<![CDATA[followthescience.nl - On the News]]>Fri, 22 Sep 2023 10:02:27 +0200Weebly<![CDATA[A worldwide psychic prison -  (English subtitled)]]>Mon, 02 Jan 2023 14:31:48 GMThttp://followthescience.nl/on-the-news/a-worldwide-psychic-prison​In his  world famous management book, Images of Organization, Morgan, describes that the more instructions a manager gives to his employees, the more dependent they will eventually become on these instructions. The new normal seems to be outlined in this powerful sentence. It seems that a psychic prison is being built for the non-critical masses, who now live as if in a closed psychiatric facility.  Many people prefer not to see it, ignoring it is easier than standing up for injustice. Prof. Michaéla Schippers explains.
this video was previously published through Café Weltschmerz in Dutch called 'Een wereldwijde psychische gevangenis Michaéla Schippers en Ramon Bril' - https://youtu.be/Fv4w7XAWETw
(subtitled / reposted on 23/8/22, original publication 66.100 views 19 jul. 2020)
]]><![CDATA[Deadly mass hysteria goes wrong by the book (English Subtitled)]]>Mon, 02 Jan 2023 14:28:06 GMThttp://followthescience.nl/on-the-news/deadly-mass-hysteria-goes-wrong-by-the-book-english-subtitledLife-threatening mass hysteria by our governments makes the measures many times more deadly than the virus itself. Professor Michaéla Schippers, professor of Behavior and Performance Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam,  recognizes the mass formation surrounding the  corona virus. She specializes in errors in decision-making from a psychological perspective. Groupthink is at the wheel. A dangerous mix of prejudice, fear and not wanting to admit to being wrong. It seems to go wrong by the book, if someone wanted to do it intentionally, they couldn't have done it better.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.950965/full  
​this video was previously published through Café Weltschmerz in Dutch called 'Levensgevaarlijke massahysterie gaat fout volgens het boekje Michaéla Schippers en Ramon Bril - https://youtu.be/e3rCPv-IXHE
(now subtitled / reposted on 23/8/22, original publication 137.407 views 6 jun. 2020)
]]><![CDATA[Looking Back - Potkaars 2022 newsletter]]>Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:02:30 GMThttp://followthescience.nl/on-the-news/looking-back-potkaars-2022-newsletterPicture
This Christmas I wrote four newsletters in Dutch about my various work in 2022. This is the one about Follow the Science, translated into English. Originally posted in Dutch here. https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=8d6119c39b97b89dfef68abc7&id=79c2dc9ad7
The Dutch written monthly Potkaars newsletters are here: https://potkaars.nl/nieuwsbrief
Rico Brouwer, december 26 2022
 January 2020, even before there was a PCR test or outbreak management team, I invited the Dutch RIVM to do an interview for café Weltschmerz about pandemic response. They didn't accept. Christmas Eve 2020, my Potkaars channel was deleted from YouTube because I had made interviews with doctors Colleen Huber about the harmful effects of mouth masks, Rob Elens about the positive effects of HCQ and with lawyer Reiner Fuellmich about criminal investigations into abuses in the corona time. The conversation with Fuellmich was then my best viewed Potkaars interview with a quarter of a million viewers. In 2021 such censorship continued and in all the court cases I filmed one always saw the same thing; no substantive debate about usefulness, necessity and risks between proponents and opponents of such policies. The government shielded it with science.

How Follow the Science started

At the end of 2021 I interviewed professor of behavioral science Michaéla Schippers about her projects with ' the great citizens movement ' and that is how we conceived the plan to start ' Follow the Science '; conversations with scientists who take a critical look at the situation that has arisen and propose a better way forward from their field of expertise. Scientists themselves are also under censorship, which made starting her own channel the logical choice. FollowtheScience.NL has been Michaéla Schippers' podcast since June, I do the technology part of things and talk to Michaéla about psychological processes that you see happening around you. She conducts interviews with fellow scientists. The first interview we made was with Mattias Desmet on mass formation and group think.

The second interview was with Jordan Peterson, which now stands at a quarter of a million viewers . Pretty good for a channel that's only been around for a few months! With Potkaars it took me two years before reaching such figures. The conversation with Peterson was about the epidemic of bad decisions we've fallen into and from which, like from a downward spiral, we can't seem to escape. Peterson was on tour and also presented at the RAI in Amsterdam on two evenings. We were invited to dinner and spoke to him shortly before the show in the dressing rooms of the RAI.

In the meantime, with another project that translates to “probably true”, I had invited Peter Burger to speak in an interview about how his retraction paper on the PCR test had progressed. Together with Borger I decided to organize a lecture around his book 'back to the origin' about what is rattling about the evolution theory. He then suggested to bring researcher and co-author Rogier Louwen along. Rogier had just done an academic study into the PCR test and was in the final phase of that. The interview with Borger and his presentation can be viewed here. Partly because of that interview, he was later summarily dismissed by the institute for which he conducted the research; Erasmus MC. To date I still haven't published the part with Louwen, at his request.

