Comment on WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU by Bob Pickle.
Richard,
Either I’m misunderstanding what is allegedly going on, or you are missing the point.
If a church educational institution, such as LSU, begins to promote evolution as the true story of origins (not just teaching about evolution with an emphasis on the evidence for Biblical creation), and if the church tries therefore to rein it in, and if the WASC says the church can’t do that, then the WASC is meddling with the church’s educational mission, and what the church’s educational institutions can and cannot teach.
“They do require that the institution makes education its primary function ….”
True education or false education? If true education, then the WASC should have no problem with the church requiring LSU to stick with true education principles, and to abandon false education principles. It’s fine to require a school to teach about evolution, but requiring a school to promote evolution over creation or intelligent design is a whole different matter.
By the way, a union president should have the institution’s conformity to true education principles as his primary objective, or else he shouldn’t be chairman of the board. But I think the WASC may be opposed to this, not in favor of it, based on what is being reported.
Bob Pickle Also Commented
WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU
According to this piece, the WASC demands that LSU be autonomous from outside interference … unless that outside interference be the WASC demanding that it be autonomous. Sounds hypocritical.
If the WASC can interfere, why can’t a church when the institution it owns begins to incorporate false education and false science into its curriculum?
From the Spectrum article it also appears that LSU has rewritten its bylaws in an effort to conform to WASC expectations and accreditation standards – to include a truly “independent” board for LSU (presumably independent of church influence or direction).
If that’s really true, then that sounds a bit like Kellogg getting a new charter which said that the Battle Creek San was non-denominational, and then later using that change to wrest and steal that institution away from the denomination.
WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU
If what you have reported is accurate, then WASC isn’t doing its job, since it isn’t holding LSU accountable to principles of true education.
If these non-Adventist accrediting bodies refuse to do their job, then we may just have to go some other route. They aren’t God, after all.
Of course, one might argue that WASC’s job is to hold institutions accountable to principles of false education, not principles of true education. But who would or did give it that kind of job? And there have been non-Adventist entities and individuals that have promoted true education.
Recent Comments by Bob Pickle
Mandates vs. Religious Exemptions
“While the procedures were sloppy in this particular company, they do not appear to have significantly affected the overall integrity of the data.”
How do we know? a) How do we know that no other contractors were as sloppy? b) How do we know that “the overall integrity of the data” wasn’t “significantly affected”?
“Another reason I say this is because billions of people around the globe have now been fully vaccinated, giving researchers plenty of real-world data that clearly shows the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.”
Then why use randomized double-blinded trials at all if safety and efficacy can be clearly shown by just doling the real thing out to everyone?
Understand my question? The “real-world data” isn’t coming from something that is randomized and double blinded, and thus can never speak to the question of safety and efficacy like a randomized double-blinded trial can.
Mandates vs. Religious Exemptions
Sean, this article from the BMJ, authored by a double-vaccinated writer, is of interest: “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial” at https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
The whistleblower was a clinical trial auditor, with a 20-year career in research. Her concerns about the conducting of the Pfizer trials weren’t addressed, the article states. It explains how the FDA doesn’t handle oversight issues in a timely manner, and gives examples. And all that calls into question the integrity of the Pfizer clinical trial data.
I found “How Fauci Fooled America” at https://www.newsweek.com/how-fauci-fooled-america-opinion-1643839 by professors from Harvard and Stanford also of interest. The observations made good sense.
I’m glad you aren’t in favor of vaccine mandates.
Dr. Peter McCullough’s COVID-19 and Anti-Vaccine Theories
Since you did not respond to my principal concern, I think it fairly reasonable to conclude that Jack Lawrence’s statement about the effect of withdrawing the Egyptian study from meta-analyses is at best of questionable accuracy, and at worst a prevarication, since you are unable to show how the withdrawal of that Egyptian study significantly impacts the particular meta-analysis I provided a link to.
And thus, there may really be a conspiracy out there, even if Ivermectin is not an effective treatment.
