Napoleon's Coffee - With or without a mask
All things by immortal power. Near or far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star. - Francis Thompson
Back in 1978, the incomparable James Burke had a show on BBC 1 titled "Connections." I loved it then and its lessons are still pertinent today. Essentially, Burke showed us that we live a contingent life. More than that, we live it on a contingent planet in a contingent galaxy in a contingent universe.
And although the poetic words of Francis Thompson's flowers and stars may take contingency to an absurd level, the poetic license nevertheless captures what some regard as the "butterfly effect;" where the beating wing of a butterfly in Hawaii creates a cascade of contingencies that results in an hurricane in the Atlantic. And yet would it be prudent to conclude that all we need to do to control hurricanes is get rid of all the butterflies? No, that would not be prudent.
The great physicist Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine opined that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more contingent background assumptions. That is, we cannot practically test for all presumed cause and effect inputs and outputs. Some may, of course, be tested, and some may be estimated and some may be inferred, but some may be unknown until such time that the proper controls are put into place.
Consider the events of Sunday, June 18, 1815, units from United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau are squared up on the escarpment of Mont-Saint-Jean facing Napoleon and his troops while von Blücher's Prussians are poised to sweep in from the northeast to flank Napoleon. The Battle of Waterloo was set.
What were the factors that lead to such a devastating loss? 118,000 coalition forces against France's 73,000. The freshness of the horses, the age of the commanding belligerents, their skill sets, the weather, the season, the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment, the commitment of the soldiers, the lack of common language, finances, how much they had to eat the day before, how much rest, and what about the concentration of caffeine in Napoleon's coffee?
The factors are multitude, the shifts of fate of the individual 65,000 dead at the end of the battle could have rested on a split-second fluke; something as unfortunate as tripping over a twig on the field resulting in being bayoneted by an enemy thrust, or as fortunate as tripping over a twig on the field resulting in an otherwise well placed rifle ball whizzing safely over a solder's head.
(But what about the concentration of caffeine in Napoleon's coffee?)
Well, let's presume Napoleon actually had some coffee on the morning of the battle. Would the concentration of caffeine in the coffee be a factor in the outcome of the battle á la the butterfly effect? Or perhaps the better question would be "did the concentration of caffeine in Napoleon's coffee become a significant factor, and if so, what was the level of significance?" Now we have narrowed the question down a bit.
On the surface, a prudent person would probably say "No. The concentration of caffeine in Napoleon's coffee was not a significant factor." Well, surely we can't make such a broad categorical statement without proof can we? Yes, we can, with prudence. So what is prudence? Well, Aristotle called prudence "the right reason applied to practice." Well, a fat lot of good that does us if we can't define "right." And yet prudence requires us to discern right and wrong. Prudence "… is the intellectual virtue whereby a human being recognizes in any matter at hand what is good and what is evil."[1]
So, in the context of cause and effect, in conjunction with Duhem-Quine, prudence is an aspect of epistemology and discerning knowledge with regard to its limitation, interpretation, validity, and scope; it is how one approaches information in a manner that distinguishes veridical belief from opinion.
But is that what we are seeing in today's popular contemporary science? Is there a lack of prudence?
In today's contemporary mind, and according to "common knowledge," we seem to have migrated further and further from prudence and apparently epistemology has become less and less important in the fields of science and communications.
Let's take the current fiasco of COVID-19. When we look at papers that emerged in 2020 regarding non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), we see a plethora of very poorly written papers, guidance documents, and public announcements that are entirely devoid of prudence. For example, we are told science demonstrates that we should wear a face mask (without any actual science to back up the claims). When we ask for the science, we are handed a list of citations to articles almost exclusively written in 2020. The presentation of the citations is a testament to the fallacy of the appeal to authority, since if we actually read the articles, we invariably find that the articles do not, in fact, contain any actual science in the support of community masking. Instead, what we almost always see is a profound violation of the Duhem-Quine principle and the authors are making an a priori conclusion and then desperately trying to bamboozle their way into finding a way to make the data fit the conclusion; that is, they are trying to argue that if Napoleon's coffee had just a little more caffeine, he would have taken Waterloo (the multitude of other, more significant, factors be damned). And such arguments are almost always replete with a multitude of citations to other similar articles making the same fallacious claims, and we get a large dose of tautology on top of logical fallacy.
