Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

Peter Doshi vs. COVID-19 vaccines, the latest round

BMJ Senior Editor Peter Doshi published a preprint misleadingly “reanalyzing” phase 3 clinical trials to falsely conclude that mRNA vaccines to cause more harm than good. I sense…p-hacking. That, and comparing apples to oranges.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Pseudoscience

An antivaccine slasher myth originated in The BMJ

Recently, a claim that Pfizer’s own documents demonstrate that the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine was only 12% went viral. This is a slasher stat, so-named because like the killers in slasher movie series, even when it appears to be dead it always reappears to kill again. This particular myth originated in The BMJ in 2021.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Biology Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Marc Girardot: A “COVID myth buster” who doesn’t know chemistry

Marc Girardot is a tech guy turned COVID-19 contrarian. His analogy to falsely “explain” why mRNA vaccines are deadly shows an astounding lack of understanding of basic chemistry.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

The BMJ editors strike back against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook

The BMJ’s outgoing editor Fiona Godlee and incoming editor wrote open letter to Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s labeling Paul Thacker’s conspiracy-filled Pfizer story as lacking context. It did not go well. Actually, it was downright embarrassing.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Antivaxxers vs. FDA’s VRBPAC and CDC’s ACIP.

The FDA’s VRBPAC and the CDC’s ACIP are the two committees that approve vaccines in the US and issue recommendations regarding who should receive which vaccine and when. Predictably, after the recent recommendation that children 5-11 receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is portraying committee members as thralls of big pharma.