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Humans are fascinated by potential disasters, legends or prophecies that promise the end of the world. There is even a word for the study of such things: eschatology, from the Greek eschatos for "last" and -ology "to speak" or "to study".

There is also something about the grandeur of such claims that makes them magnets for conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics.

But just because this fascination exists, it doesn't mean it's desirable to pander to it. Not when it's without reason, and especially not in the name of science.

Alt-journalism

Recently the UK's The Sun newspaper demonstrated a spectacular jettisoning of journalistic rigour to report that Earth was about to be struck by a giant rock and that the results of this collision would be catastrophic.

Now, this is disturbing for three reasons, none of which are do do with the possible consequences of such an impact.

Leaving aside appeals to alternative facts, the first reason this is disturbing is that this claim was published at all.

While there is indeed an object meandering in our general direction, it will pass us at a distance that is further than the closest approach of the planet Venus.

If you manage to sleep well with Venus in such proximity, this new body need not disturb you either. This bit of information is so easily found that ignoring it in the article speaks volumes about the intent of the piece.

And that's leaving aside nonsensical sentences such as "it's so huge you'll be able to see it from Britain", because seeing something from Britain seems more of an issue of positioning than size.

The second reason is that this tenuous thread of hysteria was linked to wider conspiracy theories, an act one can only assume was intended to give it more popular appeal, if not actual credibility.

One of those theories is that the object is a segment of the fabled planet Nibiru, long held to be the doom of humanity by an impressive array of crackpots.

Why such theories are so popular is an interesting question, but that they proliferate is beyond doubt.

An unethical appeal to science

The third disturbing reason is that the heading ended with the tag "according to this scientist" ( update: after the publication of this article, The Sun changed the title from "according to this scientist" to "according to wild online rumours"). Except there is no evidence for the existence of the "scientist" mentioned in the article, neither in academic literature or in university records.

Google seems to find no trace of his name prior to it appearing in a "news" story on a conspiracy theory website. And, of course, on the many Murdoch media outlets that picked up the The Sun's story.

The phrasing of this headline implies this is a scientific claim, or at least a claim made by someone accepted into the community of scientists. As such, it seeks a justification in the rationality of science and taps into the public respect for scientists as agents of this collective rationality.

To make matters worse, The Sun is lending what residual respect it has as a newspaper to this supposed link. One can only imagine that in future articles it will be scientists, not The Sun, that will suffer the eye-rolling and tutting once this farcical prediction fails to materialise.

The intent of the article, therefore, is to produce unease at best, and panic at worst, by buttressing the claims of a clutch of hysterical conspiracy theorists through an appeal to the credibility of science and scientists and to deliberately conflate an actual event with an apocalyptic prediction.

This is as questionable a use of science as a doctor claiming that vaccines cause autism, or using scientific-sounding piffle to sell health products. The unethical use of science is not restricted to scientists.

It is true that the article calls this a belief held by "crackpot theorists", but a lot of space is spent outlining this theory and weaving in some factual data. And this and an earlier article work up some dire consequences and a "warning" from NASA (not to mention some lovely graphics).

Credibility in freefall

By reporting unsubstantiated claims, by promoting potential narratives linking these claims to conspiracy theories and by suggesting that any or all of these have scientific credibility, The Sun shows its value, or lack thereof, as a source of news (though perhaps it sees a new market emerging in fake news).

It, along with the other media outlets who publish this dross, is the Ancient Aliens of the History Channel in print.

The Sun is crossing the line that divides the reporting of conspiracy theories and the promotion of them. As the piece in question shows, it's certainly not in the business of debunking them. As a news article, it represents the sloppiest of standards. In its willingness to degrade the credibility of science in an attempt to induce profitable hysteria, it is lamentable.

I can only imagine that, given the attitude of The Sun to climate scientists, diminishing public faith in science is to their advantage. Now there's a conspiracy theory to get behind.

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Shallow impact: when crackpot conspiracy theories are touted as news, we all lose

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Humans are fascinated by potential disasters, legends or prophecies that promise the end of the world. There is even a word for the study of such things: eschatology, from the Greek eschatos for "last" and -ology "to speak" or "to study".

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Employers want candidates to know that there is a difference between Web Search and Research.

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Employers want candidates to know that there is a difference between Web Search and Research.

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http://blogs.proquest.com/byline/jeff-wyman/

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WOAH - LIBRARIES, BLOGS & WIKIMEDIA! - "This connection of Wikipedia’s information to sourcing, is an ideal."

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WOAH - LIBRARIES, BLOGS & WIKIMEDIA! - "This connection of Wikipedia’s information to sourcing, is an ideal."

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https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/15/1lib1ref-2017/

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Wikipedia has just turned 16, at a time when the need for accurate, reliable information is greater than ever. In a world where social media channels are awash with fake news, and unreliable assertions come from every corner, the Wikimedia communities and Wikipedia in particular have offered a space for that free, accessible and reliable information to be aggregated and shared with the broader world.

Making sure that the public, our patrons, reach the best sources of information is at the heart of the Wikipedia community's ideals. The concept of all the information on Wikipedia being "verifiable", connected to an editorially controlled source, like a reputable newspaper or academic journal, has helped focus the massive collaborative effort that Wikipedia represents.

This connection of Wikipedia's information to sourcing, however, is an ideal; Wikipedia grows through the contributions of thousands of people every month, and we cannot practically expect every new editor to understand how Wikipedia relies on footnotes, how to find the right kinds of research material, or how to add those references to Wikipedia. All of these steps require not only a broader understanding of research, but how those skills apply to our context.

Unlike an average Wikipedia reader, librarians understand these skills intimately: not only do librarians have training and practical experience finding and integrating reference materials into written works, but they teach patrons these vital 21st-century information literacy skills every day. In the face of a flood of bad information, the health of Wikipedia relies not only on contributors, but community educators who can help our readers understand how our content is created. Ultimately, the skills and goals of the library community are aligned with the Wikipedia community.

That is why we are asking librarians to "Imagine a world where every librarian added one more reference to Wikipedia" as part of our second annual "1 Librarian, 1 Reference" (#1lib1ref) campaign. There are plenty of opportunities to get involved: there are over 313,000 "citation needed" statements on Wikipedia and 213,000 articles without any citations at all.

Last year, #1lib1ref spread around the world, helping over 500 librarians contribute thousands of citations, and sparking a conversation among library communities about what role Wikipedia has in the information ecosystem. Still, Wikipedia has over 40 million articles in hundreds of languages; though the hundreds of librarians made many contributions to the English, Catalan and a few other language Wikipedias, we need more to significantly change the experience of Wikipedia's hundreds of millions of readers.

This year, we are calling on librarians the world over to make #1lib1ref a bigger, better contribution to a real-information based future. We are:

Supporting more languages for the campaign

Providing a kit to help organize gatherings of librarians to contribute and talk about Wikipedia's role in librarianship.

Extending the campaign for another couple weeks, from January 15 until February 3.

Share the campaign in your networks and go to your library to ask your librarian to join in the campaign in the coming weeks, to contribute a precious Wikipedia birthday gift to the world: one more citation on Wikipedia!