In Follow the Science I spoke with Michaéla about Gaslighting, Agnatology, Cognitive Dissonance, the death spiral, prisoners' dilemma and other (as yet unpublished) themes. In a simple, fun way, we explain in short conversations how such psychological processes work and what you can do about them. The conversations are subtitled in Dutch.

What's in a name?

The title 'Follow the Science' has been chosen as a pun. You can't follow 'science' after all. The name was chosen in reference to the term 'follow the money': follow the flow of money and you will discover people's motivation. What you can follow are scientific agreements such as how you conduct research, that your results must be accessible and that you seek out dialogue about your work instead of avoiding it. Rogier Louwen, who presented to me, was completely in line with the subsidy rules of the European Union. Matter of fact it is encouraged to do interviews like in Potkaars. When an institute then does everything it can to prevent publication, including firing the researcher, then that is the writing on the wall. Louwen made us see that censorship for what it was, but he paid for it with his job. He's a whistleblower.

With Follow the Science we follow the scientists themselves. Do they engage in the conversation, or do they walk away from it? This is how the idea of the introductory video and the logo was born; I run after Schippers over a bridge to see if I can ask something. Which scientists will (or will not) discuss their work with us? The church-like music you hear is called 'Gaudeamus igitur'. Science has taken on an almost religious status in recent years, but it should be the opposite of faith, right?

The lack of scientific freedom

ichaéla conceived the plan to visit a conference about the lack of scientific freedom and to make a video report of it for Follow the Science. No sooner said than done! We were in Copenhagen on October 24 and 25, but turned out to have put our hands in a kind of wasp's nest! You can see what we experienced there in the first video reports that we made, which are now largely subtitled . I wrote down what happened to me as a filmmaker there, you can read that here. In short; the lack of scientific freedom that was talked about in super strong sessions by scientists from all over the world landed as a kind of censorship with threats made against us if we even got it into our heads to publish it. Lack of scientific freedom indeed!

In an attempt to damage her, the organizer Peter Gotzsche wrote to Erasmus, the institute to which Michaéla is affiliated: 'URGENT: Professor Michaéla Schippers intends to break copyright and privacy laws and to abuse her professional affiliation to promote the anti-vaxxer message that the COVID -19 vaccines are useless, based on a scientifically dishonest, retracted study' and later in that letter:'We, the organizers of the event, run a huge risk that we will also be seen as being anti-vaxxers, “guilt by association,” because of Schippers horrible film, which none of us or our invited speakers are. We are high-profile scientists and consumer advocates who acknowledge that vaccines have saved millions of lives, and still do.'

Interesting that not much later Gotzsche himself published a study on vaccine damage as an author with Maryanne Demasi, his co-host at the event. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.06.22283145v1 and that Kim Witczak, who tried to retract the interview she did with us because of our supposedly anti-vax stance, is herself repeatedly critical of vaccines, discussing their harm. Her interview in Follow the science was not about vaccines, but about her presentation about her battle with the pharmaceutical industry. This is her twitter profile, judge for yourself.

The threats to us came from a Danish filmmaker who has been working with Gotzsche for some time, at least according to Gotzsche in his book (quote). Interesting, since that filmmaker appears to have been credited solely as a producer on a 2019 production and appears to have produced nothing else. So what's going on here? Have you - apart from our report - seen anything back from that event? Me neither.

Meanwhile in Holland

Rogier had returned to Potkaars to tell what had happened to him in the instant dismissal by his employer, partly because he had taken it into his head to talk to me as a journalist about his research. You can see what he said about it here (Dutch spoken).

The first hearing in the lawsuit challenging the dismissal was on November 23. I asked to film it, the judge wouldn't allow it. I was there in public, this is my written report.The verdict was supposed to be yesterday, but apparently it hasn't yet been sent.

Follow the Science and interviews such as with Peter Borger and Rogier Louwen last year are not my attempt at investigative journalism, rather they’re my search for positive constructive developments. Just like with Potkaars actually. But what do you do if you turn out to have opened a cesspool along the way? I put transparency on it. Michaéla is currently home sick, as she’s written in the Follow the Science telegram channel, but I am convinced that we will continue with it in 2023. On to something! A crowdfunding campaign has been set up here, if you want to support the initiative with a donation: https://steunactie.nl/actie/steun-follow-the-science/-13248

Potkaars

Potkaars is journalism in podcasts looking for hope. What started as a report on a demonstration by a million people in Barcelona in 2018 has now become hundreds of interviews, dozens of court case reports and even theatre performances . Yet sometimes it feels like nothing we do is having any effect. But that's not true. Everything you do makes all the difference to doing nothing. This is what I've done with Potkaars: interviews, science, theatre, lawsuits and demonstrations. If you thought it was fun, useful, or important what I made, let me know and subscribe to or share this newsletter and share the website to people around you. If you would help then let us hear from you, let’s work together next year. Wishing you a safe, loving 2023 in which more than ever, will we all have to be our own journalist? You are not alone, we are all together.
]]><![CDATA[Discriminatie en Gelijke Behandeling]]>Tue, 20 Sep 2022 12:32:59 GMThttp://followthescience.nl/on-the-news/discriminatie-en-gelijke-behandelingEnglish subtitles to this Dutch spoken interview are in the process of being created and will be added to this video once ready.

