Brainwashed? How Might You Know?

What if being brainwashed doesn't feel like being brainwashed at all? What if the person you've dismissed as “unscientific” is seeing something you haven't considered—and what happens when you are the one who is out of step?

People who have been conditioned to accept a particular narrative rarely recognise that they have been conditioned. They believe they are thinking independently, following “the science”, trusting experts and accepting what they have been told. Conditioning becomes apparent when they repeatedly encounter evidence, experiences or questions that don’t fit the “narrative”. Cognitive dissonance kicks in: the mind tries to explain away, dismiss or reject the challenges it already believes. When contradictions accumulate, eventually one starts to question the narrative.

And behavioural conditioning is apparent. During 2020, behavioural science was incorporated into the UK’s COVID response. SPI-B advised SAGE on behavioural and social interventions, including communication, adherence and ways of encouraging particular behaviours. Government papers discussed behavioural interventions and strategies for sustaining adherence. Anything contrary was summarily censored and silenced to ensure only one side - the preferred side - was shown.

We saw repeated slogans and messaging, appeals to authority and collective responsibility, social pressure, fear-based communication and powerful social norms. Whether individual measures were justified is written about elsewhere (such as masking and being six feet apart). Behavioural influence was consciously considered and applied. Repetition, authority, conformity, fear and cognitive dissonance influences human behaviour, which means we can then recognise how a population can become psychologically invested in a particular narrative.

This is where the ideas of people such as Jason Christoff, David Charalambous of Reaching People and Mattias Desmet provide another lens through which to view what happened. Their work explores conditioning, cognitive dissonance, perception, influence, conformity and what can happen psychologically when people become immersed in a powerful collective narrative. These ideas provide useful information regarding people believing, defending and sometimes aggressively protect a particular worldview at the cost of friendship, relationships and more.

Do you have a friend you believe is scientifically out of step? Do you criticise them, dismiss their views, avoid certain subjects or simply keep quiet to keep the peace? Have they “fallen down a rabbit hole” and therefore not worth listening to?

What if that person feels deeply hurt by your dismissal? What if they have spent considerable time researching something you haven’t examined and are seeing a facet you haven’t considered?

Equally, do you have a friend who simply sticks rigidly to the mainstream narrative without questioning it—and where even raising an alternative perspective is met with ridicule, derision or worse? Have you learned that certain conversations are simply off-limits because challenging the accepted view threatens the friendship?

The person you regard as being in the minority might be wrong. The individual following the mainstream narrative might be wrong. But perhaps one might ask questions that are necessary to enable wider discussion. Scientific and cultural consensus shifts. What happens when the tipping point arrives—and you are the one who is suddenly out of step?

Consider vaccines - another supposedly controversial topic. We are presented with a simple narrative: vaccines eradicated disease, vaccines are safe and effective, and questioning them means rejecting science. Yet there are many other facets worth examining: absolute versus relative risk reduction, adverse reactions, ingredients, trial methodology, historical mortality, changing disease patterns, regulatory decisions, pharmaceutical profits and financial conflicts of interest. www.howbadismybatch.com wasn’t invented out of thin air.

Exploring those questions means recognising that a complex scientific and medical story can be considerably more nuanced than the version presented to the public.

The same principle applies to infectious disease. The conventional germ model is one way of understanding disease, while terrain theory explores the condition of the host and biological environment in which disease occurs. There are questions surrounding “viral isolation”, how causation is established and how different forms of evidence should be interpreted. Science again as a form of enquiry, not rigidity of thought.

The point is to recognise different scientific perspectives are worth examining, and questioning the prevailing model doesn’t make someone stupid or anti-science.

And the principle can extend much further. Even something as apparently settled as globe Earth versus flat Earth can be approached as an exercise in intellectual openness. There are multiple books and extensive arguments examining both perspectives, despite the mainstream consensus regarding the shape of the Earth being regarded as settled. In each case we are all relying on external factors as few of us have the equipment to confirm or deny what is held as a normative view.

Thus being willing to investigate an alternative is different from accepting it or denying it. Examine observations, experiments, historical claims and assumptions presented by different perspectives and decide what we find convincing.

Opening your mind means being willing to look & listen.

Science is not a static list of unquestionable facts. It is an evolving process of enquiry. Evidence has limitations. Studies contain assumptions. Methodologies can be challenged. Interpretations change. Hypotheses are revised. What appears certain at one point can become questionable as new evidence emerges.

