The "wisdom" of the Discovery Institute

John G. West is Vice President of the Discovery Institute and one of the founding members of the Center for Science and Culture. He is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design Creationism.

West has reviewed the latest book by Francis Collins; the review was published in The Federalist. [Francis Collins’ Latest Book Doubles Down On His Massive Abuses Of Power]

Collins' book is titled The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust. Now, let me state from the beginning that I'm not a great fan of Francis Collins and I agree with those who criticize the title. I don't think that Francis Collins is going to teach me about the road to wisdom. However, my qualms pale in comparison to those expressed by John West. I want to quote a few paragraphs from his review to show you what we are up against.

"But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”

Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.” A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.

Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”

This is the culture war. This is what we have to deal with if we are going to win the hearts and minds of people who vote in all countries, not just the United States. A sizable percentage of the population agrees with West— they think that they are being manipulated by left-wing elitists.

David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and the Editor of their main propaganda website. He echos the rhetoric of John West in a blog post: Francis Collins’s “Road to Folly”.

You might wonder if the “wise” Dr. Collins learned much from the experience of Covid, with the lockdowns, the vaccine and mask mandates, the closed schools, the ruined businesses, the ruined city centers, the push to silence skeptics, to intimidate the public, that entire fiasco that did so much to discredit science in the public eye. It seems not:

I think it's important to understand where these people are coming from. They resent being told what to do by people they don't respect. It's not a question of whether the "science" is accurate or not. It's all about the messenger.

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