as the prohibition against using FORCE against others.
But values that are not near universal are the exclusive domain of the individual – not our elected representatives.
Further the more diverse we are as a country the LESS we share in common.
While that has both good and bad consequences, it also means the domain for LAW and government DECREASES with increasing diversity.
I had meant to say that our representative should make decisions based on shared values of the represented.
You make a good point about diversity. A similar point can be made for the concept of inclusion. If we are consciously including everyone, then there are fewer and fewer shared values and in the ultimate full inclusion there are no shared values. The evisceration of common values is the unexpected side effects of DEI. I don’t think that is what we want.
The States will split into nations as Europe has been.
Turley just distilled the MAGA media big lie: ” However, good science requires open inquiry and a diversity of viewpoints.” There is no such thing as a “viewpoint” when it comes to science that was properly conducted–if a study is properly conducted using the scientific method, then the results are both accurate and reliable. Excerpted from “How Science is Properly Validated”:
“Science is a systematic and rigorous process of observation, experimentation, and experimentation to create knowledge. Scientists use various methods to validate their findings, ensuring that the results are accurate and reliable. In this article, we will explore the process of how proper science is validated, highlighting the key steps and principles involved.Forensic science software
Peer Review: The Backbone of Scientific Validation
Peer review is a crucial aspect of the scientific validation process. It involves experts in the same field reviewing and critiquing a research paper submitted for publication. Peer review helps to:
Ensure that the research is original, well-designed, and free of errors
Verify the accuracy of the data and results
Evaluate the significance of the findings and their potential impact
Provide feedback to the authors for improvement
10 Key Principles of Scientific Validation
Objectivity: Scientists aim to remain impartial and objective in their research, avoiding biases and assumptions.
Reproducibility: Results must be reproducible by others, with the same methods and techniques used to obtain the same results.
Independence: Researchers must be independent, free from conflicts of interest, and unbiased.
Transparency: Research methods, data, and results must be transparent and publicly available.
Open Communication: Scientists openly share their findings, methods, and data with the scientific community.
Self-Correction: Researchers continually review and correct their findings, acknowledging errors and limitations.
Continuing Education: Scientists regularly update their knowledge and skills, staying current with new techniques and discoveries.
Interactive whiteboards
Inclusivity: Research involves diverse perspectives, considering diverse views and ideas.
Accountability: Scientists take responsibility for their work, acknowledging errors, and making amends when necessary.
Continuous Improvement: The scientific process is iterative, with continuous refinement and improvement.
Conducting Experiments and Collecting Data
Experiments are designed to test hypotheses, and data is collected to analyze the results. Experimental Design is crucial, considering factors such as:
Controlled variables: Controlling variables that might affect the outcome
Randomization: Randomly selecting subjects or samples
Blindness: Blinding participants or researchers to reduce biases
Statistical Analysis and Interpretation
Researchers use statistical techniques to analyze and interpret the data. Hypothesis testing is used to determine whether the results are statistically significant. Confidence intervals are used to estimate the range of possible values.
Publishing and Dissemination
Research findings are published in scientific journals, conferences, or online platforms. Abstracts and Summaries are used to provide a concise overview of the research.”
The foregoing is far more comprehensive than “group speak” of educated people, like Turley is trying to claim.
Just how many comments on this blog repeat the conclusion Turley is paid to promote–that MAGAt “common sense” is more valid than scientific evidence? All of this is, of course, because of Trump, his lies, his utter failure at handling COVID and his attacks against the scientific community because it dared to challenge his quack cures and lies and his lack of responsibility for the unnecessary COVID deaths he caused.
Posting the same rant over and over again does not improve its quality.
The B-2 bombers should have dropped Gigi on the Iranian locations and totally obliterated them – just out of sheer screaming the Iranians would have begged for mercy and opted to fall onto the enriched Uranium to get away from Gigalicoius.
I would guess that the Iranians have their own means of dealing with internet trolls. Probably something involving boiling oil and sheep intestines.
Amen! A highly profound and cataclysmic munition.
gig, in your simplemindedness, you fail to understand that the controversy over COVID had nothing to do with scientific methodology (there were plenty of opinions on both sides)
–it had to do with DECEPTION and SUPPRESSION and CENSOR of opposing “scientific” opinion.
Stop calling me “gigi”–where are your citations to facts? I post attributions–you post conclusions, like MAGA media always does. If you want people to believe something, post the source of the information you are citing.
Nobody has the time to waste parsing your drivel, gigi
because you ARE the previous gigi and natasha and whatever else who either got blocked on this site or just couldn’t stand the heat in the kitchen, so you reincarnated again. Not fooling anyone
Maybe if your comment was a little longer it would have been interesting.
Of course the Leftist ideologues do not ascribe to those principles of scientific inquiry you listed. They were wrong about Covid. Despite shouting “follow the science”, they suppressed the science to achieve political ends and made exceptions to their supposedly scientific rules to allow BLM street gatherings. On Climate Change, they are rejecting foundational precepts of science and statistics by insisting science tells us we must achieve Net Zero. It doesn’t. They say gender is “assigned at birth “ but ignore the scientific fact you can tell gender by looking at the chromosomes in a blood sample. They appeal to authority and consensus, not experimental results or real science.
The steps of the scientific method are familiar to cr
Following the science would mean eating GMO food, since science has found no harm in most of it.
The steps of the scientific method, and verification
Losing sucks, doesn’t it?
True science is always ready to consider experimental results that contradict the existing accepted model. Relativity famously violated Newtonian physics, but explained reality found in experiments. If physics expert in the 1900’s had behaved like the “accepted science” experts iof today, they would have refused to accept papers on relativity and suppressed the experimental results that caused Newtonian physics to fail.
When I taught Sunday School, I always taught that the scientist’s job was to find out how G_d set things up. The Bible isn’t a science text. Religion has no place in scientific reasoning and experiments.
I also don’t see any conflict between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. From genetics, we know that life is a game of genetic combinations. Not all genetic combinations are viable. If we consider all of the viable combinations as intelligently designed, then the Darwinian survival of the fittest is merely the selection of the best designs G_d made for given environments.
