Essays in Idleness

In my poignant search for uncontaminated news, I see that the Springer scientific publishing group (in Germany, across Europe, America, and everywhere) made 2,923 retractions last year. Perhaps they will exceed that number this year — it is a big company — but does that mean the retractions are significant? That depends which retraction we are discussing, or which of innumerable other items were censored or amended to placate or mollify the political authorities in Red China, or all the other countries in which Springer publications circulate. This does not amount to a modest degree of lying.

My own outrage is aimed more generally at the North American press and media, and is not restricted to their science stories. But everywhere that I have practised journalism, in the last half-century or so, I have noticed that “inaccuracies” are increasing. In the present century I have come to distrust every fact that is cited, in all the current literatures, and to expect instead ideological bias. This, too, is growing, everywhere, and becomes more boring as “leftishness” prevails, apparently universally; for even the many dimensions of this lying are increasing.

It is often unintentional, because our sources are corrupted, though it is rarely entirely innocent. Yet it is easily understood, at least in English, by those who have heard Samuel Johnson. He memorably observed, in answer to the question asked also in his day, that, “The first Whig was the devil.” He was referring to the subscribers of the Whig party, and the other chic and fashionable forces, that wish to disrupt the peace of the world.

We cannot legislate against this. Indeed, by trying to legislate we invariably make the problem worse. For it is not a physical problem, except in its ramifications. It can only be remedied piecemeal, by unambiguously moral acts, which will be frequently punished. Only the man (or hysterical woman, occasionally) who is willing to be punished can make a stand against this. It is the way of the world.