Alex Stinson, GLAM-Wiki Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation
You can learn more about 1lib1ref at its campaign page.

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Librarians offer the gift of a footnote to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday: Join #1lib1ref 2017

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Wikipedia has just turned 16, at a time when the need for accurate, reliable information is greater than ever. In a world where social media channels are awash with fake news, and unreliable assertions come from every corner, the Wikimedia communities and Wikipedia in particular have offered a space for that free, accessible and reliable information to be aggregated and shared with the broader world.

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How to spot dodgy Science - The Conversation

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How to spot dodgy Science - The Conversation

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https://theconversation.com/how-to-quickly-spot-dodgy-science-65160?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%204%202017%20-%206409&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%204%202017%20-%206409+CID_e8ef8f7e2ad32001e0ba0ac36ccef739&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=gives%20you%20his%20quick%20tips

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NASA Is Putting Its Research Papers Online

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NASA Is Putting Its Research Papers Online

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/funder/nasa/

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History Channel like it was a reliable source of information

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History Channel like it was a reliable source of information

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Is the History Channel a good source of information?

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Retweet Kyla Stephen - Local Studies Library GC Libraries

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Retweet Kyla Stephen - Local Studies Library GC Libraries

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-d-braunstein-md/evaluating-the-clinical-e_b_758343.html

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If someone starts talking to you about meridians, they're either brushing up on their geography or about to launch into a discussion about the medical efficacy of acupuncture. If it's the latter, and you're a traditional scientist, you might be in for a heated discussion.

Most people know something about acupuncture; mainly, that very skinny needles are inserted into various areas of the body. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), treatment is applied to the meridian (channel) that governs the site of the pain, not necessarily the place where the pain is being experienced. Ch'i, the invisible nutritive energy that flows from the universe into the body at any one of 500 acupuncture points, is conducted through the 12 main meridians in (ideally) an unbroken circle. Meridians conduct either Yin energy (from the sun) or Yang energy (from the earth). All maladies are caused by disharmony or disturbances in the flow of energy. Acupuncture treatment is meant to realign or reharmonize these disturbances, and on a more elevated level, to enable the realigned cells to unite with the cosmic energy of the universe.

You don't have to have to have graduated medical school to see that this can be difficult to reconcile with modern science. And this is the heart of the problem. Acupuncture is a pre-scientific paradigm based on concepts with no counterpart in contemporary western medicine. Its treatments are founded on philosophical constructs, subjective impressions and responses to patterns of disharmony, whereas Western treatments are the result of controlled scientific research. Putting acupuncture under a microscope can be like trying to capture a spirit out of the clouds.

But before the commenters start typing wildly, let me say that there has been a fair amount of research that demonstrates acupuncture's efficacy. Nevertheless (a word you see a lot in acupuncture research summaries), the conclusion of most studies, or of organizations reviewing the results of clinical trials, is that there was insufficient evidence to recommend for or against acupuncture, or that the results were equivocal, or that further research would be required.

This is a result of the difficulty in creating an appropriate controlled, double-blind testing situation. Acupuncture is an invasive treatment, so it's hard to design an effective placebo control group for a study the way standard double blinding practices are used in trials for new drugs. Acupuncture is also a process, not a pill. A process has a lot of variables, including the influence of the acupuncturist, which is a major factor. Blinding both the acupuncturist and the patient as to the treatment being given is a challenge. To rectify this, the "sham" acupuncture placebo was developed, where needles are inserted, but not in the accepted acupuncture points, or not inserted at all (using retractable needles that just appear to be penetrating the skin).

Even with these efforts, as the Institute of Medicine has acknowledged, it's difficult to standardize a process and to separate the effectiveness of a treatment from that of the person providing it. True Traditional Chinese Medicine acupuncture is tailor-made for each patient based upon the condition and the examination, and there are multiple variables such as manual or electrical stimulation, number of acupuncture sites treated, frequency of the sessions, and length of treatment. Additionally, many of the trials suffered from low numbers of subjects and mixtures of conditions rather than examining a single homogenous condition. For example, headache trials often include patients with tension headaches, migraines, headaches due to cervical spine disease and other causes, each of which may have a different cause, and, thus, unlikely to respond to a "one size fits all" approach. On the upside, the quality of acupuncture research is improving. Still, the evidence for and against continues to grow, with many layers of nuance in-between.

Tests such as a positron emission tomography (PET) scan have shown that treatment with genuine needles, as opposed to the use of "sham" needles, does create objective changes in brain states. But, random placement of placebo needles also had that effect.

Where acupuncture seems to have gained the most clinical ground is in the area of pain reduction. Researchers in Germany conducting acupuncture trials for patients with chronic low back pain found that only 15 percent of subjects who received genuine acupuncture treatment needed extra pain medication, compared with 34 percent who were receiving "sham" treatments, and 59 percent receiving conventional therapy. Long-term pain reduction was also best for subjects who received either real or "sham" acupuncture versus those that received conventional therapy.

In another study, researchers used "sham" acupuncture controls entirely and compared it to the drug Effexor for relieving hot flashes in breast cancer patients. They found that acupuncture relieved hot flashes as effectively as the drug and with fewer side effects, namely the lack of energy and reduced sex drive.

So which is it? Does acupuncture work or not? Or does it work if you think it works? While some findings support acupuncture's efficacy, especially for post-operative or chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and post-operative dental pain, others posit that its clinical effectiveness depends mainly on a placebo response.

Proponents of acupuncture say that it doesn't matter if a placebo effect is at work or not because the ultimate goal is to activate the body's power to heal itself. This, in fact, seems to be the point at which Western medicine and the relatively new approaches of Integrative Medicine (IM) or Complimentary Alternative Medicine (CAM) finally do converge. Over the past decade, integrative care has become an accepted element of treatment at many major medical institutions and part of traditional academic curriculums. It combines conventional Western medicine with holistic treatments like acupuncture, massage, biofeedback, yoga and stress reduction techniques to treat the whole person, not just a disease.

In this expanding holistic universe, acupuncture is a key player, even though scientists and scientific institutions continue to question the existing data and testing methodologies, which, of course, is the most scientific way to deal with the issue. The quintessential scientist, Einstein, noted that finding the right question is 95 percent of finding the solution. In the case of demonstrable clinical outcomes for acupuncture, perhaps the best question we have so far is, "Does it make you feel better?"

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Evaluating the Clinical Effectiveness of Acupuncture

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If someone starts talking to you about meridians, they're either brushing up on their geography or about to launch into a discussion about the medical efficacy of acupuncture. If it's the latter, and you're a traditional scientist, you might be in for a heated discussion.

