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Computers and social media Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad team up to lecture social media about “obsessive criticism”

Formerly respectable academics John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad published a complaint about “obsessive criticism” on social media. Hilarity ensued, and many irony meters were reduced to sparking, smoking, sputtering ruin.

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Antivaccine nonsense History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics World War II

COVID-19 vaccines and the Nuremberg Code, revisited

Antivaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates (especially COVID-19 vaccine mandates) violate the Nuremberg Code and call for Nuremberg-style tribunals to hold public health and vaccine advocates “accountable”. As usual, they have no idea what they are talking about. This is also not a new antivax narrative, although what is unprecedented is that what was once fringe even among antivaxxers is now mainstream.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Cancer Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

“Naturopathic oncologist” Colleen Huber goes full COVID-19 quack

Colleen Huber has gone full COVID-19 quack, because of course she has. She’s a “naturopathic oncologist,” and it was always to be expected.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

What makes a COVID-19 “contrarian” doctor—or any quack?

In 2008, I tried to answer the question: How do doctors become contrarians, quacks, and antivaxxers? A Twitter encounter suggested to me not just answers but that an update to that post is massively overdue.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff want to hold “lockdowners” accountable

Great Barrington Declaration author Dr. Jay Bhattacharya claimed that the pandemic was over and “regular people” will hold “them” accountable, while coauthor Martin Kulldorff Tweeted an article with an image of a guillotine. Do they know that calls for “justice” like this echo an old and very dark antivax fantasy?