Girls with Dragon Tattoos
A story of ongoing learning, verification and truth telling.
As wise and brilliant script writers once alluded to: We don’t ever truly try to figure out what decisions we make in our lives because, we’ve already made them. We’re all just trying to figure out why we made these decisions ex post facto. True words from the dialogue of the movie The Matrix.
“Because you didn’t come here to make the choice. You’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.”
And speaking of movies, has anyone seen the movie ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’? I like this movie very much and have watched it many times. I think they chose the right people to portray the characters in the 2011 film. Rooney Mara plays the lead character Lisbeth: the genius ward of the state with the photographic memory who goes on a magic carpet ride with the other lead character, Mikael played by Daniel Craig, who makes a career mistake as the catalyst for the rest of the events to follow in the plot.
The story goes like this: Mikael loses his life savings (and reputation) due to a libel suit. He wrote a piece about the misgivings of a very rich business man named Wennerström and published it in his magazine called Millennium. But the source of the inside information given to him about Wennerström was not correct (he was set up), and he had not verified this source or inside information prior to publishing the piece in his magazine. This train of events leads to the beginning of an epic and life-changing journey for him and all of the other characters in the film. It turns out that he was correct about Wennerström’s corruption but the pathway to the truth was, with side roads.
My story of late
I am not a journalist. I like to write. I have written science articles. I am pretty innocent when it comes to humans - I don’t think with malevolence, for example. It’s not in my code. So the fact that I write Substack articles and publish daily is a big thing for me, and to me. I feel I have become somewhat of a science and data driven current events writer for a very high-end audience. I love doing it, but it comes with a great responsibility because I know I have many intelligent readers. I care very much about my readers: my audience. I care very much about scientific integrity. I care very much about consensus. I have rules about verification and authentication as well, but again, I am new to this. Verification/authentication of sources, it seems, should be a must in movie scripts, and real life. Or should they? Without these winding roads of non-verified moments, we end up, well, experiencing life. I mean, how boring would The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo be if Mikael hadn’t become a ‘libelist’? It was because he messed up that the all of these nodes of opportunity were met with vigor and innocence by all the characters.
Life happens in spite of us. Don’t make plans too far in advance, I would say.
Yesterday, I believe that I made my own ‘journalistic error’. Nothing big. It involved more of my own rules and abiding (or not), by them. Kind of like a personal ethical code of conduct. I have not become a libelist or anything. Haha! I wrote a Substack article and therein reposted some photos from an online article (there’s no way around me referencing the article in question) prior to having verified the validity of the photos. I knew the article was sensationalized as you will see simply from the title (“EXCLUSIVE: Shocking microscopy photos of blood clots extracted from those who “suddenly died” – crystalline structures, nanowires, chalky particles and fibrous structures”), which I had stated in my first ‘write’ (I loathe sensationalism), but I guess I was drawn in. I am not immune, it seems, to the sensational headlines! “They work every time.” Jello Biafra
Personally, I do not believe that there is a need for any of us to be sensational in our headlines: we have the truth. But I also understand that this is a part of the media circus that runs our lives.
So what happened was, I didn’t obey one of my seminal rules: if the title of an article contains certain ‘indicators’ or keywords there’s no need to read the article - the text would likely be as misleading as the title. I even wrote a Substack on this as a cautionary tale of sorts!
The title of the article had all of the indicators. The word ‘exclusive’ written in CAPITALS. The word ‘shocking’! The unfounded use of the words ‘nanowires’. I mean, I probably should have passed on it. By my own standards. By the way, there are nanotape structures potentially formed as a by-product of specific modified RNA-derived amyloidogenic peptides post translation (I wrote about this) with demonstrable amyloidogenic properties. This is founded in published work.1 2 3 4 But this is a very different concept to the idea of ‘nanowires’ as far as I understand the misconception by the photos in the article. Maybe I am wrong.
The photos listed in the article themselves were very strange. They showed increasing magnifications of what was claimed to be analyzed samples of the stringy, rubbery contents extracted from cadavers donated by an embalmer. There were some claims made in the text accompanying the article that I do not, and did not (at the time of the original write), stand behind, of course. But, nonetheless, I had not suspected that the photos might not have been verifiable, at that point. The funny part was that I did not need to include them in my article to bring the take home message… home. Where else would it be taken? Lol
Most of the text that accompanied the photos was more compelling than the photos themselves, and told the story of many different manifestations of these strange ‘clots’. But there were some weird claims as well including a mention of Gram staining which is a technique to stain gram negative bacteria. So this was another indicator.
Now, to be clear, I do not know one way or the other if the photos are authentic. But that is precisely why I did not feel comfortable reposting them in the end. Maybe my dedication to multiple source verification is too hardcore, but I have a little Dragon Tattoo on me too and I believe that multiple source verifications are the cornerstone of good journalism. It is severely lacking in just about all media (definitely all legacy media outlets) of late.
I have since rewritten the article and excluded the photos and the article reference. They weren’t necessary to bring home the take home message of the article. This is not a hit piece on that article, by the way. It’s just the story of my own journey through the winding turns of life. If not for that article, I would not have had this journey.
One last point, I fully understand that anonymity is required in some cases where medical doctors and pathologists do not want to jeopardize their jobs. …I will revisit this.
I hope this was an enjoyable read. I feel it’s really important to not only share the science and data with y’all, but the processes in the background. The algorithms, if you will. And the humanity. And, as we all know, these processes are never a straight or direct line to the endpoint and involve an amazing and complex winding road of experiences along the way. And yes, I am here to understand why I made the choice to post those photos in the original write. I think I do now. It was for the journey and for the revelations therein along the way. Not just for myself but for my readers. And who knows where this is going to lead…
Who knows… Stay tuned!
Idrees D, Kumar V. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interactions with amyloidogenic proteins: Potential clues to neurodegeneration. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2021 May 21;554:94-98. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2021.03.100. Epub 2021 Mar 24. PMID: 33789211; PMCID: PMC7988450.
Grobbelaar LM, Venter C, Vlok M, Ngoepe M, Laubscher GJ, Lourens PJ, Steenkamp J, Kell DB, Pretorius E. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 induces fibrin(ogen) resistant to fibrinolysis: implications for microclot formation in COVID-19. Biosci Rep. 2021 Aug 27;41(8):BSR20210611. doi: 10.1042/BSR20210611. PMID: 34328172; PMCID: PMC8380922.
Nyström S, Hammarström P. Amyloidogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein. J Am Chem Soc. 2022 May 25;144(20):8945-8950. doi: 10.1021/jacs.2c03925. Epub 2022 May 17. PMID: 35579205; PMCID: PMC9136918.
Tetz G, Tetz V. Prion-like Domains in Spike Protein of SARS-CoV-2 Differ across Its Variants and Enable Changes in Affinity to ACE2. Microorganisms. 2022 Jan 25;10(2):280. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms10020280. PMID: 35208734; PMCID: PMC8878784.
1. THAT "Girl with the Dragon Tattoos" is very good indeed :)!
2. You have the integrity to admit when you are wrong (and quite fast)... I wish CDC did the same, yet on their site it still appears that the pathogenic spike protein is a "harmless piece"... I suppose that's the difference between science and religion :P...
3. Thank you for your honesty :-)...
Amyloidosis is a very hot topic now, with many substackers addressing it. Natural News did their usual thing and sensationalized the topic, although they never used the "A" word, and went on to advertise a segment on InfoWars. At this juncture, all of us are gathering/evaluating information. I appreciate your rewrite of the original article, your thoughts in this article, and very much look forward to the first-hand pathology results from Dr. Ryan Cole. Rock on!