Marxism has all the rigidity of a fundamentalist religion. It backs scientific theories that are convenient politically. Any conflicting viewpoints are heresy, unless the Party decides that they are politically beneficial.
“. . . that caused Newtonian physics to fail.”
Really?
So planes do *not* need to create lift to overcome gravity? Rockets don’t need thrust to overcome gravity?
Someone should tell Musk that he’s wasting tons of money creating rocket engines he doesn’t really need.
Gravity?
Buoyancy and density are what you’re actually referring to. Gravity is a theory.
“Buoyancy and density . . .”
Of what?
You correctly note that real science is the result of following the scientific method with reproducable results.
Then you go off into nonsense about peer review.
Peer review is NEW, it is NOT the scientific method. What is called peer review today did not exist prior to the late 20th century and the ascendance of peer review corresponds EXACTLY to the decline of science.
Peer review was little more than political gatekeeping in the world of science.
You cite that Peer review involves reporducing results – but in the real world it does NOT.
There is an ongoing reproducability project that has found of the publish papers examined fully 1/3 do not reproduce AT ALL.
Another 1/3 are reproducable – but NOT with statistical significance. Normally that means there is not a causal relationship between the independent and the dependent variables. What that usually means is that the scientists have NOT correctly identified the independent variable,
but are testing one dependent variable against other dependant variables.
REGARDLESS science has ONE standard – REPRODUCABILITY.
Objectivity is a means not an end, and not a standard. Scientist who have better ability to be objective are ore likely to get results that are reproducable with statistical significance.
Inclusivity has absolutely no place in science at all.
Science is about the discovery of universal truth – it does not care about our preferences, values morals or principles.
While those things may be very important they have nothing to do with science.
If the IQ od one race is consistently higher than the IQ of others then that is TRUTH – whether we like it or not.
Whether e are members of the high IQ rare or a low IQ race
There is plenty of legitimate scientific and non-scientific reasons to look for the causes of that difference
I used IQ and race merely as an example. Scientists are free to have their own values moral and otherwise.
They are free to be guided by them in their pursuit of science – they are NOT required to be objective.
They are free to look for scientific truth guided by there own morals and values.
What matters is NOT their motives, but their results.
This is the constant nonsense of the left.
Not even christ judges man on their motives, but on their results.
You may not do evil with good motives.
And you may well do good with bad motives.
In fact the free market depends on people pursuing their individual self interests to accomplish the common good
You delve into math and methods – and that is very important – at the same time all it is, is a collection of tools and techniques that we have used to determine the probability that the results we have are truth.
Math or atleast the math used to verify science is not subjective.
If you are playing games with it – your results are highly suspect
I would also note that you confuse various different forms of science.
The scientific method – controlled laboratory testing is what produces the most absolutely certain results.
But all science can not be conducted in perfectly controlled laboratory settings.
In addition to using statistical methods to evaulate the truth of controlled experiments.
We use them to try to extract truth from less controlled experiemnts and from non-experimental observations within the real world.
Economics, sociology, anthropology and myraids of other “soft sciences” do not have the luxury of controlled laboratory experiments.
Even medical testing can not be done in a perfectly controlled environment. No two humans are exactly the same.
The least trustworthy “science” is that that is derived without controlled laboratory experments.
Most of the laws of economics are determined by statistical analysis of the real world – NOT controlled experiments.
But with a large enough body of data and intuition we have been able to establish actual laws of economics.
ATS – it is hillarious that you rant about Trump and Covid.
Trump did not fail at handling COVID.
COVID is perhaps one of the greatest examples of the EXPERTS botching things.
Worse the failure of the experts was predictable, and occured specifically because they VIOLATED all the core principles of science.
Study after Study prior to and during Covid – dozens of studies extablished that MASKS DO NOT WORK against respiratory viruses.
That was KNOWN before COVID.
It was also possible to mathematially prove with laboratory tests that Masks would not work.
The perfect conditions lab testing of masks found there were 70% effective in a single exposure.
Trivial understanding of math would lead you directly to rapidly diminishing effectiveness.
Basic math and trivial computer similations let you mathematially determine that stopping a virus with a transmission rate of 2.5 is virtually impossible.
You need some means or combination of means that is near 100% effective. And 2.5 is the transmission rate for the original Wuhan Covid.
Later variants have R0’s over 30.
A large number of intelligent people – both in the public health field and other fields that deal with the reap world and real mathematics from very early and in increasing numbers were telling those “scientists” who controlled govenrment public health that they were full of schiff and doing ACTUAL HARM
Trump did not botch covid, you can not botch the response to something that is not stopable.
But here you are ranting about science while concurrently getting the very fundimentals you write about completely wrong.
If you try to defend the public health experts who botched covid an attack those that repeatedly told them and all of us that this was unscientific NONSENSE. Then you have no clue what science is and should not be pontificating on it.
The evidence based “research” during COVID such as standing 6 feet apart or the over confidence in wearing masks, especially the ones wearing them outside or by themselves in cars, confirmed my confidence in “science.”
I took the vaccine and boosters. I ended up in the ER on the second shot and had COVID twice.
When the DOD took over the administration of COVID and bully Governors and local politicians were given free rein to lord over us, that is when I fully experienced the true potential depravity of mankind.
I am not anti vaccine and I subscribe to those doing proper research. However, there is a significant number of findings that are poorly derived.
The scientific research is and always should be open to debate and criticism. When critics are shut down, that is when to give extra caution.
What we saw during the lockdown was closer to SWAG than “science.”
“Peer review is a crucial aspect of the scientific validation process.”
BS.
Galileo’s “peers” considered him crazy; Vesalius’s, a crank; Pasteur’s, a hoaxer. Many of Jenner’s peers rejected his discoveries. The Royal Society refused to publish them.
Science is *not* a function of consensus. It’s an independent thinker alone with the facts of reality.
Thank God for Clarence Thomas.