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http://www.history.co.uk/shows/ancient-aliens/articles/do-aliens-exist-most-compelling-evidence-of-alien-existence

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https://scholar.google.com.au/

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http://search.proquest.com/docview/1830536929/2D9127A5121A4A6EPQ/11?accountid=26503

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http://apac-tc.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/BOND:all_resources:TN_wos000232438300003

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No. 3  EVALUATE THE INFORMATION YOU FIND > research> scrutinize > check

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No. 3  EVALUATE THE INFORMATION YOU FIND > research> scrutinize > check

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> Evaluate the sources critically
> Reviewing multiple points of view to construct your own opinion
>Exploring different sources of information: Books, library databases, Journal articles, Government websites, websites to understand a topic
> Research the claims made in newspaper articles or scrutinise Blogs or Wikipedia for accuracy or check websites to make sure they are updated regularly

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No. 2   FIND IT > THE BEST POSSIBLE INFORMATION

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No. 2   FIND IT > THE BEST POSSIBLE INFORMATION

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> Find the information needed efficiently
> Search using 'AND'  'OR'  "A WHOLE PHRASE"
>Use the best keywords and phrases using academic databases or Government websites = LibrarySearch or ProQuest or ABS

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No. 1.      IDENTIFY > Reliable versus Unreliable Resources

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No. 1.      IDENTIFY > Reliable versus Unreliable Resources

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> Identify the nature and extent of the information you need
> PRIMARY SOURCES OF INFORMATION = FINDINGS FROM RESEARCH
> VERSUS SECONDARY RESOURCES = BOOK ABOUT THE RESULTS
> USE A SEARCH STRATEGY : You could look for a published evidenced based paper an article written about the results/findings and then find the most current information about the information.
> Become well-informed!

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How will we know alien life if we see it? It depends on whom you ask.

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How will we know alien life if we see it? It depends on whom you ask.

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http://apac-tc.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/BOND:all_resources:TN_scopus2-s2.0-84941242203

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https://theconversation.com/health-experts-find-no-evidence-homeopathy-works-again-38651

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The life of super-Earths : how the hunt for alien worlds and artificial cells will revolutionize life on our planet

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The life of super-Earths : how the hunt for alien worlds and artificial cells will revolutionize life on our planet

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http://apac-tc.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/BOND:all_resources:BOND_ALMA2125379140002381

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Oldest planets in galaxy raise hopes of alien life.

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Oldest planets in galaxy raise hopes of alien life.

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http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=100732016&site=ehost-live&scope=site

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https://theconversation.com/why-i-believe-well-find-aliens-leading-expert-on-search-for-intelligent-extra-terrestrial-life-31066

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https://theconversation.com/au/health

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934315005161

http://search.proquest.com/docview/359252489/449FDD3D48E5481FPQ/5?accountid=26503

http://search.proquest.com/docview/309328395/1D7B198C21C14C5FPQ/5?accountid=26503

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ProQuest - Massive database holding academic journals and newspapers - You can start your research here!

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ProQuest - Massive database holding academic journals and newspapers - You can start your research here!

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http://ezproxy.bond.edu.au/login?url=http://search.proquest.com

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JavaScript is required. This web browser does not support JavaScript or JavaScript in this web browser is not enabled.

To find out if your web browser supports JavaScript or to enable JavaScript, see web browser help.

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http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/01/06/at-least-4-known-alien-species-have-been-visiting-earth-for-thousands-of-years-x-canadian-defence-minister-continues-to-blow-the-whistle/

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I am well aware that just because somebody (no matter what their 'position') says something to be true, does not mean it's true. Exceptions, however, can be made if there is evidence that goes beyond their words and correlates with what they say. At the end of the day, you have to listen to what your heart tells you.

Paul Hellyer was the Canadian Minister of National Defense in the 1960s, during the Cold War. He was responsible for combining the Canadian Air Force, Navy, and Army into what is known today as the Canadian Forces, and was the highest ranking person (on paper) inside of the Department of Defence for Canada. He is also Paul Hellyer the highest ranking person among all G8 countries to openly discuss UFOs and extraterrestrials.
--> Our latest podcast episode: Were humans created by extraterrestrials? Joe sits down with Bruce Fenton, multidisciplinary researcher and author to explore the fascinating evidence behind this question. Click here to listen!
He has been speaking about UFOs and extraterrestrials for quite some time now, and he recently made an appearance on RT news stating that there are at least four known alien species that have been visiting Earth for thousands of years.

Upon retirement, Hellyer began to blow the whistle on UFOs and extraterrestrials. His testimony is backed up by hundreds of other high ranking military and political personnel all over the world, along with official documents released by dozens of governments worldwide that have officially acknowledged the presence of UFOs.

I think it's also important to point out that the Canadian government recently acknowledged the fact that various federal agencies, including Transport Canada, the RCMP, and the Department of National Defence, used to track and investigate UFO sightings. They claim to have stopped those programs, but that contradicts Hellyer's claims. There is good reason to believe, and a lot of evidence to suggest, that some of these UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial space craft rather than military, and the activities of the agencies responsible for these programs go far beyond just tracking them, and into actually contact with various extraterrestrial races, other classified technological developments, and more.

Below are some excerpts from his interview. To hear more, watch the video clip
"In one of the cases, during the Cold War, 1961, there were about 50 UFOs in formation flying south from Russia across Europe. The Supreme Allied Commander was very concerned and about ready to press the panic button when they turned around and went back over the North Pole. So they decided to do an investigation, and they investigated for three years, and they decided that, with absolute certainty, that four species, four different species, at least, have been visiting this planet for thousands of years. . . . There's been a lot more activity in the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb, and they are very concerned about that, and the fact that we might use it again, because the whole cosmos is a unity and it affects not just us but other people in the cosmos, they're very much afraid that we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again and this would be very bad for us, and them as well." "They have different agendas. . . . Nearly all are benign and benevolent, they want to help us, [but] there may be one or two species which do not. . . . . They come from various places. For a long while, I only knew about ones that came from different star systems. . . . There are some in our star system, there are actually extraterrestrials who live on a planet called Andromedia, which is one of the moons of Saturn, and that there are others on Venus, and some on Mars, and that they may be interacting between themselves . . . because there is what is called a federation of these people, and they have rules. For example, one of the rules is that they don't interfere with our affairs unless they are invited to. . . . They have accepted the fact this is our planet, and that we have the right to run it, but they are very very concerned, they don't think we are good stewards of our planet. We're clear-cutting our forests, and we're polluting our rivers and our lakes, and we're dumping sewage in the oceans, and we're doing all sorts of things which are not what good stewards of their homes should be doing, and they don't like that, and they've made it very clear. And as a matter of fact they have given us a warning, and this has come from more than one source." "Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about where we were headed and offered to help. But instead we, or at least some of some of us, interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after. The inevitable result was that some of our planes were lost, but how many were due to retaliation, and how many were a result of our own stupidity, is a moot point." "It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark."
Sources:

The Facts:
Jonas F Ludvigsson, a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute is quitting his work on covid-19 because of harassment from people who dislike what he discovered.

Reflect On:
Why are scientists, journalists and doctors who present information that opposes what we hear in the mainstream censored, ridiculed, harassed and never given any air time?

What Happened: A letter to the editor published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden" has found that "Despite Sweden's having kept schools and preschools open, we found a low incidence of severe Covid-19 among schoolchildren and children of preschool age during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic...No child with Covid-19 died...Among the 1,951,905 million children who were 1 to 16 years of age, 15 children had Covid-19, MIS-C, or both conditions and were admitted to an ICU, which is equal to 1 child in 130,000."

