!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

A few years ago, analysts with the National Bureau of Economic Research decided to try to quantify the headlock that “elite scientists” exert on their chosen disciplines. They wanted to know if Nobel laureate Max Planck’s lamentation on ego could be statistically proven: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

By Billy Cox De Void 4-2-16

Targeting the life sciences, NBER formed a database of 12,935 scientists whose publication performance, patents, funding levels and peer pedigrees – i.e., membership in the National Academies of Science or the Institute of Medicine – satisfied baseline criteria. From there, NBER whittled the field down to 452 names. All were considered the rock stars of their generation, circa 1975-2003. More significantly, every one died before they retired.

The results of the study – published in December under the headline “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” – showed how subsequent publication activity by the deceased stars’ colleagues tapered off precipitously, by 40 percent, following the deaths of the luminaries. Into that vacuum surged the work of non-collaborators. It went up 8 percent within a year. Within five years, papers by the non-collaborators “fully offset the productivity decline of collaborators.”

NBER summed up what had been happening this way: “The idiosyncratic stances of individual scientists can do much to alter, or at least delay, the course of scientific advance.” Conclusion: “While co-authors suffer after the passing of a superstar, it is not simply the case that star scientists in a competing lab assume leadership mantle. Rather, the boost comes largely from outsiders who appear to tackle the mainstream questions within the field but by leveraging newer ideas that arise in other domains.”

Uh-oh. Outsiders.

Which brings us to the latest paint-by-numbers whimsy from astronomer Seth Shostak, 72.

Champion of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence via the exclusive mode of radiotelescopes, author of four books, plus 60-some peer-reviewed research papers, not to mention 300 or so popular articles ranging from astronomy to technology, Shostak is so inside-the-box he even co-authored a college-level textbook on astrobiology. Plus he’s made a multitude of appearances on documentaries and TV series. Smart guy, clearly. Elite. He was rewarded for those efforts in December when he received the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. And as a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he never misses a chance to remind Americans that UFOs are a waste of time. Thus:

Sensing a potential affront to mainstream groupthink with Hillary Clinton’s recent advocacy for transparent federal UFO documents, Shostak felt the need to translate her avowed interest into language Huffington Post readers could understand. From his opening sentence – “If you’re worried about little gray guys with no hair and amygdaloid eyes, Hillary Clinton wants to help” – it’s eminently clear that the senior astronomer with the SETI Institute has disqualified himself from any meaningful discussion on The Great Taboo.

Shostak does what he always does. He falls back on the veracity of the USAF’s dreadfully bollixed Project Blue Book, and he characterizes “those whose psyches are invested in the alien visitation story” as delusional thinkers. No allowance, of course, for people who make no such claims, people who think radar tracks of weird *&! in the sky are interesting, and for people who wish that authority figures like Shostak would quit proselytizing and actually investigate events occurring in the 21st century. Or, failing that, at least quit misrepresenting things, like the British Ministry of Defence’s position on UFOs.

“The MOD said that after more than a half-century of taking hotline tips, they had learned nothing of either military or scientific value,” writes Shostak, who doesn’t even have to Google UFOs anymore because he’s riding Yuri Milner’s $100M SETI gravy train. “They also released tens of thousands of related government documents.”

Well, no, sorry man, you’re totally wrong on that first point. According to an MOD study declassified in 2006, referred to as Project Condign, the Brits are definitely interested in pursuing what it prefers to call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. That’s the same term Clinton used last week in her Jimmy Kimmel interview. Struggling to make sense of the evidence they considered from 1997-2000, UK analysts agreed to describe UAP as “buoyant plasma formations.” Under the MoD’s definition, UAP is a meteorological phenomenon so bizarre, so intense, that it can subject observers to radiation exposure, hallucinations, “lost time” episodes, and even cause pilots to make evasive maneuvers.

“The relevance of plasma and magnetic fields to UAP was an unexpected feature of the study. It is recommended,” declared the authors, “that further investigation should be (undertaken) into the applicability of various characteristics in various novel military applications.”

Whoa, hey, crazy “weather,” huh? With defense implications to boot. Mmmm . . . smells like $$$. Still, 10 years after the declassification of Condign, and no followup to speak of. That could mean one of two things: 1) Classified research is ongoing or, more likely, 2) a more informed generation of scientists is waiting for speed bumps like Shostak to get out of the way so a less doctrinaire era of inquiry can begin.
Read more »

Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s.

Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public's perception of reality.

Read full article »»

by Edward Bernays

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Edward Bernays. Propaganda (1928). fulltext online»»

In 1933, the American advertising industry proudly and publicly boasted that Hitler was copying their American propaganda techniques.

After Hitler and Goebbels gave a bad name to propaganda, Freud's nephew - psychologist Edward Bernays - simply re-branded propaganda as "public relations" and "professional journalism".

Read full article »»

The corporate media, at least at the level Walter Cronkite occupied, is rife with spooks, government agents, and disinfo operatives. The CIA has “important assets” inside every major news publication in the country, a fact established by numerous FOIA documents. A rare glimpse was also provided by Frank Church’s committee in the mid-70s.

Some of the journalists working the CIA’s side of the street “were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country,” Carl Bernstein wrote in an article published in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. “Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.”

“It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field,” writes Alex Constantine in The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD. “Most consumers of the corporate media were — and are — unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs.”

Cronkite was a trusted and valued part of that huge mass propaganda effort.

It is said Cronkite “somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to,” according to the Los Angeles Times, when in fact — like all corporate media figures — Cronkite was reading from a script provided by the CIA at the behest of the ruling elite.

Read full article »»

A vicious smear attack on Alex Jones and his websites launched by the ADL in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh police shootings which attempted to classify Infowars as an outlet for “hate speech” has been discredited after the ADL’s own website admitted that Richard Poplawski held views that opposed those of the Texas radio talk show host.

Stories claiming that Poplawski was influenced by Alex Jones, Infowars and Prison Planet originally appeared Sunday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Raw Story. Neither of these news organizations attempted to speak with us before claiming the link and Raw Story later issued a retraction and removed us from their original piece altogether after we questioned the sloppy nature of their writer Muriel Kane’s hit piece.

Read full article »»

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has posted an article on its website by Dennis R. Roddy attempting to link Richard Poplawski, the Pittsburgh man accused of killing three police officers on April 4, to radio talk show host Alex Jones.

Read full article »»