Janice LeCocq, are you acquainted with Oliver Clozoff?
I had a great mentor, a neurosurgeon (back when I thought I would end up in medicine) who once said to me, “Illness becomes apparent as doctors become available.” He wasn’t talking about Sudan or Burundi. He was sarcastically talking about the U.S.
I never forgot that.
Today, it’s like “expert opinions” become apparent as advanced degrees become more available/easily attainable.
Letter alphabets following one’s surname immediately establish superior opinion in the mind of a listening, viewing, or reading John Q. Public. (I immediately think of “Dr.” Jill Biden and the substance of her dissertation. After that, I think of MEDIA, in presenting its guests with lists of their credentials.)
But media doesn’t follow up with guests who are equally-credentialed but with counterpoised or even nullifying or neutralizing opinions. And only outlier sources would dare assess the simplicity and commonality of Biden’s themes.
Today, it contributes to a circular argument/circular reasoning. -So how common is it to become an “expert” who has obtained advanced degrees– when your professors and boards all agree with your research because it reflects where they led you?
I understand Professor Turley’s frustration with a dominant ideology that pervades advanced scholarship and academic residency.
Lin,
Great comment. Would suggest it is in their best interest in order to keep their “expert” status to promote each other in their so-called “expert” roles, even if they are wrong. They just ignore when they are wrong or pretend it never happened.
The way to advanced degrees and “expert opinions” was paved by DEI, and DEI could not survive without grade-inflation, thus pushing forth of the ill-equipped and substandard.
Meritocracy (high standards) used to guarantee that a formally trained expert had the intelligence, aptitude, and skills in his/her field. Now, all we can say with certainty is that matriculation furnishes a certain number of minorities in fields—double the attenuation when their base of inquiry is Marxist.
The Untied States has slipped (academically), and we are losing more ground and professional integrity with each graduating class.
Dianna,
Great observation.
Thanks for the solidarity. Any serious inquiry concerning today’s leftist, socio-political, heresy goes to identification of its roots. The rise of the extreme-left: electing political insurgents like Mamdani because he looks fresh—man-scapes well) is an affront to our American intelligence (what’s left of it). These people came from somewhere….learned something, somewhere….Trump is not wrong to pull funding from “certain” colleges.
Lin, I like your quote.
“Illness emerges in proportion to the availability of doctors”—a saying both cynical and not entirely false. But once government gets involved and starts paying the bill, a different quip tends to surface:
“An internist is someone who looks for disease in a healthy person until he finds one.”
This isn’t a shot at internists. It’s a reflection of how incentives can shift the focus from healing to hunting.
S. Meyer: Just coming home from evening meal with friends and see your addition-especially your last paragraph–great comment– (wish your comment was available for my/friends’ meal conversation).\
Yes, and I only add that the advent of health insurance benefits only exacerbated that hunting–as well as contributed to the standardization of pricing of services rendered.
Lin, if I had the data, I’d look at ER vet bills to see how insurance affects what gets done for dogs. I was recently at the ER for my dog, and the total bill came to around $2,000 over two visits. I paid for it because I had the money. If I hadn’t, I would’ve gone with just a partial work-up, since not everything seemed essential. That would’ve saved me about $1,500. In a way, that’s a small example of moral hazard. I approved the full work-up because I could afford it, not necessarily because it was all needed. Many people carry insurance even though they wouldn’t have paid that full bill out of pocket. More moral hazard and ever-increasing prices.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Americans enjoy the 4th Amendment right to be secure in their persons and their privacy.
Americans are free to seek and obtain healthcare from a private property, free enterprise medical doctor in the free markets of the private sector.
The Department of Health & Human Services, CDC, Medicare, and Medicaid are unconstitutional and entirely bereft of a legal and citable basis in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Comprehensive and mandatory governmental healthcare provision is only considered legitimate in the context of the Communist Manifesto, which states, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
____________________________________
Article 1, Section 8:
– Congress has NO power to tax for, fund, provide, or regulate healthcare.
– Congress has NO “emergency” powers other than the suspension of habeas corpus “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it”—Section 9.
– Congress has NO power to deny Americans their freedom of mobility, assembly, commerce, enterprise, industries, markets, etc.
– States have no power to deny Americans their constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities.
It doesn’t take an Ivy League graduate degree or a CV listing >50 published papers to know when Marxist Commies lie to you. Today’s MSM / DNC are going all in for Iran, believing every vomitus and excrement Iran’s Khamenei passes. Common sense is sound practical judgment independent of specialized knowledge or training that most Americans, at one time, possessed. These came to be because they had an upbringing in traditional family values.
Whenever the Left utter a promulgation on any particular topic, it is common sense to know they are lying, like this beauty of propaganda by Islamic militant Khamenei
The worst thing about the bombing of Iran, is that they were not wiped off the face of the Earth. Now we have to put up with the MSM/DNC raise champagne glasses and throw their cloaks at the feet of Islamic Militants while portraying them as victims of America and Israel.
#FinishThemOff
Khamenei Declares ‘Victory’ Over Israel And America: U.S. Strikes Achieved Nothing, Iran ‘Slapped’ America’s Face
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “I should congratulate the people. First, I would like to congratulate them on the victory over the fake Zionist regime. With all its clamor and pretension, the Zionist regime was almost annihilated and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic.
“On the other hand, the Islamic Republic landed a resounding slap in America’s face. It attacked Al-Udeid Base, one of the most important U.S. based in the region, and inflicted damage on it. The same people who exaggerated about [the damage to Iran’s nuclear site] have tried to belittle what happened in this case. They said that nothing happened, while a great thing did happen.”
https://www.memri.org/tv/khamenei-declares-victory-slaps-america-by-hitting-al-udeid
Estovir,
Yeah, seeing the MSM parrot a low confidence, initial DIA BDA report as fact, unless it is a significant and open target like a key bridge that by its destruction denies the enemy crossing for hundreds of miles, it can take days, weeks or even months before we know what the real BDA is. Then there is the secondary and third order effects that need to be taken into consideration. Those can have ripple effects that can spread across time.