It was published by Jonas F Ludvigsson a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute.

The study also showed that "fewer than 10 preschool teachers and 20 schoolteachers in Sweden received intensive care for Covid-19 up until June 30, 2020 (20 per 103,596 school teachers, which is equal to 19 per 100,000). As compared with other occupations (excluding health care workers), this corresponded to sex- and age-adjusted relative risks of 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.49 to 2.49) among preschool teachers and 0.43 (95% CI, 0.28 to 0.68) among schoolteachers.

In a Karolinska Institute press release, Ludvigsson indicated he was hopeful about the results. "It is very gratifying that serious COVID-19, defined here as needing treatment in an intensive care unit, is so rare among children despite schools being open during the pandemic," he said. "The next step will be to follow up the children who were treated in an intensive care unit for COVID-19 to see if they have recovered fully. My gut feeling is that children who have been seriously ill because of MIS-C seem to recover fully eventually."

After he published this piece, an article published in the British Medical Journal on the 18th of February by Ingrid Torjesen states the following,

The Swedish government has said that it will strengthen laws on academic freedom after a leading Swedish academic announced that he was quitting his work on covid-19 because of an onslaught of intimidating comments from people who disagreed or disliked his research findings....After the letter's publication he was bombarded with angry messages through social media and email criticising the study and inferring that it and Ludvigsson were representative of the country's covid-19 containment strategy.

The experience has taken its toll on Ludvigsson. He told the journal of the Swedish Medical Association ( Lakartidningen) that for a week he woke up at 3 am every night and could not get back to sleep and that he had now lost his appetite for covid-19-both when it comes to speaking out and researching. He has decided to quit researching and debating covid-19.

He is trying to put the experience behind him and has said that he will not talk to the media about what happened. However, he told The BMJ that, although the findings were published in a research letter, this was "an actual study" that underwent formal external peer review, including statistical peer review, and the manuscript was revised four times before it was published.

Intimidation and threats against academics have risen with the growth of social media, and uncertainties and diverse opinions about covid-19 have added to the situation. In response, Sweden is planning to provide increased support for academic freedom through an amendment to its Higher Education Act.

Matilda Ernkrans, Sweden's minister for higher education and research, told The BMJ, "It is deeply concerning when academics are threatened to the extent that they don't have the courage to keep on doing their job. This is not a new phenomenon, but we have seen an increase of threats against academics related to research on the coronavirus. When people are silenced, it's a threat against the freedom of speech and our democracy. "To strengthen academic freedom, the Swedish government has proposed a new amendment that points out that education and research must be protected to enable people to freely discover, research, and share knowledge."

Ole Petter Ottersen, president of the Karolinska Institute, told The BMJ that he found the increase in threats and harassment towards researchers very worrying.

"A tough debate and a diversity of opinions based on facts and evidence are necessary elements of science and public discourse, but hateful and scornful accusations and personal attacks cannot be tolerated. We already see that researchers retreat from the public debate after being threatened or harassed, and in my own institution a leading researcher just decided to give up his covid-19 research for the same reason," he added, referring to Ludvigsson.

Given that the Karolinska Institute seems to be the focus here as well, I thought I'd mention that professor Anna-Mia Elkström, an epidemiologist from the Institute and professor Stefan Swartling Peterson, have gone through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and come to the conclusion that least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight COVID as have died of COVID directly. You can read more about that story here.

Why This Is Important: Censorship of opinions, evidence, data, science and information is a big problem today, this is no secret. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden once said that "The Problem with fake news isn't solved by hoping for a referee. But rather because we, as participants, as citizens, as users of these services, (need to) help each other...We point out what is fake, we point out what is true - the answer to bad speech is not censorship, the answer is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters, now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting more popular."

Snowden, like many others, especially those of us in the field of alternative media are quite aware of the fact that censorship and the close relationship big tech companies have with governments is due to their goal "to dominate the conversation and information...They're trying to make you change your behaviour." ( source) We've talked about this here at CE since our inception in 2009, that the job of mainstream media, and "fact-checkers" these days, in our opinion, seems to be perception control. This is especially true when it comes to major global events, ones that seem to benefit the rich and powerful. The world's ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the covid pandemic began, for example.

As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? -Edward Snowden ( source)

The Polish Government recently announced that it will be taking steps to make censorship by big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter completely illegal, comparing it to their experience during the communist era. The Prime Minister said that "Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently."

The point is, it's perfectly fine to disagree with one another, that's healthy, and open debate is healthy especially during the times we are living in. What seems to be so off-putting to many is that debate is being discouraged. People are being urged not to do their own research, and any evidence or opinion that goes against what we hear from mainstream media is being completely ignored, censored or ridiculed to the point where people whose only source of information is mainstream news seem to be completely in the dark regarding important information and research.

The Takeaway: Why does mainstream media fail to have proper and appropriate conversations about "controversial" information that threatens the accepted framework of what we know, or at least what we are told is known? Why can't we understand the viewpoints, opinions and perception of those who disagree with us, and try to empathize with and understand why somebody feels the way that they do? It seems today that information and perception control are at an all time high due to the fact that information that threatens certain government and corporate agendas is a threat to powerful people, but again, if you share this opinion and information/evidence as to why you feel this way you may be labelled as a "conspiracy theorist."

All this being said, like 9/11, covid has served as a catalyst for even more people to question the official narrative, and whether or not our governments and the corporations above them actually have our best interests at hand, or if they're simply serving other interests and rolling out measures under the guise of good will when they are not in humanity's best interests.

Anyone who disagrees with the way COVID is being handled is not allowed to have a platform to speak. What does that tell us? You decide.

Last but not least, do we really want to go back to "normal"? A bird kept in a cage who is given a bigger cage will think it's free and has attained a new level of freedom. Something to think about. You can read more about that discussion here.

The Facts:
A recent report by Oxfam is one of many to explain how the world's wealthiest people have seen their wealth grow substantially since the beginning of the pandemic, while most others have suffered greatly as a result of the pandemic.

Reflect On:
Why is money always presented as a problem or a solution? Does humanity have the potential to move beyond such a system and thrive? Do we have solutions to our issues? Is the problem that many solutions threaten government/corporate greed/control?

A recent report by Oxfam shows that "the world's ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began." On the other hand, the majority of people have been ushered into "the worst jobs crisis in over 90 years with hundreds of millions of people now underemployed or out of work." The report was titled "The Inequality Virus" and was published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum's (WEF) 'Davos Agenda.'

The WEF has been both praised and criticized by many academics, politicians and journalists for their " Great Reset " initiative. An initiative that intends to rollout,and currently is rolling out, a number of large changes here on planet Earth as a response to various, according to them, crisis' we face such as climate change, terrorism, and of course the covid pandemic. The criticism comes from the idea that 'the powers that be' are using, and have used global crises' to put more money, power and control over the human race into hands of the very few, all under the guise of good will and necessity. Measures being proposed include many things like the implementation of 5G, digital ID's, digital currency, universal income, the abolishment of privately owned property, mandatory vaccination, increased surveillance measures like tracking, facial recognition and much more. This comes along with a 'ministry of truth' that seems to be "fact-checking" information that pertains to these topics. The censorship of alternative media and scientists who share information that counters what we hear in the mainstream during this pandemic has been unprecedented.

