Although there is already an "HIV/AIDS" debate thread on this forum, I thought I'd create a new thread that uses the example of "HIV/AIDS" (whatever it happens to be on any given day) to address some basic scientific concepts. Anyone can make a scientific claim, but of course the issue of "credentials" will often arise, though the natural reality is what it is, regardless of anything. If a claim is supported by some evidence, it can be put forth as a hypothesis, which then requires testing, and not just by the person (s) who is making the claim. If extensive testing/experimenting has been conducted, and if all the evidence supports the hypothesis (and nothing contradicts it), then the hypothesis is a theory. Claims never become "facts." Facts are an interesting concept, however. Let's say you conduct an experiment, but in a flawed way, and your findings are bogus. Those findings are still technically "facts," in that they are "on the record," even though they are false, due to bad experimental design or some other problem. Thus, claiming that something is a "fact" is not necessarily very important, and may actually be misleading.
A theory can always be refuted, and all it takes is one piece of evidence that directly contradicts the theory. Of course, if the evidence is derived from a flawed experiment, the refutation does not stand. The whole point of scientific methodology is to establish causation. We often hear about the "theory of evolution," for example, and the point is to establish a cause for the diversity of species that exist on the planet. The problem with this "theory" is that it's not possible to "pin down" the concept of "species" - it is based upon definitions humans impose, not on natural reality. Some humans want to claim that members of a species cannot generate viable offspring with members of a supposedly different species, and they have composed a list of different species. However, how many experiments have been done to demonstrate that this is indeed the case? If such experiments were conducted, and it was found that member of one species can generate viable offspring with members of a different species, these people would simply change their list of species.
Thus, they are never on "solid ground," and the whole point of explaining "evolution" becomes muddled. Instead, it makes more sense to talk of "cell colony diversification," and just omit the notion of species, at least for the time being. The natural biological reality is constantly changing, but the concept of "species" makes it sound like there is a permanent element involved. If there is such a permanent element, one will find it at the cellular or molecular level (proteins in particular, which do the "heavy lifting" for living things). In any case, I view the "theory of evolution" as an attempt to explain what humans perceive (that is, "species") rather than to conform to the scientific method, and it's certainly not a scientific theory, because it is based upon a tautological foundation.
Another problem in science today involves the influence of "models" and "epidemiological" studies, both of which are basically ways to circumvent the scientific method. Briefly, and in practical terms, in order to conform to the scientific method, you need to state a clear and specific hypothesis (meaning you've already done a lot of research and you know that what you are stating is more than a claim or "hunch") and then there needs to be demonstration of its accuracy, with controls for all potentially causative factors. For example, if you want to claim that dietary oxidized cholesterol is dangerous, you can feed two groups of animals the same diet, with one getting oxidized cholesterol and one getting non-oxidized cholesterol. Of course, it's likely that the oxidized cholesterol is dangerous when fed in certain amounts, so you would have to control for that factor. And the animals would have to be eating a diet that is known to be optimal, based upon previous experiments. However, in "nutritional science" today, it's common for a questionnaire to be given to people, and then these get converted into statistics, which can then be written up as an epidemiological study. The problem is that potentially causative factors are almost always ignored. For instance, the amount of butter someone eats might be taken into account, but not whether the person used the butter in high heat cooking or ate it without cooking it at all. Since there is strong evidence that cooking is problematic, ignoring this potentially causative factor invalidates the "facts" the study might generate.
With models, there is just no way to know if a causative factor is being overlooked, although with models it's more likely that a factor is being overemphasized or devalued. In the field of nutrition, I advocate feeding lab animals specific diets, rather than attempting to make claims about the effects of saturated fatty acids, for instance. The reason is that we can say for sure what happens when animals are fed different diets, but it's very difficult to say that a group of animals fed more saturated fatty acids than another group lived longer or shorter lives (or whatever the claim is) because of that one factor. There are different kinds of saturated fatty acids, for example, so that would have to be controlled. Then there are the other factors which are usually not controlled in these experiments, such as oxidized cholesterol and antioxidant consumption. As I've told people, doing these kinds of experiments, I could make it look like dietary saturated fatty acids are very healthy or very unhealthy - just tell me what outcome you'd like, and I can do it for you. For example, if I wanted to make saturated fatty acids look healthy, I'd use fresh coconut oil and I would not cook it (and the other group of animals would be fed low-quality, refined oils rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids). If you want saturated fatty acids to look unhealthy, I'd feed the animals lots of cooked lard (which is only about 40% saturated fatty acids, but the other group of animals would be fed a high-quality olive oil, rich in antioxidants and containing no cholesterol, oxidized or otherwise).
Now I'll turn to "HIV/AIDS." What is the "HIV/AIDS" hypothesis, exactly? Nobody I ask will tell me. We do know for sure that in the early to mid 1980s, the "HIV/AIDS experts" were telling the public that if you got "infected with HIV" you would almost certainly die within about a year, and this claim seemed consistent with various reports. These days, however, there are "studies" from the "top" scientific journals in the world such as the following:
QUOTE: ...The new Lancet study found cART yielded a 13.8-year life-expectancy increase - from 36.1 years in study participants who began therapy during the 1996-1999 period to 49.9 years in participants who began therapy during the 2003-2005 period... UNQUOTE.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080725142400.htm
Now for a hypothetical, which is a technique that allows for what one might call intellectual experimentation. Let's say I can get an "HIV expert" to infect me with the "virus." Now, according to the study I cited in my original post to this thread, I should live several decades (up to around 50 years) if I take the "medicines." But then comes this report, also recent:
QUOTE: "...HIV develops resistance very rapidly, and once that happens, drugs don't work as well as they theoretically should, or they stop working altogether," explained Dr. Matthias Götte, an associate professor in McGill's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. "Physicians routinely have the patient's virus tested for resistance in advance of treatment to help make the appropriate clinical decisions..." UNQUOTE.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080731173131.htm
Because nobody will tell me what the "HIV/AIDS" hypothesis is (a claim at best, actually), the best I can do is to base my notion of what this might be by reading "orthodox" literature. And from doing such reading, the only reasonable interpretation is that "HIV" mutates rapidly when one takes the "medicines," which leads to eventual "resistance," and then the virus can destroy certain kinds of T cells, your immune system is compromised badly, and you die of "opportunistic infections" in a year, 18 months, or thereabouts.
Leaving aside points made by scientists like Peter Duesberg, who pointed out that even if you believe there is such a virus (as he does), it simply cannot be responsible for massive T cell destruction, anyone with basic common sense (which is required to create the scientific method in the first place) can see a glaring contradiction here. If one can live about 50 years with the "medicines" while "HIV infected,"' then this claim of a rapid development of resistance is ludicrous. And vice versa, of course. In any case, the objective reader can only wonder how any hypothesis could ever reconcile these statements. And this is really just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. For example, these same kinds of "experts" also claim that one can now live around 7 to 9 years after "infection" without taking the "medicines," but then that would mean that the early investigators were totally wrong, because "HIV" killed within 18 months in the "early days" of "HIV/AIDS." The contradictions are too numerous to mention in this general essay, but a key point is that this is why a clear, concise hypothesis is required in order to do science, that is, to try and determine the causation of natural phenomena. If we allow "scientists" to put forth nonsense like whatever they say "HIV/AIDS" is today, then where will it end? And how different is it than the typical religion, which asks people to "have faith" and to refrain from demands of a demonstration to show that a claim is accurate? |
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