Someone noted that anything and everything that can even suggest a failure by Trump, MSM and the DNC will cheer it on. Even if it is Iran able to make and produce nuclear weapons. That is how sick they are.
Maybe he has a crystal ball. The Iranians appear to like it. Common men can have four wives. Royalty can have an unlimited number of wives. It just doesn’t seem fair.
Plus george said Prez Trump would keep the new 747-8 for himself… One lie after another.
This fool is never right.
DustOfff,
He also said a whole bunch of lies about people not leaving NYC, https://jonathanturley.org/2025/06/25/escape-from-new-york-democrats-embrace-socialist-as-new-mayor/comment-page-2/#comment-2529193
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/06/25/escape-from-new-york-democrats-embrace-socialist-as-new-mayor/comment-page-2/#comment-2529195
And here is this, Wall Street Panics Over Prospect of a Socialist Running New York City
“Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s stunning primary win is rattling the financial industry that had backed Andrew Cuomo”
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/wall-street-panics-over-prospect-of-a-socialist-running-new-york-city-da7db7e4?mod=hp_lead_pos2
Ouch!
Plus he knows everything about airplanes. Yeah sure george
Yet another MAGA media theme to appeal to the gullibles–don’t trust better-educated people with more knowledge and experience–trust MAGA media and morons like RFK, Jr., and that’s because “experts” are left-wingers, and, anyway, your MAGAt common sense counts for more than those stupid educated leftist “experts”. Turley downplays the benefit of education, experience, scientific studies, authoritative literature and the consensus of experts”: Yet, what constitutes an “expert” can be little more than an advanced degree, and the “overwhelming opinion of experts” can be little more than groupthink.”
Turley not only knows better, AND, significantly, he knows that the gullible MAGAts he is paid to help deceive DON’T know any better. Turley is also carrying out another MAGA media trope–trying to defend Clarence Thomas. Turley knows about the Federal Rules of Evidence. Evidence Rule 702 is “Testimony By Expert Witnesses” and reads:
A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if the proponent demonstrates to the court that it is more likely than not that:
(a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue;
(b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data;
(c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and
(d) the expert’s opinion reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts of the case.
Federak Evidence Rule 703 is entitled “Bases of an Expert” and provides:
An expert may base an opinion on facts or data in the case that the expert has been made aware of or personally observed. If experts in the particular field would reasonably rely on those kinds of facts or data in forming an opinion on the subject, they need not be admissible for the opinion to be admitted. But if the facts or data would otherwise be inadmissible, the proponent of the opinion may disclose them to the jury only if their probative value in helping the jury evaluate the opinion substantially outweighs their prejudicial effect.
Turley also knows about the Daubert case–summary from “Case Briefs”:
“509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786, 125 L. Ed. 2d 469, 1993 U.S.
Brief Fact Summary.
The Plaintiffs, Daubert and other minors (Plaintiffs), suffered limb reduction birth defects. They claim the defects were caused when their mothers ingested drugs manufactured by the Defendant, Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Defendant), while they were pregnant.
Synopsis of Rule of Law.
To be admissible, expert scientific testimony that is derived from research done for the purpose of litigation must show that the conclusions were reached after following recognized scientific methods of research.
Facts.
The minor Plaintiffs were injured when their mothers ingested drugs manufactured by the Defendant. According to the Plaintiffs’ experts, the drug manufactured by the Defendant caused the deformities. However, the majority of the scientific field does not agree that the drug causes limb deformities and the Federal Drug Authority (FDA) continues to approve of its use in pregnant women.
Issue.
Whether the expert testimony offered by the Plaintiffs is admissible.
Held.
The Plaintiffs’ expert testimony is not admissible.
Discussion.
* When it comes to expert testimony and scientific theory, it is hard for the courts to determine what is a fact and what is a scientific theory admissible in court.
* Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (Rule 702) is now the standard for admitting expert scientific testimony. Under Rule 702, there are several factors to consider when determining whether expert testimony is admissible:
i. Whether the theory is generally accepted in the scientific community;
ii. Whether the theory/method has been subjected to peer review and publication;
iii. Whether the theory/method has been tested or can be tested;
iv. Whether the potential or known rate of error is acceptable.
Turley’s dismissal of expert opinion as nothing more than “groupspeak” by people with advanced degrees is not only inaccurate, it is shameful for someone who holds himself out as a law professor. The upshot of demeaning expert opinion, especially in the area of public health, will be unnecessary deaths and suffering.
Please tell me this is AI written slop, there’s no way a person would actually pump out something so obtuse.
It’s AI written slop.
Turley is not diminishing ALL “expert opinions” on science—though a ton of pseudo-science can be bought and forced into policy by government interests—just the dishonest ones,grubbing for fame and/or $$$
and Turley is not engaging in group-speak as Fauci and Collins did, along with the help of the CDC and all their misinformation [many of you are STILL wearing masks and STILL getting injected, the REAL “gullibles”] to gain your rabid endorsement and compliance. Turley is pointing out that certain “interests” use “the science” to fool and control people like you.
BTW: Demeaning “expert opinion” is done every single day, on cross-examination…. :-/ your examples are inane.
Not to worry, Gigi (with the anonymous login at 1:07) No one will ever deride you as an expert, because no one will ever consider you one, or your opinions valuable.
Dear Prof Turley,
It was Dr. Fauci and President Biden who compelled me, forced me, to take the Covid mRNA vaccine shots. They said it was a pandemic of the ‘unvaccinated’ and that if I take the vaccine I will not get, or transmit, the Covid virus.
That was a lie.
*thanks to a few ever-Stallworth medical experts .. . we now know that was a lie.
Dont forget this gem, How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate
“They worked with the media to trash the Great Barrington Declaration.”