The idea that these are some sort of 'nefarious' measures being taken is usually presented as a "conspiracy theory" within the mainstream media. Unfortunately, big media continues to fail at having appropriate conversations around controversial topics. Furthermore, these implementations continue to rollout against the will of many people. That in itself has many people quite disturbed and asking the question, do we really live in a democracy, or is an authoritarian oligarchy type of government operating under the guise of a democracy?

According to Oxfam,

The report shows that COVID-19 has the potential to increase economic inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began over a century ago. Rising inequality means it could take at least 14 times longer for the number of people living in poverty to return to pre-pandemic levels than it took for the fortunes of the top 1,000, mostly White male, billionaires to bounce back.

A new global survey of 295 economists from 79 countries, commissioned by Oxfam, reveals that 87 percent of respondents, including Jeffrey Sachs, Jayati Ghosh and Gabriel Zucman, expect an 'increase' or a 'major increase' in income inequality in their country as a result of the pandemic.

Oxfam's report shows how the rigged economic system is enabling a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet. It reveals how the pandemic is deepening long-standing economic, racial and gender divides.

A lot of these issues come as a result of the measures taken to combat covid, which have come under fire by many scientists, academics, doctors and journalists. Again, information, evidence, data and opinions of these people has been completely silenced. Professor Anna-Mia Ekström and Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson, for example, have gone through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and came to the conclusion that at least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight covid as have died of covid. A group of doctors and scientists published an essay for the American Institute for Economic Research explaining and presenting the data as to why they believe lockdowns are not only harmful, but useless to combat COVID. These are two of many examples.

Lack of access to health care, economic implications and more have experts suggesting that lockdown measures will kill well over one hundred million people and push even more to the brink of starvation. According to Oxfam, the pandemic has ushered in the worst job crisis in over 90 years with hundreds of millions of people now underemployed or unemployed.

Billionaires fortunes rebounded as stock markets recovered despite continued recession in the real economy. Their total wealth hit $11.95 trillion in December 2020, equivalent to G20 governments' total COVID-19 recovery spending. The road to recovery will be much longer for people who were already struggling pre-COVID-19. When the virus struck over half of workers in poor countries were living in poverty, and three-quarters of workers globally had no access to social protections like sick pay or unemployment benefits.

The report does mention the benefits of vaccines, and that the covid vaccines are not being fairly distributed. It speaks of the vaccine as a life saving intervention, but does not mention that fact that this is a virus with a 99.95 percent survival rate in people under the age of 70, and that other interventions like vitamin C, Zinc, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have shown great success and efficacy. Vaccine hesitancy, especially with regards to the covid vaccines, is on a sharp rise among people, doctors and scientists. Again, the mainstream doesn't seem to do an adequate job of covering information like this. Big Tech fact checkers censor any type of information that doesn't paint vaccines in a positive light, and all those who raise concerns, no matter how legitimate, seem to be labelled as "anti-vax conspiracy theorists" and are constantly ridiculed. It would be great if the mainstream actually brought these concerns to light and addressed them in a civil manner.

Early on in the pandemic a report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America's ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days. This is despite the fact that the economy is expected to contract by 40 percent this quarter. In turns they were correct.

The Institute for Policy Studies' report shows something nothing short of a modern day oligarchy, where the super-rich have captured so much power and control, including controlling what laws are passed. These are the "decision-makers" of our world while we all are glued to to the T.V. see what they "command" next, not realizing that we the people have the most "power." "Their" power comes from our compliance, and our compliance comes from their ability to shape our perception of this issue. The report discusses what it labels a new "wealth defense industry" - where "billionaires are paying millions to dodge billions in taxes," with teams of accountants, lawyers, lobbyists and asset managers helping them conceal their vast fortunes in tax havens and so-called charitable trusts. The result has been crippled social programs and a decrease in living standards and even sustained drop in life expectancy - something rarely seen in history outside of major wars or famines.

The Takeaway: It can be frustrating observing the human experience knowing that we are nothing but infinite potentiality. The human race has huge potential and we have more than enough solutions and technological developments to start co-existing with mother Earth in a more harmonious way, one that provides abundance to all people. Many of these technologies and solutions "never see the light of day" ( Dr. Brian O'Leary, NASA astronaut ex-Princeton physics professor). Why was electric car technology invented decades ago but not put into mass production? My point is, again, that solutions exist, that's not the problem, the issue seems to be the prevention of solutions from making their way into the public due to corporate and government interests being threatened. Is this really the kind of world we want to live in? Despite all this, we continue to operate under the assumption that "this is the way it is" and the idea of a "utopian" society is unachievable.

This goes to shows that it's not really the "solutions" that will change our world, it's the consciousness that humanity operates from. It's the consciousness behind these "solutions" that determine what direction humanity takes.

When it comes to mandating certain health measures, and other things, do we really want to live in a world where we give so much power to governments to the point where they can dictate our actions, and control our thoughts and perceptions regarding certain global events? Do we want to allow them to restrict access to certain rights and freedoms simply for non-compliance of certain measures, like getting vaccinated, for example? Should freedom of choice not always remain? Should governments and private institutions simply be making recommendations?

What about the "new normal"?

This is an important question at the moment, and we are seeing it in everything from alternative media to mainstream media. As we saw with Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, even politicians are warning their citizens that what you see happening now will be the 'new normal' to some extent. What do they mean by this? Should we want things to go back to how they were prior to this pandemic? Do we have a future of even more restrictions in sight?

From my perspective, I don't want things to go back to 'normal'. Why do I say this? Because I ask myself the question: was life prior to, and even during this pandemic, truly allowing humanity to thrive? Was it anywhere even close to what humanity is capable of? Or is it a society and world designed out of programming that has convinced us to accept basic survival as being how we should live... as normal?

This can be a question for everyone no matter where you live on this planet. Whether the weekly rat race is reality or whether having to worry about whether you will get your next meal is your reality, is this truly how we want to live and what humanity is capable of?

If not, then how can we shift the conversation to begin exploring how we might change the way we live in our society?

Read more here.

The Facts:
A recent article published in The Lancet medical journal explains that PCR tests can be "positive" for up to five times longer than the time an infected person is actually infectious.

Reflect On:
Why are certain viewpoints, opinions, studies, scientists and doctors being censored and/or ignored for presenting data that completely contradicts what we are receiving from government health authorities.

PCR testing (polymerase chain reaction testing) has come under fire from numerous doctors, scientists, politicians and journalists since the beginning of this pandemic. Not everyone would know this if their only source of information was mainstream media however, as they've chosen not to cover the controversy surrounding it. This is not to say that PCR testing hasn't been praised as a useful tool to determine a covid infection, but again, there are great causes for concern that aren't really being addressed.

