A Rogues Gallery Of People Who Got It Wrong

It's incredible how often prominent people make predictions or statements that don't pan out. Rarely do they have to answer for their ii-advised pronouncements.

It's okay to make flippant end-of-year predictions if you're a radio host or podcaster. However, statements, especially when aligned with real-world policy, can often have serious ramifications. Another consideration is that statements can frighten children, who usually accept them as factual.

Paul Ehrlich

Professor Paul Ehrlich was a Stanford ecologist whose book The Population Bomb created quite a stir in 1968. Ehrlich warned that hundreds of millions would die from starvation because the planet could not sustain food production for 3.5 billion people at the time. So, of course, one of his solutions was population control.

Well, here we are 56 years later, and there is plenty of food. In certain countries, the problem is food distribution and government corruption, as opposed to the inability to produce enough food.

Ehrlich's other foremost solution was the redistribution of wealth. We have never heard that before, have we? Ehrlich still believes he was correct; he was just off by 50 years. One thing he should have counted was technology making food growth more efficient, and he didn't envisage the natural tendency of fertility rates to drop as people have been lifted out of poverty.

I suppose Ehrlich made a lot of money along the way while he scared many people.

Barack Obama

In 2015, Obama was obsessed with securing a deal to limit Iran's nuclear program and spearheaded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This would limit Iran's ability to break out to being a nuclear power for 10 years. In exchange, sanctions would be lifted against Iran, and money was released to this oppressive regime; plenty of money, to the tune of $150 billion. Why would you make a deal with those who are committed to wiping Israel off the map and then targeting America?

Obama claimed this would bring Iran into the community of nations. Right, Iran played Obama and Biden for fools. From early on, Iran restricted inspectors at some of its nuclear sites. Iran is such an evil regime and can't be trusted, but in Obama's Lala land, there is no problem.

By providing Iran with billions of dollars of cash, the agreement helped to fund Iran's military and proxy terrorist groups, which have taken thousands of lives. It's the main reason the October 7 terrorist group Hamas and the other bad actors could carry out what they did. Whether intentionally or through naievete, Obama was wrong.

Most experts believe Iran is either weeks or a few months from being able to deliver a nuclear weapon. They have even bragged about the level of Iranian enrichment approaching weapons-grade. Well done, Obama.

George Bush

One of George Bush's central claims to fame was the Iraq War. In 2003, the U.S. invaded on the pretext that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Eight years later and with more than 4500 dead, the U.S. pulled out of Iraq, leaving in its midst sectarian violence and chaos.

George Bush's claim is that he received intelligence about the weapons of mass destruction was false. There were never any found.

Al Gore

Gore is the father of the global warming/climate change hysteria. His film, An Inconvenient Truth, described a dismal future if we didn't stop furning fossil fuels. He claimed there was a climate emergency and, in 2009, asserted that there was a 75% chance that the north pole's ice cap would be completely melted. He also claimed that the oceans would boil.

All this hyperbole by Gore did was frighten children, some of who still see no future because of 'climate change'. Of course, Gore made himself a fortune and has never had to answer to his irrational rantings and predictions.

The Geophysical Dynamics Laboratory stated in November 2024, "It is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability"

Donald Trump

Trump hails the COVID-19 vaccine as 'one of the greatest achievements of mankind' and rejects vaccine skepticism in new interview

A year after the rollout in December 2021, Concerning the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson Trump stated, "All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years,"

"No, the vaccine worked. But some people aren't taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take their vaccine."

In 2023, he stated the following, as reported in Newsweek:

"I was able to get something approved that, you know, that has proven to have saved a lot of lives," Trump said, ignoring Brody's request to weigh in on the anti-vaccine narrative. "Some people say that I saved 100 million lives worldwide."

Trump was and is wrong. He never addressed the many side effects and deaths. Is his ego so fragile that he can't admit many people have suffered from the shots?

Neville Chamberlain

Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister in late 1938. Hitler had marched into Austria and threatened Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain, Hitler, and two other leaders met in Munich. It was decided that Czechoslovakia would give up its western, German-majority province of Sudetenland. Chamberlain came back triumphant, thinking war with Germany had been avoided. Chamberlain's statement is a reminder of what it's like when you deal with tyrants.

"My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."

In March 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and the war was on. Chamberlain was delusional, thinking he could trust Hitler. He was replaced by Churchill, and thankfully, with the help of America, Canada, Australia and Russia, Hitler was eventually defeated.

Claudius Ptolemy

Ptolemy was an Egyptian mathematician and astronomer. He developed the geocentric principle of the universe, meaning that the earth was the centre of the universe. This was established in science at the time and sanctioned by the church. The problem was that it wasn't true.

It took 1500 years before Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, deduced that the sun was at the centre of the universe. This was called the Heliocentric Principle. Galileo also confirmed this principle with his observations but was severely reprimanded by the church. Old dogmas die hard.

These examples, and there are many more, tell us that throughout history, certain facts accepted as truths have turned out to be false. We certainly saw so much of this in the age of COVID-19. So it's important to look at anything we're told using critical thinking skills, and also whenever someone says we 'must' do something, we need to question. Too much dogma has clouded the truth.

Too many accept what they believe to be accurate, wanting to believe authority figures, yet they have been misled. Sometimes, authority figures really mean authoritarian.