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116
‘There needs to be a quick and devastating take down’: Emails show how Fauci and head of NIH worked to discredit three experts who penned the Great Barrington Declaration which called for an end to lockdowns
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10324873/Emails-reveal-Fauci-head-NIH-colluded-try-smear-experts-called-end-lockdowns.html
Whoa, slow-down there mainstream-media-sycophant: did you know that those “stalwart medical experts” were conservative doctors and scientists who were, doxed and lied against, reputations ruined, by Fauci and “the science,” until their [OUR!] truth finally prevailed and your side finally accepted it [took a hell of a long time!]….
You got those shots because your side constantly lied to you, mandated it, and made you distrust and forgo the remedy (IVERMECTIN), not because “the science” and your leftist experts were ever right. We KNEW the day would come, when you all would twist the story about your blind obedience to devils.
Take it easy Bec. Science has no ‘side’. That’s why the discoveries of science will never, ever, end. .. no matter how much Dr. Fauci lied about it.
*I can help you, but what’s my goal here . .. to make you a happy, well-adjusted political fanatic?
Still haven’t heard you give any proof for your slander of Justice Thomas below. We’re waiting.
Did not slander Justice Thomas .. . once Justice Scalia’s erstwhile fluffy puppy.
Since 2004 SCOTUS justices have accepted nearly $5m in gifts.
“According to the data compiled by Fix the Court, since 2004, Thomas has accepted $4,042,286, or 193 gifts. The group reported that, for Thomas, there’s an additional 126 “likely but not confirmed gifts.”
*The Hill, June 2024
And you slander him again, and yet still don’t provide any proof of wrongdoing. Amazing.
We need to focus more on right doings.
Dgsnowden: When you read something, you don’t engage your critical thinking skills. Instead, you assume it’s correct simply because it agrees with you, but that’s a faulty approach, especially given how weak your critical thinking actually is.
You cite a dollar amount as if it’s inherently damning, but is it meaningful? Look at what the money was for. Was Justice Thomas in a quid pro quo situation? He wasn’t. If I give my child a million dollars and he later ends up on the Supreme Court, does that mean he did something wrong?
We were right, from the very beginning….”take it easy”—hmmm, very strange advice coming from someone who drank the “trust the science” koolaid, sided with the “lying-science,” and doxxed those who were right about the whole Plan-demic.
Listen, speaking the truth about “the science” you defended early-on, is not going against future research and discoveries. Stop conflating everything into your ideoloical bent: the point is to understand, via the COVID debacle, how science is used to harm people, divide and conquer.
Dianna,
Great comment and well said. Especially the “the point is to understand, via the COVID debacle, how science is used to harm people, divide and conquer.” part.
You’ve got to be kidding. Science definitely has a side and always has had bias. The hope is that you can filter it out.
When examined some patients had lung worms and not covid. Ivermectin is correct most likely. Can’t hurt with all the eye worms that came in and a great variety of other worms. Ya gotta worm em. 😉
From The Associated Press, dateline 3/5/21, describing a misleadingly edited video of an interview with Dr. Fauci:
“In an earlier part of the video clip Fauci describes the distinction between the COVID-19 vaccines protecting against illness versus protecting against infection.
“You could be prevented from getting clinical disease, and still have the virus that is in your nasopharynx because you could get infected,” Fauci says, referring to the area behind the nose in the upper part of the throat. “We’re not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected.”
The narrator repeats just a select portion of Fauci’s comment to suggest something is wrong. “We are not sure at this point that the vaccine protects you from getting infected,” the narrator says, emphasizing each word.
In fact, the full context shows Fauci was describing the difference between being infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus versus falling ill with COVID-19. Scientists have cautioned that more data is needed to understand whether vaccinated people can still have asymptomatic COVID-19 infections they could spread to others.”
From Fact Check.org, dated 3/26/2021:
“A popular video that adds a voiceover to footage from a television interview with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci inaccurately questions the efficacy of one of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the U.S.
“So the vaccine don’t protect you from covid ???” reads the Facebook video post title. In fact, as Fauci explained in the interview, the vaccine does protect against COVID-19, which is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. It may not, however, protect against infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which sometimes does not make people sick.”
STOP REPEATING AND SPREADING MAGA LIES. The CDC always said that the main benefit of the vaccine was to prevent hospitalizations and needing ventilator care.
Hold up a sec, since when was it just the CDC that we were complaining about? How about the freaking president, old Vegetable Joe himself, saying over and over again the very lie that the vaccine prevents you from getting and spreading the virus? I’m sure others can find plenty of other experts from that execrable junta saying the same thing.
Nice try moving those goalposts, but you’re caught.
Dr. Fauci was head of the CDC. I don’t see any citation for what you are claiming REAL PRESIDENT Joe Biden said. Study after study proves that getting the vaccine prevents serious COVID infections and lung failure requiring ventilator care.
“I don’t see any citation for what you are claiming REAL PRESIDENT Joe Biden said”
I understand that you have deliberately suppressed how terrible the Biden regime’s response to the virus was, but seriously, two seconds on google:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/10/17/biden-overstates-how-well-vaccines-prevent-person-to-person-virus-spread/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-biden-inflates-011843623.html
factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.9FR7KY
on and on and on.
“getting the vaccine prevents serious COVID infections and lung failure requiring ventilator care”
Not exactly the same as preventing infection at all, or preventing retransmission. Are those goalposts that you’re moving heavy?
“Dr. Fauci was head of the CDC”
Want to try that again?
https://www.cdc.gov/museum/history/pastdirectors.html
Can’t spend five seconds on google? Here’s one:
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.9FR7KY
BIDEN: “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
You know what, I’ll give you a free one here. Biden obviously didn’t know any better (because, come on, it’s not like he knew anything ever). But, he was repeating what the experts told him. Experts who were wrong.
Yeah. I heard that one too. That, in retrospect, the Vax was only meant to prevent ‘serious’ illness. .. and other tall tales.
Fauci is slicker than snot and that’s not a ‘MAGA lie’ .. . he was Biden’s (& Trump’s) chief medical official.
*in retrospect, I very much regret taking the 2-step mRNA vaccine . ..