As far back as 2007, Gina Kolata published an article in the New York Times about how declaring pandemics based on PCR testing can end in a disaster. The article was titled Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn't. In July, professor Carl Heneghan, director for the centre of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, an outspoken critic of the current UK response to the pandemic, wrote a piece titled " How many Covid diagnoses are false positives? " He has argued that the proportion of positive tests that are false in the UK could also be as high as 50%.

The Deputy Medical Officer of Ontario, Canada, Dr. Barbara Yaffe recently stated that COVID-19 testing may yield at least 50 percent false positives. This means that people who test positive for COVID may not actually have it. Former scientific advisor at Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, argued that the proportion of positive tests that are false may actually be as high as 90%.

Furthermore, 22 researchers have put out a paper explaining why, according to them, it's clear that the PCR test is not effective in identifying COVID-19 cases, and that as a result we may be seeing a significant amount of false positives. You can read more about that here.

These are simply a few of many examples from the recent past, and it's concerning because lockdown measures and more are based on supposed positive "cases."

Another concern recently raised comes from an article published in The Lancet medical journal titled "Clarifying the evidence of SARS-CoC-2 antigen rapid tests in public health responses to COVID-19."

In it, the authors explain that most people infected with COVID are contagious for approximately one week, and that "specimens are generally not found to contain culture-positive (potentially contagious) virus beyond day 9 after the onset of symptoms, with most transmission occurring before day 5." They go on to explain:

This timing fits with the observed patterns of virus transmission (usually 2 days before to 5 days after symptom onset), which led public health agencies to recommend a 10-day isolation period. The sort window of transmissibility contrasts with a median 22-33 days of PCR positivity (longer with severe infections and someone shorter among asymptomatic individuals). This suggests that 50-75% of the time an individual is PCR positive, they are likely to be post-infectious.

Once SARS-CoV-2 replication has been controlled by the immune system, RNA levels detectable by PCR on respiratory secretions fall to very low levels when individuals are much less likely to infect others. The remaining RNA copies can take weeks, or occasionally months, to clear, during which time PCR remains positive.

They explain:

However, for public health measures, another approach is needed. Testing to help slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 asks not whether someone has RNA in their nose from earlier infection, but whether they are infectious today. It is a net loss to the health, social, and economic wellbeing of communities if post-infectious individuals test positive and isolate for 10 days. In our view, current PCR testing is therefore not the appropriate gold standard for evaluating a SARS-CoV-2 public health test.

An article published in the British Medical Journal explains:

It's also unclear to what extent people with no symptoms transmit SARS-CoV-2. The only test for live virus is viral culture. PCR and lateral flow tests do not distinguish live virus. No test of infection or infectiousness is currently available for routine use. As things stand, a person who tests positive with any kind of test may or may not have an active infection with live virus, and may or may not be infectious.

The relations between viral load, viral shedding, infection, infectiousness, and duration of infectiousness are not well understood. In a recent systematic review, no study was able to culture live virus from symptomatic participants after the ninth day of illness, despite persistently high viral loads in quantitative PCR diagnostic tests. However, cycle threshold (C t) values from PCR tests are not direct measures of viral load and are subject to error.

Searching for people who are asymptomatic yet infectious is like searching for needles that appear and reappear transiently in haystacks, particularly when rates are falling. Mass testing risks the harmful diversion of scarce resources. A further concern is the use of inadequately evaluated tests as screening tools in healthy populations.

The UK's testing strategy needs to be reset in line with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies' recommendation that "Prioritizing rapid testing of symptomatic people is likely to have a greater impact on identifying positive cases and reducing transmission than frequent testing of asymptomatic people in an outbreak area."

The academics who published this paper are one of many explaining how another approach is needed, given the fact that PCR tests are the basis of lockdowns that might have already, and will kill more people than COVID itself, all for a virus with a 99.95% recovery rate for people under the age of 70. Many are in fact calling for the end of testing for asymptomatic people.

Michael Levitt, a medical professor at Stanford University and a Nobel Laureate for chemistry is one of many who has been emphasizing this:

"Getting tested right to avoid making more mistakes going forward [is crucial]." He writes, "very disturbing that PCR test can be positive for up to FIVE times longer than the time an infected person is actually infectious. Many implications."

Rosamond A K Jones, a retired consultant paediatrician, and part of the Health Advisory & Recovery Team (HART) in Slough, UK, writes with regards to testing in UK schools:

If testing 5 million secondary school pupils twice a week, those 10 million tests would be expected to generate 30,000 false positives. These children would presumably all be sent home from school, with their 30 classmates, leading to almost a million children incorrectly out of school each week.

According to an article written by Robert Hagen MD, who recently retired from Lafayette Orthopaedic Clinic in Indiana:

By base rate fallacy/false positive paradox, if the specificity of a test is 95%, when used in a population with a 2% incidence of disease - such as healthy college students and staff - there will be 5 false positives for every 2 true positives. (The actual incidence of active COVID-19 in college age students is not known but estimated to be less than 0.6% by Indiana University/Fairbanks data. Even using a test with 99% specificity with a 1% population incidence generates 10 false positives for every 9 true positives.

Using the same test on patients with COVID-19 symptoms, because their incidence of disease is 50% or greater, the test does not have to be perfect. Even using a test with only 90% specificity, the number of false positives will be much less significant.

Another issue is with PCR testing is the cycle threshold. PCR seeks the genetic code of the virus from nose or throat swabs and amplifies it over 30-40 cycles, doubling each cycle, enabling even minuscule, potentially single, copies to be detected. I first learned about this when Elon Musk revealed he had completed four rounds of COVID-19 testing, tweeting that something "bogus" is going on because two of the tests came back false, and the other two came back positive.

He also mentioned he was "doing tests from several different labs, same time of day, administered by RN & am requesting N1 gene PCR cycle threshold. There is no official standard for PCR testing. Not sure people realize this."

And therein lies the problem, something that the World Health Organization finally addressed recently. On January 13th the WHO published a memo regarding the problem of asymptomatic cases being discovered by PCR tests, and suggesting any asymptomatic positive tests be repeated. This followed up their previous memo, instructing labs around the world to use lower cycle thresholds (CT values) for PCR tests. The higher the cycle threshold the greater the chance for false positive rates.

Is this why case rates around the world have started to decline? It seems plausible since the same time cases dropped the WHO told labs to monitor the cycle thresholds which means false positives would reduce.

A Portuguese court has determined that the PCR tests used to detect COVID-19 are not able to prove an infection beyond a reasonable doubt, and thus determined that the detainment of four individuals was unlawful and illegal. In the Portuguese appeal hearing, Jaafar et al. (2020) was cited, explaining how a high CT is correlated with low viral loads.

"If someone is testing by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the rule in most laboratories in Europe and the US), the probability that said person is infected is <3%, and the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%." ( source)

The court further noted that the cycle threshold used for the PCR tests currently being made in Portugal is unknown. You can read more about that story here.

"Cases" Are The Basis of Lockdowns

The information above is indeed telling, because PCR tests are being used to justify lockdown measures and yet there is a huge amount of controversy and inaccuracy with them.

Professor Anna-Mia Ekström and Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson have gone through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and came to the conclusion that at least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight covid as have died of covid.

