Why Fringe Science?

Without fringe science, mankind would be without many of the medical discoveries we take for granted - including genetics, antisepsis, the circulation of blood and germ theory. Progress in science mostly occurs in the fringes, for that is the nature of science - never arriving at a permanent destination and always pressing forward. 

Arriving at a final destination in science automatically implies a loss of momentum and a stagnant state of self-destructive decay. Just as a stagnant stream starts soon to stink, a stagnant state of science will always lead to a stunted putrefaction. 

It is the scientists occupying the fringe who defy the centrifugal forces that threaten to hold back human progress - they are always moving out of the suffocating centre or straining at and breaking the ropes that seek to bind them. 

During the covid pandemic, a strange and relatively new term entered the realm of science in Western nations.  The term “consensus” was pulled in from the realm of social interactions and planted into the centre of medical science.  Corrupt news media, corrupt politicians, corrupt licensing bodies and corrupt public health agencies had “arrived” at a “consensus” about lockdowns, masks, vaccines and the origin of viruses! 

Astonishingly, most physicians and nurses also believed they had arrived at this destination of certainty - this “consensus” about covid science. Except of course, that the “consensus” was repeatedly demolished by “fringe” science moving forward at a pace that the statists of consensus could not control. 

With increasing panic the tyrannical medical establishment first tried disowning and changing the “consensus” and when that did not work, a chief proponent of statism and the “consensus” even claimed that he was “the science!”

A consensus cannot exist in science - only data and the analysis of data and the arrival at the next temporary pause in the pursuit of truth.

There are other serious logical fallacies with using the word, “consensus” to describe progress in science, including medicine. Literally, a consensus view means a view acceptable to every single person who holds any view at all - a complete impossibility in a new and advancing area of medicine and science.  

Even if it is claimed that the “majority” of people hold a particular position in a new area of science, what size of majority characterizes the plausible validity of a consensus? And what if the minority view is the more well thought out, the more in tune with the data, the more brilliant - or as my son would say, the more “based?” 

A “majority” view is never a “consensus” and no matter the label, such a view would never be valid. Indeed, if that were so, there would have been a valid “consensus” on the bastardization and bending of science that occurred in the Soviet Union of the twentieth century. The “consensus” was supposed to be what the Soviet pseudo-scientist Lysenko put forward as the “truth,” initially about genetics and then about virtually all of Soviet science and literature, except mathematics and physics. 

The consensus “Lysenkosim” of the Soviet Union was very much like the Anthony “Fauciism” of the covid pandemic. Most real, Russian scientists were opposed to the official nonsensical narratives of Lysenkoism - but this opposition amounted to a minority of brilliant, dissident scientists who were persecuted, stripped of prestigious professorships, sent to the gulag or imprisoned and executed. 

Fringe science challenges both the status quo and the consensus. This ability to be a skeptic and not accept anything at face value was indeed once a prized possession of Western science that was supposed to thrive on its maverick, unconventional ability to uncover the hidden secrets of science. 

Once the Western academy was taken over by a postmodern view of the world however, with its relativism and official, individual definitions of pliable truth, it became necessary to persecute any scientist who strayed from the particular, popular, fashionable definition of official “truth” at any particular time.  

Just as in the Soviet Union, there are cycles of persecution unleashed by successive inheritors of this dysfunctional, dangerous and dystopian idea of truth in which “trusted experts” and rulers with a fascist media in tow, force a “consensus” belief system on the people. The system turns on itself and ultimately destroys itself - but leaves a ruined, wrecked and smouldering landscape behind. 

We are living through such a time. Very soon, nations and civilizations which operate without the stifling constraints of “consensus” will overtake the West and will appropriate to themselves the celebration of “fringe” science and the free pursuit of truth that has been responsible for much of human progress.