This is still not proof that Justice Thomas violated any rules, as you so casually asserted, without evidence.
Who wants to know?
Again, did not accuse Justice Thomas of ‘wrongdoing’ or ‘violating any rules’. Evidently, Justice Thomas accepting $4m in gifts is perfectly ‘legal’ .. . although, afaict, the other Justices seem to frown upon such excessive largesse.
*note. it’s a safe bet none of those ‘gifts’ came from the DNC political action committee.
Still not proof of any wrongdoing. Care to try again? Innuendo and slander do not make a good case, if you weren’t aware.
dgsnowden: well, your hero can just sign an Executive Order commanding the vaccine to exit your body–right?
Don’t you mean, have the autopen sign it?
You’re so obtuse that you don’t realize that you’re sending friendly fire. The lying mess that is dgsnowden is on your side.
Ty. .. your half right.
*Jabba the Hut Trump as my ‘hero’ is the craziest thing I’ve heard all day!
There have been studies that show the mRNA vaccine caused a 12.6% increase in miscarriages. When you drill down into the data, that number jumps to 82% miscarriages in women in their first trimester.
Just think, millions of women lost their unborn babies by the vaccine. It was Biden mandated abortions.
Note, that data was presented during a Congressional hearing. And there have been additional studies that reflect the same evidence.
Thank you for this cogent summary of a significant trend, perhaps a sea change, in the power dynamic in America.
“White-throated sparrows have four chromosomally distinct sexes that pair up in fascinating ways. P.S. Nature is amazing[.] P.P.S. Sex is not binary.”
– Laura Helmuth, Editor-in-Chief, Scientific American
__________________________________________________________
AI Overview
This behavior is linked to genetic differences and leads to a system where birds essentially behave as if there are four sexes, EVEN THOUGH ANATOMICALLY THEY ARE STILL MALE AND FEMALE.
___________
Let’s cut the bullshoot.
“Let’s Get It On” like everybody else.
_________________________________________
AI Overview
While white-throated sparrows engage in procreation through the fundamental process of sexual reproduction (involving male and female gametes – sperm and eggs) like many other species, their mating system has a unique characteristic that sets them apart: disassortative mating based on color morphs.
Birds and not humans
“If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.”
– Gordon A. Eadie, 1945
Chirp-chirp. Forest sounds, bird calls, and David Attenborough pontificating:
Rummaging though the junkyard of its mind, the multi-sexed-mind of the thrushing-anon finds fanciful and ways to lie to all of “themselves.”
Turley is absolutely correct.
Regular folks like us who rely on common sense have always known better than all the so called “experts” throughout history.
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor the telephone, was ridiculed by people with common sense who said it was a “worthless toy”. Western Union, a major communication company at the time, saw no future in the telephone, calling it an “electrical novelty with no market potential”
John Logie Baird, who invented television, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night, said movie producer Darryl Zanuck, at 20th Century Fox.
IBM scientists who invented the computer, were told by their common sense president, Thomas Watson, that there is a world market for maybe five computers. Common sense indeed.
Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, said rockets would allow space travel and eventually travel to the moon, and was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Guglielmo Marconi, who discovered radio waves and suggested this would provide a means of communication, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Ludwig Boltzmann, who said all matter was comprised of atoms, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Galileo, who said the Sun is the center of the solar system, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Luigi Galvani, who said the nervous system sends signals by electrical charges, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
William Harvey, who said that the heart pumps blood around the body, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Marcello Malpighi, who said that tiny cells circulate in the bloodstream, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Ignaz Semmelweiss, who said surgeons should disinfect their hands before performing surgery to prevent infections, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Louis Pasteur, who said that infections are caused by invisible germs, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Giordano Bruno, who said the Sun is a star like many others in the universe, was ridiculed by those with common sense.
Joseph Lister, who said surgical instruments should be sterilized before use, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
John Snow, who said cholera was spread by contaminated water, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Ernst Chladni, who said meteorites come from outer space and not from volcanoes, was ridiculed by people with common sense.
Do you wear a mask or three while driving in your car by yourself?
Do you need a warning on a drill bit not to put it in your ear?
Do you need a warning not to put a hot curling iron up your nose?
Do you need a warning not to stare into the sun?
Likely, you do.
NotReallyaFarmer
And here we have a perfect example of the pointless, ignorant deflection using completely irrelevant examples that is favored by mindless cult members who think they are exhibiting their “common sense”.
ONLY you think that Upstate is right.
Mindless cult members are the ones who need all those warnings to prevent harm to themselves. Like you. Meanwhile, those of us who have a degree of common sense, do not. We tend to think for ourselves. We question the experts and their narrative. That would be the traits of someone with critical thinking skills. Not to just blindly believe whatever the experts say.
Tell us, are you wearing a mask or three while you sit in front of your computer, by yourself, making dumb comments?
“Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, said rockets would allow space travel and eventually travel to the moon, and was ridiculed by people with common sense.”
No, he was ridiculed by the New York Times, which in fact took decades to admit that they were wrong, far after Goddard’s rocket designs were proven.
Your list inadvertently and hilariously just proves Turley’s point: these people weren’t ridiculed by people with “common sense,” they were ridiculed by the experts of the time. Way to own goal, nimrod.
Actually, that is an interesting point. Many of those listed were scientists or inventors at the time. Anyone with any degree of common sense would of said, “Show me proof or evidence you are correct or your invention could be valuable,” before making a educated or informed decision. It was likely the “experts” at the time were their biggest critics. How many times both in the distant past and even recent past have the “experts” been proven wrong. COVID lock downs is a great example, so is the masks, distance rules, vaccine effectiveness. Then there is the “inflation is transitory!” narrative that all those “experts” got oh, so wrong. I knew inflation was going to be “transitory.” I adjusted my stock portfolio by what I was seeing and ended the one year up 9%. And who am I? Just a crayon eating Marine and uneducated farmer. Yet, seems I got more common sense then the “experts” do.
* I knew inflation was NOT going to be “transitory.”
The only thing transitory was Biden’s ability to form cogent thoughts.
