By Mike Sutton –
Bullshit kills? Really? “Nullius in Verba” Show me the Evidence!
Last week in London, I seriously offended my hosts by insisting that the pink beef burger they served my daughter from their BBQ was quite possibly not safe for her or anyone else to eat. The juicy fat and perfectly charred burger was made from the finest ground steak from their local trusted butcher, and so they insisted it was perfectly safe to eat. Safe, because it is safe to eat a rare steak. After a heated discussion (pun intended) they finally, grudgingly, accepted that I was right.
I was right to tell them that not only are pink burgers unsafe (unless you first sear the outside of the steak before grinding it up), they are particularly unsafe for children and should never be served to them. Why is this a fact? Because the carcass of a slaughtered bull is often covered in its faeces, or that of other bulls (literally bullshit), and so it can get onto the meat. Bullshit contains E. coli, which is a lethal bacteria if ingested by humans.
Pink burgers might be safe if the internal pink bit has reached 160 degrees throughout in the cooking process, but it’s very hard for anyone to prove to you that it has. For all you know they made a mistake or they are “bullshitting” in the philosophical sense described by Harry H. Frankfurt . Where is the verifiable evidence, you need to ask.
In my opinion, when it comes to beef burgers, it is logically, rationally, better to stick with the veraciously potential life-saving guidance of the Hospitality Association on such things as pink beef.
The Bullshit Burger Parable
Later in the evening, my hosts turned the discussion to the difficulty I am having in getting the scientific and wider community to understand why it is important that we distinguish between truth and bullshit in the story of the discovery of evolution by natural selection.
People read my book, ‘Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s greatest secret‘ agree with the newly discovered bombshell evidence in it, but just can’t be bothered to spend so much as 5 minutes of their precious time to write a review on Amazon to help spread the truth. Why, because apparently “who cares about the truth of such matters?” I was further informed: “The trouble with you is that you care too much about the truth.”
The newly discovered facts in my book are as unwelcome as the guest who questions the food hygiene of the dish served them by a beloved and proud host. And yet, the veracious information I gave them might save the from killing someone they love.
Analogously, understanding the real, as opposed to mythical, process by which all ground-breaking scientific discoveries are made may in the future improve scientific knowledge about how to increase the rate of making new life-saving discoveries in science. If we don’t realise this we don’t realise the lesson of the Bullshit Burger Parable: namely, bullshit literally kills!
Do you have time to spread this important message to your fellow humans? Perhaps you don’t care enough about the truth? After all, as my extremely successful hosts told me: “Don’t you realise we are living in a post truth world?” They know that the big money in academia today, and other corporations (not their respective sources of income, by the way) is in selling palatable bullshit instead of unpalatable truth, just so long as it brings in money. And that is exactly what the Darwin deification industry does. It’s very profitable for universities that spread it. It’s very profitable for the publishers who publish it. And it’ very profitable for the authors and scientific associations that peddle it. Is money the “bottom” line (pun intended)?
The author’s eight year old daughter understands the lifesaving difference between evidence and dangerous wishful thinking. Do you?