There are also financial and institutional interests. Money influences every area of modern life, including science, medicine, pharmaceuticals, food, energy, technology and the media. That means legitimately questioning who funds the research, who benefits from the conclusion and which questions receive investment.

A nuanced story can be presented as though there is only one way to see it which is where conditioning is powerful. Once someone has emotionally invested in a normative explanation, contradictory information may feel personal rather than an invitation to reconsider. The instinct becomes defending the position rather than investigating the evidence.

Someone can be intelligent, educated and thoughtful and still reach a conclusion different from ours. They may have considered evidence we haven’t. They may have spotted a limitation in an argument that we overlooked. A healthy response to someone whose views seem counter narrative is not ridicule, contempt or immediate dismissal, but:

“Tell me why you think that. What have you found that I haven’t seen?”

You might still disagree. But at least you have kindly and willingly engaged with the idea rather than the label attached to the person. The danger is becoming so certain that you are right that you lose the ability to recognise when you might be wrong.

What beliefs have I inherited rather than investigated? Which subjects have I been taught are “settled” and therefore not worth questioning? Have I dismissed someone because of their conclusion without examining their reasoning?

Have I allowed fear of ridicule or social rejection to determine what I am prepared to consider?

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all:

Opening your mind means being willing to look beyond the version of reality you were originally given. It means exploring different perspectives, questioning established assumptions and considering evidence and possibilities that may previously have been overlooked.

Most people who now think differently were once believers in the mainstream narrative and prevailing science. They trusted “experts” and regarded some of the people questioning them as misinformed or misguided. So what happened? What did they encounter that made them stop and look again? Was it a personal experience? A contradiction they couldn't explain? A piece of research? A conversation with someone they had previously dismissed? Data contradicting what was in the mainstream? Or an accumulation of too many things that no longer seemed to fit?

You deserve the freedom to investigate what you believe. Don’t take my word for it. Read, question, compare—and make up your own mind.

Behavioural psychology, conditioning and COVID-19

• UK Government / SPI-B (2020) — The Role of Behavioural Science in the Coronavirus Outbreak. This is particularly important because it is a primary government document demonstrating that behavioural science was explicitly being considered in the COVID response. UK Government — SPI-B: The role of behavioural science in the coronavirus outbreak

• Jason Christoff — writings and lectures concerning psychological conditioning, repetition, social influence and behavioural manipulation.

• David Charalambous — Reaching People — work exploring cognitive dissonance, perception, influence and how people respond when information challenges an established worldview. Reaching People

• Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism — explores what Desmet calls “mass formation”, including the role of anxiety, isolation, collective narratives and intolerance of dissent. His arguments should themselves be read critically and examined alongside other perspectives. Mattias Desmet — The Psychology of Totalitarianism

Vaccines, medical history and competing interpretations

• Zoey O’Toole & Mary Holland, Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth — a critical examination of vaccine safety research, regulatory processes and evidence.

• Suzanne Humphries & Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History — examines historical mortality statistics, sanitation, nutrition and the conventional interpretation of vaccination and disease decline.

• Leon Canerot, The Unfortunate Truth About Vaccines: Exposing the Vaccine Orthodoxy — a critical examination of vaccine policy and the assumptions underlying vaccine orthodoxy.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Brian Hooker, Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak — presents a critical comparison of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

• Eleanor McBean, The Poisoned Needle: Suppressed Facts About Vaccinations — an historical critique of vaccination.

• Peter McCullough, Vaccines: Mythology, Ideology, and Reality — examines vaccine policy, safety and the interpretation of evidence.

Germ theory, terrain and viral causation

• Robert Koch’s postulates — the historical framework for establishing causal relationships between microorganisms and disease. Importantly, the scientific literature itself documents the difficulties of applying the original postulates to viruses and the subsequent modifications made for virology.

• Prescott et al., Amending Koch’s postulates for viral disease — discusses the fundamental difference between bacterial culture and viral propagation in living cells, including the limitations and changes involved in applying “pure culture” to viruses.

• Hosainzadegan et al., The necessity to revise Koch’s postulates — reviews limitations of the original postulates, including their application to viruses and complex host–microbe relationships.

• Dr Sam Bailey — presents a critical perspective on viral isolation, germ theory and the interpretation of infectious-disease evidence. Her arguments provide an example of the alternative perspective discussed in the article and should be examined alongside the mainstream virological literature.