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Thanks to enormous funding for educational programs, the whole
world ?knows? that HIV causes AIDS. But is what we know compatible
with the facts? This book challenges the conventional wisdom on
this issue. Collating and analyzing, for the first time, the
results of more than two decades of HIV testing, it reveals that
the common assumptions about HIV and AIDS are incompatible with the
published data. Among the many topics explored are the failings of
HIV testing, statistical evidence that HIV is neither sexually
transmitted nor increasingly prevalent, and problems caused by the
differing diagnostic criteria for AIDS around the world. But how
could everyone have been so wrong for so long? This vital question,
unaddressed in previous works questioning the HIV-AIDS connection,
is central to this book. The author considers comparable missteps
of modern science, and discusses how funding influences discovery
in today's scientific circles.
This book discusses the ways in which science, the touchstone of
reliable knowledge in modern society, changed dramatically in the
second half of the 20th century, becoming less trustworthy through
excessive competitiveness and conflicts of interest. Fraud became
common enough that organized efforts to combat it now include a
federal Office of Research Integrity. Competent minority opinions
are sometimes suppressed so that policy makers, media and the
public are presented with biased or incomplete information.
Evidence tending to challenge established theories is sometimes
rejected. While most would agree in the abstract that science can
go wrong, few would consider-despite interesting contrary
evidence-that official consensus about the origins of the universe
or the causes of global warming might be mistaken.
The nature of scientific activity has changed dramatically over the
last half century, and the objectivity and rigorous search for
evidence that once defined it are being abandoned. Increasingly,
this text argues, dogma has taken the place of authentic science.
This study examines how conflicts of interest--both institutional
and individual--have become pervasive in the science world, and
also explores the troubling state of research funding and flaws of
the peer-review process. It looks in depth at the dominance of
several specific theories, including the Big Bang cosmology,
human-caused global warming, HIV as a cause of AIDS, and the
efficacy of anti-depressant drugs. In a scientific environment
where distinguished experts who hold contrary views are shunned,
this book is a welcome addition to the examination of scientific
heterodoxies.
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