NotReallyaFarmer
Your incoherent ramblings about “How many times both in the distant past and even recent past have the “experts” been proven wrong” demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of science and “common sense”.
Of course scientific “experts” have been wrong in the past, because science is inherently a process of scientists proving other scientists wrong. That’s how science works. It would be a terrible thing if scientists were never wrong because that would mean that science had come to a standstill and was no longer advancing. Here’s the important thing though, scientists are always proved wrong by other scientists! Major scientific principles aren’t overthrown by people with no scientific training sitting on their couch and speculating! New scientific discoveries are made by scientists, not bloggers, not people who have never set foot in a lab. There is no universe in which someone’s uneducated opinion is just as valid as the results of countless peer-reviewed studies by actual scientific “experts”.
The past 100 years have seen great advancements in almost every field of science as new discoveries have replaced outdated hypotheses. This is the natural progression of scientific discovery. But for some reason, in the twisted minds of anti-science zealots like you, this progression is used as an argument AGAINST new scientific theories and concepts that have an overwhelming amount of evidence behind them. These anti-science zealots conclude that because scientists were wrong in the past, then they must be wrong now.
The absurdity of this conclusion defies the “common sense” that you so proudly claim to possess.
You have actually produced a logical paradox that destroys itself. Your argument posits that we can’t trust scientists because they’ve been wrong in the past, but the only reason why we know those scientists were wrong is because other scientists discredited them. But you have just claimed that we can’t trust scientists, which means that we can’t trust the scientists who discredited the original scientists. This argument would make all science invalid and we would have no reason to accept anything that any scientist has ever discovered, which completely defies “common sense”. For example, this argument completely destroys the arguments of the science “experts” who signed on to the Great Barrington Declaration regarding COVID.
You side with the scientists who opposed the views of the NIH regarding the COVID pandemic.
You side with the scientists who signed on to the Great Barrington Declaration, and said that masks and vaccines and lockdowns were not useful and may have been harmful.
However, by your own argument, these Great Barrington scientists cannot be right. Your argument is that scientists are wrong now because other scientists have been wrong in the past, and this is your argument that the NIH scientists were wrong.
Despite this argument you claim that the scientists you agree with must be correct.
This is an absurd position.
You cannot claim that the NIH “experts” must be wrong because scientists in the past have been wrong, while simultaneously claiming that YOUR scientists who happen to proclaim your preconceived prejudices must be right.
Your position demonstrates a complete absence of the “common sense” that you claim to possess.
Wow are you dumb.
I am NOT anti-science. For that matter I use science everyday on the farm. I use science for non-Big-Ag, holistic farming techniques, everyday. To rotate crops. To break the worm cycle. Yes, I do my own fecal matter testing to test for worm infestation. That requires the use of a microscope and other laboratory equipment and techniques. To use earthworms to improve soil naturally without the use of petro-chemicals. To compost correctly. And all those things also require a degree of not only non-acadima knowledge but common sense. I learn and educate myself by reading books.
The rest of your comment is not even worth responding to, it is so very ignorant.
You must be lying, according to Bloomberg farming is so easy: “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”
Can’t blame Bloomy for being so out of touch, it’s not like he even waters the plants, I’m sure he has a guy for that.
Oh, BTW oh so dumb one, along with using science on the farm, I also use observation and common sense to make judgements. For example, there is something called meningeal worm, that, by experience and common sense, I can see when a goat, sheep has it. Then I apply the correct treatment. Same goes for when one of the livestock have pink eye. How to recognize it and treat it. It takes a degree of scientific observation and common sense. Just like calving or kidding season. Helping a cow, goat or sheep give birth is not something I am foreign to.
Heck, you cannot even get out of your own way.
NotReallyaFarmer
Yet again you display the appalling ignorance and lack of common sense that is common to all anti-science zealots.
You have absolutely no understanding of what science actually is.
Using discoveries made by scientists is not the same as DOING science.
Science is something that you DO !!!
Science is an attempt to explain an observation for which there is no explanation, or an incomplete explanation, using a rigorous set of investigative rules.
The farm activities you describe are not DOING science. You are simply applying findings that have been discovered by actual scientists, and which you know about by reading or talking to scientists.
You are NOT doing science. You are simply making use of scientific discoveries that you have learned about from scientists. The fact that you believe these activities are a scientific endeavor indicates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of real science.
You claim that you are not anti-science, while simultaneously dismissing the views of scientists with whom you disagree, especially with regard to COVID, based on the assertion that they must be wrong because other scientists have been wrong in the past.
Despite this absurd position, you are quick to assert that the scientists with whom you agree regarding COVID must be right.
Do you not see the insanity of this point of view ???
You can’t have it both ways.
Your position is the absolute diametric antithesis of the scientific method.
The assertions you make are the absolute defining features of ignorant anti-science zealots with an agenda to impose irrational beliefs on society.
By the way, how do find the time for all this “scientific” activity, when you are commenting here all day, every day ??????
There’s much more to saying “the science “or “the experts” were wrong, and it’s simply this: they were “wrong” (doing wrong) ON PURPOSE, as in committing crimes with their exclusive knowledge and power!
People who KNOW this are not saying all science is wrong or that science is not allowed to be wrong—that’s a convenient red-herring in slandering an entire population of those who disagree with your leftist ideology, then giving yourself the right to call them uneducated.
Dianna Bec
This has to be the most irrational, insane comment of all time.
You claim that you are not saying that all science is wrong.
You then claim that the scientists who ARE wrong are deliberately, and perhaps criminally, spreading false information.
How do you decide whether a scientist is deliberately providing false information ????
It appears that any scientist that does not agree with your preconceived prejudices is by definition wrong.
How convenient !!!!
You are nothing more than an anti-science zealot with an agenda.
Most certainly, you are [deliberately] missing the CONTEXT: the comments refers to “trusting the science,” thus the purported “scientists,” who pushed COVID information and VAX [all of it was false information, from people like Fauci who narcissistically called himself “science,” while people like you assisted him in pushing everyone to be injected, wear masks, and persecute those who didn’t].
