James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., Rational Debate Isn’t Disrespectful — It’s What Science Is All About

A number of people (all non-scientists) have “chided” me — some privately, some in public — for daring to write this article.

The comments have focused on whether I should have written the article to outright accusations of being “disrespectful” to Bryan Ardis for the information he shared about venom proteins found in COVID patients.

A careful read of the article will show that it is nothing more than a translation of the study that was cited (actually two studies) in response to numerous queries about what I thought of the idea that there might be venom proteins in the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, or in the virus, or in Remdesivir, or in the water.

In the process, I added the idea that perhaps people in Italy were being injected with venoms to treat autoimmunity. I won’t recap why, you can read that in the study.

This article is about the exchanges between myself and people who took it upon themselves to tell me that I either SHOULD NOT HAVE done something they think I did, based on their misinterpretation of my article (such as criticizing Bryan, which I did not do), or that I SHOULD have done something else instead (such as do what Bryan suggested, meaning “further inquiry,” which is, of course, precisely what I did).

So, this is just a message to explain that scientists thrive on RATIONAL criticism. Sharing ideas is what we’re all about, right? The science is never settled, right?

I don’t take it personally when these unwarranted criticisms come in, because they often come from people who confuse, even if momentarily, rational inquiry for criticism, and rational criticism (when offered) as something else, like an “attack” on a person. (Also, they sometimes make impossible demands: “You should prove the virus does not exist”).

As IPAK-EDU grows, we’ll be offering courses in formal logic and reason so the public has the opportunity to learn how to use logic, reason, and science to be better able to interpret studies for themselves. For example, the public needs to know that one cannot ever prove a negative.

For another instance, remember when we were told that SAR-CoV-2 was just “exosomes”? What happened to that? I want to point out the illogic between “the virus was engineered” and “the virus does not exist.”

I debated proponents of “the virus does not exist,” and the next day, after I showed them all of the evidence I could think of that would help them, they were repeating the same mantras about Koch’s postulates, even after I showed them that yes, they had been satisfied, not of the purpose of satisfying them, but instead the consilience of the evidence shows that they are satisfied.

The experiment they insist upon, injection or willful exposure of human beings with the isolated virus and replication of the symptoms can obviously never be conducted (you can’t give people the infection, it’s unethical) for the purpose of showing the virus exists, but the rest of the data are more than enough.

Am I being “disrespectful” by answering the call to help out?

And what is the purpose for contacting me and telling me I should “investigate further” when that’s exactly what I did? If people don’t like what I found after I investigated further — (reluctantly, as my Immunology class can attest, they asked me about the studies, too!), then what I did becomes, somehow, in their minds, a purposeful attack.

It’s bad enough that we have faux scientists running the show at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, etc.

We can’t adopt a dogmatic approach to science as we, the people, build back better.

So I stand by my article, and my intent of the article, as a contribution to the thought stream.

I sometimes imagine that there is a disinformation committee that sits around thinking of ways to confuse the public with crazy ideas, placing bets on which ones they think the vaccine risk aware public might buy into. I would not put it past the oligarchy to do this.

This only motivates us, even more, to stick with rational criticism and logic.

For those who want evidence that satisfies Koch’s postulates, look at the studies where animals are infected with the virus taken from another animal and are made sick. How Ralph Baric was able to take sequences from China deposited in a database and synthesize an RNA molecule that could not easily infect feline cell lines until he modified the sequence so it was better able to infect feline cell lines.

Look at the millions of sequences (not a rhetorical prescription, seriously, look at them) and imagine thousands of labs around the world coordinating the made-up genomic sequence (some 27,000 bases) in such a way that perfectly fits SARS-CoV-2 right next to SARS-CoV-1 in the phylogenetic tree, and in such a way that phylogenetic analyses lead to trees that track known transmission pathways.

If you’re not still satisfied, take my Bioinformatics course this summer and learn how to analyze DNA, RNA and protein sequence data and then jump into the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 sequences yourself.

These are healthy, well-intended and not smarmy challenges. I created an online University in part to help people who cannot parse their understanding of criticism (which, in everyday life can be harsh, personal, and cruel) and rational criticism, which is a detached, unemotional and essential part of science.

I suppose Fauci and his ilk have given the public the idea that scientists have a superiority complex. If anyone gets that vibe from me, you’re reading too much into it. I am driven to leave the world a better place than I found it, and I seek to empower others via intensive, meaningful education and objective research.

Anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight, but I have too much to do.

So, with all due respect, save me some time, and please help me stay on task by meeting me halfway on rational criticism. You’ll see things in a whole new light.

Let’s build the future with science, logic, reason, compassion, empathy and in the right spirit.

Originally published on James Lyons-Weiler’s Popular Rationalism Substack page.

James Lyons-Weiler is the president and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, an advocacy group that pushes for accuracy and integrity in science and for biomedical researchers to put people’s health before profits. An established academic and researcher, he has a bachelor’s degree in biology, a master’s degree in zoology, a Ph.D. in ecology, evolution and conservation biology and a postdoctoral in computational molecular biology — and he’s the author of “Ebola: An Evolving Story and Cures vs. Profits.”