“One can spend an entire lifetime correcting a flawed paper published in reputable journal and still lose the battle if people like the basic idea.” -Victor Hamburger (1a)
It's not just in the COVID issue, either. Look at popular "common knowledge" about Global Warming, Darwinism, the Viet Nam War, reproductive sciences, The Crusades, perceived risks and risk communication, "Second Hand Smoke," and the list goes on and on and on.
"Common knowledge" has become a substitute for verified fact. How did we come to this?
Well, frankly, we came to it through a long history of that very thing. Look again at poor Pierre Duhem himself and the astonishing case of the real "da Vinci Code" involving a real Harvard Professor (George Sarton), who along with a certain Mr. Freymann and Mr. Cavalier, conspired to hide the fact that Duhem had discovered that da Vinci had relied heavily on, and plagiarized the work of, the "Parisian Doctors" and the "Oxford Calculators" who predated Newton by 150 years and Galileo by 300 years. Why the conspiracy? For the exact same reason that we now see a shameful propagation of lies regarding the likes of Fauci and Redfield, as well as the hopelessly flawed (and now heavily mischaracterized) goofy ideas of another plagiarist, Charles Darwin. We see it also in the continued mischaracterizations of the Spanish Civil War and the French Revolution - and the list goes on. All "common knowledge," very little of it has ties to reality.
Shame on my own colleagues in science who, in similar fashion to promote a social and political alternative (and save themselves from embarrassment), similarly promote such deceptions themselves. The sad part is that most of them know what they are doing (many of them have sincerely fooled themselves through a judicial application of cognitive dissonance which is merely assuaged by jumping on the most populated bandwagon).
That practice doesn't help matters much, and reminds me of the famous words of S.P. Langley[2] who understood "herd mentality" in the progress of science and used a metaphor:
… not wholly unlike a pack of hounds, which, in the long-run, perhaps catches its game, but where, nevertheless, when at fault, each individual goes his own way, by scent, not by sight, some running back and some forward; where the louder-voiced bring many to follow them, nearly as often in a wrong path as in a right one; where the entire pack even has been known to move off bodily on a false scent.
The data don't lie, Men interpreting the data lie. And such Men will not be favorably remembered, because ultimately the truth becomes known. In 2006, the Institutes of Medicine, Board on Health Sciences Policy, convened the Committee on the "Development of Reusable Facemasks for Use During an Influenza Pandemic." This was an austere assemblage of eminent professionals from the University of Chicago, The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale University School of Medicine, and others.
Collectively, The Committee produced a report titled "Reusability of Facemasks During an Influenza Pandemic: Facing the Flu"[i] One of the fundamental findings of The Committee was the foundational understanding of how politicians and glory-grabbers may be swept away with the urge to use a pandemic to manipulate people; and politics may rear its ugly head taking US policy makers down the path of tyranny using junk science to support their agenda. The Committee prophetically cautioned:
Any public health effort aimed at extending the usefulness of existing devices must be delivered with clarity and truthfulness. The public is likely to forgive lack of knowledge but will not be willing to trust public health officials in the next instance if they have in any way been misinformed or misled.
It's time to stop focusing on Napoleon's coffee and pretending that in 2020 we discovered some grand hidden answer to controlling viruses and begin remembering that prudence is a virtue and let the data and the science lead us where it leads us, regardless of how much we may not want to see the reality it presents. When we choose to do this, the pandemic will continue unabated (as it already has done anyway), but the panic will end (especially when people realize they have been completely duped about the reported number of COVID deaths), and we will reopen our society and begin regaining our collective sanity.
Caoimhín P Connell, Forensic Industrial Hygienist, February 22, 2021
References
[i] ISBN 978-0-309-10182-0 | DOI 10.17226/11637
[1] Richert, Scott P. (quoting Father Hardon) "The Cardinal Virtue of Prudence (And What It Means)." Learn Religions, Aug. 25, 2020, learnreligions.com/prudence-a-cardinal-virtue-542128.