You are nothing more than sock-puppet who followed and pushed dangerous UN-scientific propaganda, via the same kind of rhetoric you’re spewing here: Worship of your leftist government overlords and their false science.
Anonymous,
Were all the folks you just cited in your message “experts”, or might they also just been folks with common sense?
Methinks what Turley’s getting at is that there are a class of experts who honestly believe that, because they have advanced degrees in something, they know far better than anyone else, what’s good for the rest of us. They forget that every single one of us is flawed and therefore prone to error.
OUr biggest problem as humans is that we don’t question the things we should, and question things we shouldn’t, and oftentimes lack sufficient wisdom to discern the line between the two.
Should we totally ignore the experts? No. We should, however, be free to question said experts if something in our gut tells us what they’re peddling doesn’t pass the “smell test”.
You’re telling me that there might not be 87 genders after all? I’m shocked, it just seemed so obvious.
Fascinating list — which you then misuse to ridicule people with common sense.
Your characterization, though, is a lie.
And the facts you cited belie your ridicule. Those inventions and discovers were in fact rejected, not by the average person with common sense — but by “experts” in the respective fields.
“John Logie Baird, who invented television . . .”
That is misleading. He invented the (basically worthless) *mechanical* television. Farnsworth invented television as we know it.
“Giordano Bruno, who said the Sun is a star like many others in the universe, was ridiculed by those with common sense.”
That one is particularly dishonest.
Bruno was ridiculed and tortured by religious zealots — which is the antithesis of common sense.
You gotta trust those experts over on CNN. You can bet your bottom dollar that they will tell you that they triple check every story. Yet somehow they have reported that the damage to Irans nuclear ability was based on a leaked “low confidence” report. Then the satellite footage came out and we have not heard a single “my bad” statement coming from the hallowed halls of CNN. OH MY. More of if Trump did it then it must be a failure. So much for triple checking the story to properly inform the public that they profess to care so much about. Stolen valor.
TiT,
The initial report came from the DIA aka in the IC as the Discount Intelligence Agency. While I was in Afghanistan, the S2 said they were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
Thank you, prof, for highlighting the Thomas concurrence. I thought it was a very important statement and am disappointed that this portion of the opinion was not considered appropriate for the majority to include in the majority opinion.
Why couldn’t he have posted this last week? A few days ago, “elite” was the Wordle word of the day, but I guessed “evite” and “exite”.
SCOTUS’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has similar flaws. It has tailored way back on criminal punishment for the worst offenders based on “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” It finds a “consensus” among states in ruling that a certain punishment, like the death penalty for a brutal child rapist, is cruel and unusual.
First, the whole “evolving standards” concept is an exercise in chronological snobbery. Oh, we’re so evolved that we’re morally superior to our forebears, barf barf. Second, the “consensus” typically involves like ten states, so 20% of the states. Really, SCOTUS? A consensus?
What really happened in the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas scandal. What was the real nitty-gritty?
What is an EXPErt? Oop’s Expert. Expert(ists) of resent have been elevated by emanations (gases emissions) without concern of supporting FACTS, just fantasies of superiority through title or some other feeble self-promotion. Acceptance by the public consumer of the self-promoter’s expertise becomes apparent daily, one example is the charlatan Greta Thunberg and her take on climate change. I previously quoted Einstein and will again today: “Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality”.
GW,
Thank you for the laugh!
I like your quote.
I didn’t understand it.
The Chinese have the same story. Pointing at the moon it’s called. The people look at the finger and miss the moon.
Doesn’t it violate due process for an appellate court (including SCOTUS) to rely on an amicus brief with scientific expert conclusions, where the science involved was not subject to cross examination and findings of fact by the trial court?
To me, that seems analogous to an ex parte communication in which the proponent of the science is allowed to talk privately with the appellate judges and influence their decision, without the other side being present to ask questions and proffer a counter-argument.
Probably.
“where the science involved was not subject to cross-examination”
Excellent observation, Kansas. I don’t rely on even the top science or medical journals. While they may move science in the right direction, they are often flawed and have repeatedly been shown to produce cr-p.
Even if Justices don’t mention the science in court or opinion, they’re still influenced by it. But the Supreme Court is not supposed to determine what is right or wrong; it is supposed to decide what is Constitutional. Most Justices aren’t trained in scientific methods, which leaves them relying on conclusions rather than evaluating the underlying process.
I’m obviously not an attorney, but I remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Unfortunately for the world, the “experts” dragged the science of genetics into the courtroom, and that science is what Hitler later relied on. Yet that alone should have warned the courts to stay in their lane.
Would you expand on the practical legal aspects of what you’ve already outlined? I read many scientific journals and often notice flaws in their conclusions, even when I agree with the direction they’re pointing.
Meyer, I will have to return to this topic later, as I have to get on the road for a family gathering. In the meantime I will just say that Roberts knows better and should be reining this practice in, meaning the practice of Justices relying on unvetted amicus briefs purporting to contain scientific truth. If he doesn’t then legal academics should strongly and consistently criticize it till it falls out of favor. But I don’t think they are likely to, except for Professor Turley and many a few other voices in the wilderness.
OMFK-
The Brandeis Brief, like the amicus brief cited by J. KBJ, has probably done more harm than good to the legal system than anything else in my experience, and for the very reason you suggest: They proffer nothing more than the unchallenged, and unchallengeable, conclusions of so-called experts not subject to cross-examination that are too often relied on by appellate judges to reach outcome driven results that would otherwise fly in the face of once settled legal principles.
Given that these same “expert” conclusions are mostly the product of group-think, not real scientific inquiry, it is little wonder that the courts spend so much bloviating on the issue of whether there are 100, or more then 100, genders.
Disgusting.
-g
They were speaking of the roles men and women play, jobs, likes and dislikes and women as housewives wasn’t enough.
The breakdown in culture came with the breakdown of the nuclear family. Mother provided the care for the family and father brought home the food.