Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

How antimaskers co-opt techniques of scientific data analysis to generate COVID-19 propaganda

There’s a new paper out analyzing how antimask activists weaponize the tools of data visualization and scientific argumentation to produce convincing antimask propaganda. Antimaskers are claiming that it shows that they are more “scientific” than those supporting the consensus viewpoint with respect to COVID-19 and masks. What it really shows is that they are good at weaponizing the tools of data visualization and scientific arguments to come to the conclusions that they want to come to.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Bioethics Medicine

Why is Peter Doshi still an editor at The BMJ? (RFK Jr. and COVID-19 vaccine edition)

BMJ senior editor Peter Doshi has been casting doubt on vaccine safety and efficacy since 2009. Now he’s “just asking questions” about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in a BMJ article reprinted verbatim by antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Why does The BMJ still employ him?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Music Skepticism/critical thinking

About Eric Clapton’s adverse reaction to AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine

Last week Italian architect and film producer Robin Monotti Graziadei posted to his Telegram channel a report from Eric Clapton that he had had a bad reaction to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Can we tell what really happened? And why is Clapton saying he “should never have gone near the needle”?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

The latest antivax lie from Peter McCullough, Mike Adams, and RFK Jr.: “COVID-19 vaccines are killing people!!!!”

The latest antivaccine disinformation, spread by Peter McCullough, Mike Adams, and RFK Jr., consists of pointing to the large numbers of reports of death (and other adverse events) to the VAERS database. It’s an old antivax deception.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Blog housekeeping Blogging Music

A blog disaster, or: Never trust WordPress

There is no post today, because WordPress and its Gutenberg editor ate large swaths of it. Lesson learned. I had written about Eric Clapton’s reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine but don’t know if I’ll revisit and reconstruct the original post.