[1a] Rakic P. Confusing cortical columns: Pasko Rakic quoting a personal conversation with developmental neurobiologist, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Victor Hamburger (PNAS 105 (34) 12099-12100, August 26, 2008)
[2] Langley, S.P. The History of a Doctrine, SCIENCE, 12, p.74 (1888)
Other COVID-19 discussions by CP Connell:
How to Peddle Backward - What happened to the 2020 Flu Epidemic? A summary of the US Crude Mortality Rate's refusal to cooperate with the popular narrative.
WHO thought this was a good idea... (Comments regarding the December 1, 2020, "Mask use in the context of COVID-19".)
The Failing Mask Cure Aid a review of Bundgaard H, Bundgaard JS, Raaschou-Pedersen DET, et al, "Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers, A Randomized Controlled Trial" (Ann. Int. Med. Nov 18, 2020, https://doi dot org/10.7326/M20-6817).
Don't be a Maskhole, Karen A review of Zeng N, Li Z, Ng S, Chen D, Zhou H, Epidemiology reveals mask wearing by the public is crucial for COVID-19 control. (Medicine in Microecology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medmic.2020.100015):
Masks, and the new Doctor Schnabel von Rom: Review of Stadnytskyi V, Bax CE, Bax A, Anfinru P, The airborne lifetime of small speech droplets and their potential importance in SARS-CoV-2 transmission (Approved by PNAS May 2020: https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006874117)
Pathological Science - Zhang et al and the PNAS: Zhang R, Annie Y Zhang L, Wang Y, Molinae M: Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19 (fast-tracked through the PNAS on June 11, 2020)
Defacing Mask Science - Rossettie S, Perry C, Pourghaed M, Zumwalt M, "Effectiveness of manufactured surgical masks, respirators, and home-made masks in prevention of respiratory infection due to airborne microorganisms" The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2020;8(34):11–26
Masks - Don't look behind the curtain: Review of Vivek Kumar, Sravankumar Nallamothu, Sourabh Shrivastava, Harshrajsinh Jadeja, Pravin Nakod, Prem Andrade, Pankaj Doshi, Guruswamy Kumaraswamy "On the utility of cloth facemasks for controlling ejecta during respiratory events "
Size matters! A Brief Description of filtering mechanisms and size.
Materials v. Masks: A review of Konda A, Prakash A, Moss GA, Schmoldt M, Grant GD, Guha S "Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks" (American Chemical Society, April 2020)
"Junk Science: In Favor of Community Face Masks - a return to Lysenkoism" A review of: Jeremy Howard, Austin Huang, Zhiyuan Li, Zeynep Tufekci, Vladimir Zdimal, Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen, Arne von Delft, Amy Price, Lex Fridman, Lei-Han Tang, Viola Tang, Gregory L. Watson, Christina E. Bax, Reshama Shaikh, Frederik Questier, Danny Hernandez, Larry F. Chu, Christina M. Ramirez, Anne W. Rimoin Face Masks Against COVID-19: An Evidence Review NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 13 May 2020
Wishful Science - A review of Anna Davies, BSc, Katy-Anne Thompson, BSc, Karthika Giri, BSc, George Kafatos, MSc, Jimmy Walker, PhD, and Allan Bennett, MSc Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic? (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:413-418)
If Manikins Could Fly… A Review of Eikenberry SE, Mancuso M, Iboi E, Phan T, Eikenberry K, Kuang Y, Kostelich E, Gumel AB "To mask or not to mask: Modeling the potential for face mask use by the general public to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic" (Infectious Disease Modelling 5 (2020) pp. 293-308)
Review of Cheng VC, Wong S, Chuang V, So S, et al "The role of community-wide wearing of face mask for control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic due to SARS-CoV-2" (Journal of Infection April 30, 2020;16:13)
Gassed Masks! Reactivation of viruses and deoxygenation during mask wearing.
Masking the Truth - A discussion of aerosols and droplets
We R0 New York City - A discussion of the basic reproduction number.
The epidemic of ignorance: Lessons from "Flattening the Curve" April 14, 2020
Think Tanks! The Dangers of Group-Think April 13, 2020