Are The Skeptics Guide To The Universe Shills?

Being 'skeptical' means that you don't believe something. But influencers who call themselves skeptics are the opposite. They are 'know-it-alls'. They claim to have a logical system that allows them to see the truth of everything. They are full of factoids and opinions. A true skeptic would just go "I don't know'. But you can't fill hours of podcast every week with scientific humility.

A shill is a person that is promoting a product with deception. Pretending to be impartial, but actually working for a corporation.

Are Steve Novella and The Skeptics Guide To The Universe shills? As a real skeptic: I don't know. But I have a story about them.

The Skeptics Guide To The Universe is a long running science podcast. Every week they give their opinions on science news. Amazing how influencers find the time to become experts on every topic under the sun. My science teacher taught me: "The only way to know something for sure, is to test it yourself". These influencers must spend 24 hours per day in the lab and out in the field.

I listened to the first 700-some episodes of The Skeptics Guide To The Universe. Over time, red flags were popping up. But I didn't think about them deeply until The Incident.

The way The SGU sees the truth of everything, is that they name a logical fallacy, and then they diagnose the person with a category of bias. If a person says: I don't want to eat pesticides because it isn't natural, The SGU will say "That is an appeal to nature fallacy and you have an appeal to nature bias". Steve Novella actually claimed to have discovered the appeal to nature fallacy. A 10 second google search says otherwise. Steve Novella has an "I invented appeal to nature fallacy" bias.

It is my insight that all fallacies are "non sequiturs". Which means "It does not follow from the previous statement". For instance: things are not always good because they are natural. Or things are not always true because a doctor says so. "You have cancer because I'm a doctor" and "Red meat is healthy because it is from nature" are not logical statements.

Logic without data is worthless. The best evidence we have are published peer reviewed scientific studies. Measurements and calculations. But how was this proven, and how was it proven that science is incorruptible and infallible? As a skeptic: I don't know. But the only truth is measurement.

So listening to 700 plus episodes of The SGU, I noticed that they would break all their own logic rules. For instance, they said you can't prove a negative, but would keep making negative statements like "vaccines do NOT cause autism" or "lime disease does NOT exist". If they catch someone making a negative statement, they would go: "You are so stuuupid, you don't know the first thing about science". Then would make multiple negative statements themselves. In an email Steve Novella claimed never to have called people stupid (not true), and that science can prove negative statements. He also claimed that they didn't doubt lime disease, but instead chronic lime disease. Another "untruth".

The SGU claimed that it was trying to save the world with skepticism, yet climate change and ecology was missing from their show. Steve Novella once announced they would include environmental news, then didn't. He also said that enough other skeptics were focusing on climate change. Not in my experience. Religion was also missing from their topics, interestingly.

Steve Novella once claimed that as a doctor, he was qualified to speak on all things science. Appeal to authority. 

I suspected that The SGU was getting their science news from reddit. One week a science study did the rounds on reddit that "healthy eating is BS, and nutrition is just about calories". It contradicted tens of thousands of other studies. The SGU went for it, saying that eating vegetables is psuedo-science and a gateway to not getting vaccinated. A slippery slope fallacy.

One time an anti-Monsanto documentary came out. The SGU didn't acknowledge that this documentary existed, but decided to do a "deep dive" on Monsanto the week it came out. Steve Novella claimed that the criticism against Monsanto came down to 4 copyright lawsuits. He said they won these lawsuits and that the court system is very reliable. He said that Monsanto is no more evil than any other corporation. I can find thousands upon thousands of lawsuits against Monsanto. 

The SGU also justified that a GMO promoting professor was getting money from Monsanto and had lied about it. They said "off course he had to lie about getting money from Monsanto, because people would call him a shill". I later looked into this story, and they misrepresented what had happened. 

In 2017, I think, there was a lawsuit against Monsanto and news was trickling out. The SGU didn't acknowledge this lawsuit, but decided to launch a weeks long attack on organic farming while the court case was happening. Monsanto makes GMO crops and pesticides, and the court case concluded their pesticide glyphosate causes cancer and Monsanto had known.

I didn't have an opinion about GMOs or pesticides. But I was working at an organic farm, and when The SGU facebook page started posting "untruths" about farming, I started debating people on their page. I started fact checking their claims, and posting my findings. And my posts were getting deleted.

Steve Novella once claimed that he ignores this facebook page with over 1 million followers. But someone was deleting my comments every time I drove a point home.

The arguments from The SGU against organic farming were ridiculous. For instance, Steve Novella wrote that people who eat organic food are racist because we need GMOs to feed a growing African population. (But eating meat with a huge footprint is not racist, because Steve says "eat a little less meat maybe".) The SGU, during this court case, would post multiple arguments like this per day. When I commented about the lawsuit, it would get deleted.

There was an apparently mentally unwell commenter who really seemed to believe that organic farming is pure evil. He was telling people who were talking science to unalive themselves. One time, I called him a clown.

I decided to test/entrap whoever was deleting my comments. I alternated posting scientific facts and posting wordsalad nonsense. The science would be removed, while the wordsalad remained up. Then I addressed the person deleting my comments, and suddenly got banned from Facebook for calling that troll 'a clown' maybe a week before that.

Immediately after that, I got a message that someone had hacked my Facebook from Malaysia and had hacked my Google from Brussels. I changed my passwords and deleted all my comments on The SGU page. I got spooked.

So: are The Skeptics Guide To The Universe shills for Monsanto? As a skeptic: I don't know anything for certain. But it sure is suspicious. 

peace ✌️ 💜