​Mensen en media betichten elkaar soms van discriminatie en daar ontstaat bij tijd en wijle veel ophef over. Naar aanleiding van commotie die is ontstaan over een recente uitzending van omroep Ongehoord Nederland over racisme, vertelt prof. of Behavioral science Michaéla Schippers aan Journalist Rico Brouwer waar die neiging tot het maken van onderscheid op uiterlijkheden vandaan komt, hoe je er ook tegen aan kunt kijken en wat je er aan kunt doen. 

Discriminatie is letterlijk “het maken van onderscheid”. Onderscheid maken op basis van bepaalde kenmerken, is iets wat mensen soms van nature doen. Zo maken we bijvoorbeeld ook vaak onderscheid op grond van prestaties. We vinden het leuk om te zien wie er op de Olympische Spelen gaat winnen en de winnaar geven we aandacht en een prijs, terwijl er voor verliezers weinig tot geen aandacht is. Andere, meer willekeurige vormen van discriminatie, zoals het onderscheid maken op grond van ras, geslacht en religie zijn bij wet verboden; artikel één van zowel de grondwet als van het burgerlijk wetboek in Nederland gaan over het recht op gelijke behandeling en het verbod op discriminatie.
Het minimale groepsparadigma in de sociale psychologie is een methode om te onderzoeken wat de minimale voorwaarden zijn om discriminatie te laten ontstaan. De neiging om de eigen groep (“ingroup”) te bevoordelen ten opzichte van de andere groep (“outgroup”) blijkt zelfs al te ontstaan als op willekeurige gronden onderscheid wordt gemaakt. Zo zal het opplakken van rode en blauwe stickers in een experiment mensen al automatische het gevoel geven dat ze tot verschillende groepen behoren. Bij het verdelen van schaarse middelen, of iets waarvan mensen denken dat het schaars is, zullen mensen geneigd zijn de eigen groep te bevoordelen. In deze video vertelt prof. Schippers wat discriminatie is, hoe je het kunt herkennen in het dagelijks leven en hoe je met de ongewenste vormen van discriminatie om kunt gaan.

Omroep Ombusman
"In de afgelopen drie dagen hebben zich meer dan 1750 mensen tot de ombudsman gewend met opmerkingen en klachten over de inhoud van een uitzending van Ongehoord Nederland van 15 september 2022. De klachten concentreren zich voornamelijk rond een item met daarin beelden van geweld van zwarte mensen tegen witte mensen. De inhoud van dat item en het gesprek dat hierover met een studiogast werd gevoerd, worden door klagers discriminerend, opruiend, haat zaaiend en racistisch genoemd. Ook zijn er klachten over het verspreiden van onjuiste informatie en de presentatoren zouden zich onvoldoende journalistiek opstellen in dit en andere onderdelen van het programma." (Omroep Ombudsman: Racisme-klachten over ON: wat gebeurt er nu )

Ongehoord Nederland
"Met verbazing verneemt het bestuur van omroep Ongehoord Nederland de reactie van de NPO op de uitzending van het opinie-programma Ongehoord Nieuws van 15 september 2022. Volgens de NPO zouden daarbij ‘de grenzen van racistische of discriminerende uitlatingen’ zijn bereikt. Volgens het bestuur van ON! is daarvan geen enkele sprake en is dat ook nooit de bedoeling geweest.
Onder de vraagstelling: ‘Racisme, wie doen het?’ en ‘Wie is een racist?’ is aandacht besteed aan de ruzie en de beschuldigingen van racisme bij de partij BIJ1. Deze situatie werd door schrijfster Shohreh Feshtali van Iraanse afkomst en prof. dr. Paul Cliteur, emeritus hoogleraar Encyclopedie van de rechtswetenschap, geduid. Daarbij heeft Ongehoord Nederland niemand willen beledigen. De kernboodschap van het item was juist de oproep van studiogast Paul Cliteur dat (alle) mensen elkaar meer als mensen zouden moeten gaan zien." (Voorzitter Ongehoord Nederland: Verklaring omroep Ongehoord Nederland naar aanleiding van uitzending 15 september 2022  )

NPO
"Naar aanleiding van een item over racisme in de uitzending van Ongehoord Nieuws van Ongehoord Nederland donderdag 15 september, laat Frederieke Leeflang, voorzitter van de raad van bestuur van NPO, weten dat hiermee de grens van de redactionele vrijheid is bereikt." (Reactie NPO op uitzending Ongehoord Nieuws 15 september  )

Uitzending gemist: https://www.npostart.nl/ongehoord-nieuws/15-09-2022/VPWON_1339274
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