Antivaccine activists and quacks often weaponize legitimate concerns about industry conflicts of interest in medicine into the “shill gambit,” in which they accuse critics and defenders of science-based medicine of being in the pay of big pharma. However, the rise of physician-influencers and, in particular, Subscription Substack show that not all conflicts of interest are from industry or even financial.
Over the last month, Orac has noticed that “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers are rediscovering old school “vaccines cause autism” pseudoscience in a huge way. Also, there’s transphobia. Lots of transphobia. WTF is going on?
Last month, a study showed that papers about COVID-19 that are retracted tend to be cited far more than average and continue to be heavily cited after retraction. Clearly, scientific publishing and the scientific community need to do better.
“Died Suddenly” is a movie and a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 vaccines are causing young people to drop dead but “they” are trying to suppress the evidence. I guess a new study showing no correlation between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death is just part of “Their” effort.
Tucker Carlson was fired on Monday. Antivaxxers are blaming big pharma because he had aired a segment attacking Pfizer and its COVID-19 vaccine.