A study published by four medical professors from Stanford University has failed to find evidence supporting the use of what they call "Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions" (NPIs) like lockdowns, social-distancing, business closures and stay at home orders. According to the study, these measures have not been sufficient and are not sufficient to stop the spread of COVID and therefore are not necessary to combat the spread of the virus.

A group of doctors and scientists published an essay for the American Institute for Economic Research explaining and presenting the data as to why they believe lockdowns are not only harmful, but useless to combat COVID. In the essay they present a multitude of studies supporting the same conclusions found in the Stanford study cited above. You can read that here.

Lockdown harms were pondered early on in the pandemic, a report published in the British Medical Journal titled Covid-19: "Staggering number" of extra deaths in community is not explained by covid-19″ has suggested that quarantine measures in the United Kingdom as a result of the new coronavirus may have already killed more UK seniors than the coronavirus has during the months of April and May .

Bhattacharya, MD, PhD wrote an article for The Hill titled "Facts, not fear, will stop the pandemic." In it he points out a number of facts regarding the implications of lockdown measures, which also include that fact that:

Internationally, the lockdowns have placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation, 80 million children at risk for diphtheria, measles and polio, and 1.8 million patients at risk of death from tuberculosis. The lockdowns in developed countries have devastated the poor in poor countries. The World Economic Forum estimates that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.

Is a Great Reset Really required? Or should we just go back to normal? Even if we weren't in a lockdown, should we still be questioning how we feel about our "normal." You can dive into a deeper discussion about that here.

The Takeaway

The one thing that has many more people questioning their government with regards to COVID seems to be the fact that countless amounts of scientists, doctors, journalists and more are being heavily censored for sharing their information, data, research and opinions about COVID when they don't fit within the accepted framework of mainstream culture.

For example, the Swedish government has said that it will strengthen laws on academic freedom after a leading Swedish academic announced that he was quitting his work on COVID-19 because of an onslaught of intimidating comments from people who disagreed or disliked his research findings. ( source) This is one of many examples, you can see more here.

Dr. Kamran Abbasi, former (recent) executive editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and a consultant editor for PLOS Medicine. He is editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and JRSM Open recently published a piece in the BMJ, titled "Covid-19: politicisation, "corruption," and suppression of science." I reference this quite a bit in many of my articles so I apologize if you've come across it already.

Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency-a time when it is even more important to safeguard science. -

I say it in almost every article I write about COVID, should we not have the right to examine information openly and transparently and determine for ourselves what is and what isn't? Why is it that someone like Dr. Anthony Fauci gets to make an appearance on television with instant virality anytime he desires, while other experts presenting opposing viewpoints are completely ignored? Can the mainstream media make the "consensus" or the majority seem like the minority and the minority seem like the majority?

How are we going to make sense of what is going on and make effective decisions about it all if we are not allowed to talk about certain ideas?

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"At Least 4 Known Alien Species Have Been Visiting Earth For Thousands Of Years": Former Canadian Defence Minister Continues To Blow The Whistle

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I am well aware that just because somebody (no matter what their 'position') says something to be true, does not mean it's true. Exceptions, however, can be made if there is evidence that goes beyond their words and correlates with what they say. At the end of the day, you have to listen to what [...]

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Other terms of reliability: Scholarly - Peer-review - academic rigor - scientific evidence - academic journal -evidence based - science based - online journals, eBooks, text books

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KEYWORDS TIPS - USE THESAURUS - PREDICTIVE WORDS IN DATABASES - USE OTHER DESCRIPTIVE WORDS -  KEEP ON SEARCHING

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KEYWORDS TIPS - USE THESAURUS - PREDICTIVE WORDS IN DATABASES - USE OTHER DESCRIPTIVE WORDS -  KEEP ON SEARCHING

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https://library.bond.edu.au/

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Bond University Library provides customer-focused, innovative services and resources to support the teaching, learning and research needs of the University.

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ALIEN SPECIES IN A WARMER WORLD: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

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ALIEN SPECIES IN A WARMER WORLD: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

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http://apac-tc.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/BOND:all_resources:TN_scopus2-s2.0-72149125354

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http://www.space.com/33203-aliens-extraterrestrial-life-1500-years-for-contact.html

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No. 5 ACKNOWLEDGE THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION YOU USE

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No. 5 ACKNOWLEDGE THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION YOU USE

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> Your Reference list is a reflection of your reading
> Understand plagiarism
> Copyright
> Use Creative commons for images
> Give credit to an image
> If you are going knock off other peoples' ideas .... just make sure you knock off from the best.  And say thank you.  Russel Howcroft

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Unreliable resource for colonic irrigation

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Unreliable resource for colonic irrigation

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http://search.proquest.com/docview/862232977/1D7B198C21C14C5FPQ/1?accountid=26503

http://search.proquest.com/docview/328459711/1D7B198C21C14C5FPQ/8?accountid=26503

http://search.proquest.com/docview/353235491/1D7B198C21C14C5FPQ/14?accountid=26503

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Relation Between Lunar Phases and Stock Market Return

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Relation Between Lunar Phases and Stock Market Return

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are investors moonstruck? - lunar phases and stock returns

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Are Investors Moonstruck? - Lunar Phases and Stock Returns by Lu Zheng, Kathy Yuan, Qiaoqiao Zhu :: SSRN

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This paper investigates the relation between lunar phases and stock market returns of 48 countries. The findings indicate that stock returns are lower on the da

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https://theconversation.com/proof-of-alien-life-you-need-a-lot-more-evidence-than-that-18439

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Funny looking alien. University of Sheffield

Could life really exist on other planets? The most positive scientific answer we can offer is: well, maybe, but we do not yet have enough evidence for or against.

Yet Milton Wainwright and colleagues from the Universities of Sheffield & Buckingham would seem to disagree with that. They seem to have found evidence of life-forms in Earth's atmosphere, delivered from space. The press has rapidly and uncritically echoed these claims.

This most definitely grabbed my interest. There has been a lot of talk that life on earth was seeded from space, a hypothesis called panspermia. It has been considered for hundreds of years, and has got a boost from modern research: life, in the form of bacterial colonies, can survive under the extreme conditions found within space environments. But is there physical evidence for "life arriving from space"? Such evidence would be monumental.

On reading results from Wainwright in the Journal of Cosmology, I would suggest the jury go back to deliberate some more. What the authors report sending a balloon for obtaining tiny objects from the lower stratosphere, which they examined using a scanning electron microscopy.

They found something called a "diatom frustule", which is, in essence, the non-living outer shell of a dead organism, a type of algae that thrives in rivers, streams and oceans. Diatoms are so common and so populous in such environments that they are central to those ecosystems. Wainwright makes a case that the inanimate material they see once belonged to a living entity.

The elephant in the room of course is, how did the diatoms end up in the stratosphere?

The authors conclude that they come from some other planet. But the explanations and (more to the point) the scientific evidence provided in the authors' paper are rather weak. While terrestrial sources for diatoms so high in the stratosphere, such as volcanic eruptions & contamination of the original sampling equipment are considered unviable by the authors, they offer as an alternative that the material must have come from space. However, to date there is no supporting evidence for that hypothesis either.

