From Professor PZ Myers:
The Grand Prize for Pseudoscientific Gobbledygook goes to…the University of Pittsburgh!
I read the whole paper by Moses Turkle Bility. It was a wild ride. Let me try to summarize the whole thing in non-gibberish.
- They had two rooms full of immunocompromised experimental rats.
- These rats had been surgically implanted with fetal human hematopoietic tissue for reasons unknown, but for an experiment that had been approved by the university.
- A respiratory disease swept through the colony, affecting one room more than the other. Nothing is made of this observation.
- COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. Therefore they called this a COVID-19-like disease. Gotta cash in on the hot topics, you know!
- They dissected the dead rats and found hemorrhagic patches and silicate/glass-like structures in their lungs. These are not clearly evident in the photos, but OK…
- Silicate/glass-like structures? Surely, this means the phenomenon is similar to the phenomenon of serpentization in geology! (I’m wobbly on what serpentization is, but here’s a short definition.)
- Therefore, we must immediately delve deep into geological processes and oscillations in planetary electromagnetic fields. Ta da!
- We assume “Long-Wavelength Magnetic Anomalies Induces COVID-19 Via Magnetic Catalysis”, not that silly germ theory or zoonotic infection by a zoonotically-derived virus. I guess we know what causes COVID-19 now, and it isn’t a virus.
- “Nephrite-Jade Amulets Interacts With LWMAs (long-wavelength magnetic anomalies) and prevents disease in thoracic organs”. I guess we know what cures COVID-19 now.
- There was no test of the effect of LWMAs on the rats. They also didn’t make itty-bitty jade amulets for them.
That’s all remarkable bullshit presented in a kind of rabid stream-of-consciousness form, with the major conclusions neither tested nor even logically implied by the circumstances that triggered the “study”. It was not so much a “study” as some guy’s rat lab being devastated by a disease, so he retreats to his office to make a lengthy rationalization based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and half-assed geology. No experiments were done, yet he leaps to all these bizarre conclusions. Just look at the diagram above, most of which is irrelevant noise stitched together with unjustified premises!