Dr. Peter McCullough’s COVID-19 and Anti-Vaccine Theories
Could you explain that? Above you said, “I have taken a look. And, I find no reason to conclude that this is not the case – as have numerous scientists who have also reviewed this study.” That can only mean that you already know what part of the study I’m overlooking. Why would you want to keep that a secret?
“… this isn’t something that interests me ….”
Certainly that can’t mean that you have no interest in making sure your links only go to credible sources.
The two links you gave to show that it doesn’t matter whether Jack Lawrence’s story is on the up and up or not:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389 is only about mild illness, and even admits “larger trials may be needed to understand the effects of ivermectin on other clinically relevant outcomes.” Thus, this study doesn’t refute the entire meta-analysis I linked to, even if this study’s results are reproducible.
https://rethinkingclinicaltrials.org/news/august-6-2021-early-treatment-of-covid-19-with-repurposed-therapies-the-together-adaptive-platform-trial-edward-mills-phd-frcp/ contains no data regarding Ivermectin. But I did find a news article claiming that the results about Ivermectin have not been published or peer reviewed yet.
Any explanation as to why double-blinded RCT’s in Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, presumably Iraq, and Spain would yield different results than the one from Columbia that you linked to? Each of those are listed in the meta-analysis regarding mild illness. (I said presumably Iraq because the meta-analysis called it an RCT, but didn’t include the words double-blinded.)
Perhaps part of the issue is what the Ivermectin was combined with. Comparing Ivermectin with Ivermectin + something else does not prove that Ivermectin isn’t helpful if one of those regimens is less effective than the other.
The news article about the Together Trial decried conspiracy theories. I think a good way to refute conspiracy theories is to show that there aren’t any, by proving that Jack Lawrence is legit. Otherwise, if he’s only a pseudonym, or employed or paid by a drug company, that’s not going to help squelch conspiracy theories.
Dr. Peter McCullough’s COVID-19 and Anti-Vaccine Theories
Sean, could you please address my question? I didn’t see where you answered it above.
The quote from Jack’s article at https://grftr.news/why-was-a-major-study-on-ivermectin-for-covid-19-just-retracted/ :
“After excluding the data from the Elgazzar study, he found that the effect for ivermectin drops significantly with no discernible effect on severe disease.”
Is that really true?
Here’s a meta-analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
How does removing the Elgazzar study from this particular meta-analysis change the conclusion? I’ve looked at the various tables, and I just don’t get how Jack could make that statement, or how the person he’s citing could have made that conclusion.
If you think I’m misreading the meta-analysis, please cite or quote the relevant text or table, and explain what I’m overlooking.
I’m not looking for “I don’t see a problem.” I’m looking for, “Look at table X. If you remove the Elgazzar study from that table, the end result is that patients with Y disease receive no benefit at all.”
Above, you cited additional studies rather than addressing the truthfulness of Jack Lawrence’s statement as it pertains to removing the Elgazzar study from the meta-analysis I provided a link to. Those are two different issues.
Whether Jack Lawrence’s key contention is correct or not is essentially irrelevant to my question about his credibility. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t like the idea of taking Ivermectin, but whether one should take it or not is not my concern here.
If a masters student in London, whose hobby is to attack a conservative American Youtuber and who just happens to notice plagiarism in the intro of an Egyptian medical study, is so careless or ignorant as to not see that a claim about a meta-analysis is bogus, then something is dread wrong, and we aren’t being told what is really going on.
Why do I say that? Because the presumed level of astuteness that would lead to the detection of plagiarism would prevent the repeating of a bogus claim about a meta-analysis.
Perhaps the problem is that the meta-analysis I provided the link to wasn’t the same one reanalyzed by the person Lawrence cited. Still, due diligence would require that Lawrence make sure that the claim he’s repeating about meta-analyses is actually sound in the light of other meta-analyses, such as the one I linked to on the NIH website from April 2021.