University of Sheffield

As a sceptical scientist, I would argue that Wainwright has found evidence for some inorganic particle (a composite of silicon and oxygen) in the lower stratosphere. It looks from the morphology (for we have no more to go on than that from the paper) as though it may have been the mineral shell of a living organism, a diatom. An organism found more than 20km up in the sky-how did that get there?

One could propose that it could have come from place A (somewhere down below, from the Earth) or it could have come from place B (somewhere up above, from outer space). What do we know about places A and B? We know that place A is teeming with diatoms and other exotic forms of biological life. We know also, at this point in time, that place B has no life that we can definitively say originates there. So, on balance, a sceptical scientist might focus their attention more on place A.

Doing so means being able to eliminate all suggestion of terrestrial contamination or mechanism for organisms or their remains being delivered to the stratosphere. Both of these hypotheses have a greater probability of being answered to the satisfaction of the scientific community than one based on life from space.

As someone who was turned on to science by the wonder of life on other worlds, I am genuinely excited by that possibility. But, as a trained scientist, that excitement will only be realised through scientifically justified evidence. As we stand now, I remain to be swayed by the scientific weight of argument in favour of life from space.

As for the press that has uncritically spread these claims, I can only suggest further developing its sense of scientific skepticism. A good start might be to compare the general reliability of the Journal of Cosmology to that of more mainstream scientific journals.

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Proof of alien life? You need a lot more evidence than that

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Could life really exist on other planets? The most positive scientific answer we can offer is: well, maybe, but we do not yet have enough evidence for or against. Yet Milton Wainwright and colleagues from the Universities of Sheffield & Buckingham would seem to disagree with that.

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http://search.proquest.com/docview/208658475/13CE2AA7E498452APQ/2?accountid=26503

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> apply your found information
> back your idea! - from a research expert
> paraphrase/reference an expert to support your point
> direct quote a research paper's findings and REFERENCE IT!

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SAN DIEGO - Aliens may be mediocre just like Earthlings, which could explain why humanity hasn't heard from advanced civilizations yet. If life on this planet develops at an average pace, rather than an exceptionally slow pace, then extraterrestrial life likely followed a similar path.

Like humanity, average civilizations have barely scratched the surface of galactic communication, so humans shouldn't start to worry about whether they're alone for another 1,500 years or so.

"Communicating with anybody is an incredibly slow, long-duration endeavor," said Evan Solomonides at a press conference June 14 at the American Astronomical Society's summer meeting in San Diego, California. Solomonides is an undergraduate student at Cornell University in New York, where he worked with Cornell radio astronomer Yervant Terzian to explore the mystery of the Fermi paradox: If life is abundant in the universe, the argument goes, it should have contacted Earth, yet there's no definitive sign of such an interaction. [ 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

Solomonides said the enormous size of the galaxy means the silence comes as no surprise.

"Space is very big. It takes a long time to reach anyone, even at the speed of light," he said.

Silent space

When Enrico Fermi formulated his namesake paradox in the 1950s, planets around other stars were only hypothetical. Today, scientists suspect that nearly every sun has at least one if not more worlds, dramatically increasing the chances for life to have evolved throughout the universe. However, for some people, the lack of confirmed greeting from another civilization suggests that life may not be so common after all.

Solomonides applied the mediocrity principle - the idea that Earth's attributes are likely common in the rest of the universe, rather than unusual - to the Fermi paradox. Scientists think that Earth is an average planet around an average star, orbiting in an average place within an average galaxy.

"There's nothing even remotely special about where we are in the universe, or even in the galaxy," Solomonides said.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic games broadcast was the first radio signal strong enough to leave Earth. Traveling at the speed of light, this program is the leading edge of a bubble of broadcasts racing outward through space from Earth. But that signal has managed to travel only 80 light-years from the planet.

Solomonides said advanced life elsewhere in the universe is unlikely to have arisen much before life on Earth. That's because bodies like those of humans require a mixture of the heavy elements produced over the lifetimes of stars, and it takes several generations of star formation to produce the necessary quantities. As a result, civilizations capable of communicating throughout the galaxy wouldn't have started out much earlier than happened on Earth.

Based on the assumption that life and technology on Earth should have evolved at a relatively average pace, not significantly faster or slower than for other civilizations, Solomonides calculated the communication bubbles that life would produce throughout the galaxy. He found that, as of today, only about a tenth of 1 percent of the Milky Way would be blanketed by signals. With those numbers, it's likely that Earth won't hear from other life-forms for another 1,500 years.

"There could be life everywhere in the galaxy, and we still wouldn't know it," Solomonides said.

In fact, "if we had been contacted by another civilization, we would actually be special."

That doesn't mean humanity should stop searching for signals or cut off broadcasts (though the rise of cable to carry television signals may mean that Earth is getting quieter anyway), Solomonides said. Instead, humans should keep broadcasting and listening in order to avoid missing the historic chance of contact, he said. People simply shouldn't expect results any time in the near future.

Even if, in the next 2,000 years, humans still haven't heard from other life-forms, that won't mean life doesn't exist throughout the galaxy, Solomonides said. He pointed out that communication requires the evolution of advanced life; molecular life won't be sending out signals, and so isn't considered in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Other scientists have suggested alien life may have evolved but then died out.

Another possibility is that advanced civilizations are unwilling to respond, because they'd rather avoid contact. After all, Solomnides said, Earth's first broadcast was Adolf Hitler's Olympics remarks.

"That's not really a great introduction," he said, wryly.
Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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E.T. Phones Earth? 1,500 Years Until Contact, Experts Estimate

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SAN DIEGO - Aliens may be mediocre just like Earthlings, which could explain why humanity hasn't heard from advanced civilizations yet. If life on this planet develops at an average pace, rather than an exceptionally slow pace, then extraterrestrial life likely followed a similar path.

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http://www.space.com/

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Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. We transport our visitors across the solar system and beyond through accessible, comprehensive coverage of the latest news and discoveries. For us, exploring space is as much about the journey as it is the destination. So from skywatching guides and stunning photos of the night sky to rocket launches and breaking news of robotic probes visiting other planets, at Space.com you'll find something amazing every day.

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Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. We transport our visitors across the solar system and beyond through accessible, comprehensive coverage of the latest news and discoveries. For us, exploring space is as much about the journey as it is the destination.

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https://library.bond.edu.au/help-support/ask-librarian/faculty-librarian-consultation

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http://www.ufointernationalproject.com/about/

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REFWORKS - Organise your research now and create your bibliography (instantly) later

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REFWORKS - Organise your research now and create your bibliography (instantly) later

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https://refworks.proquest.com/

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It's often said if cigarettes were invented tomorrow, and we knew now what we didn't know then, they would be banned outright. But vaping is showing us we're repeating the same mistakes.

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Health - Views & Research - The Conversation

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Curated by professional editors, The Conversation offers informed commentary and debate on the issues affecting our world. Plus a Plain English guide to the latest developments and discoveries from the university and research sector.

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http://www.space.com/31513-hillary-clinton-ufos-alien-life.html