This week, eminent young rising star oncologist Dr. Vinay Prasad once again expressed his disdain for skeptics. To borrow Dr. Prasad’s own metaphor, Orac shows how the esteemed oncologist’s renewed attack on medical skeptics is like dunking on a 7′ hoop. Unfortunately, it needs to be done, and Orac does it, refuting a truly ignorant and misguided attack.
Of all the strange things that have happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of a frozen meat company as a source of critical thinking and skepticism regarding COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation is one of the strangest. How did Steak-umm become a champion of critical thinking about the pandemic?
Conspiracy theories are at the heart of nearly all medical pseudoscience, be it antivaccine beliefs or quackery. COVID-19 has been a magnet for conspiracy theories.
Thanks to social media, fake news, conspiracy theories, and health scams spread faster and farther than ever. The world is in need of critical thinking skills now more than ever. Fortunately, there is hope. Critical thinking can be taught, but teaching these skills works best if you start young.
Quacks love to invoke experts who made predictions that turned out to be wrong or point to Galileo or Semmelweis as examples of scientists whose findings were rejected by the scientific or medical establishment of the time, as though poor prediction or rejection by the establishment means there must be something to their science. Guess what? As Michael Shermer put it, heresy does not equal correctness.
