Category: Internet & social media

Ivermectin: The acupuncture of COVID-19 treatments
As high-quality evidence increasingly and resoundingly shows that ivermectin does not work against COVID-19, advocates are doing what acupuncture advocates do: Turning to lower quality "positive" studies to claim incorrectly that their favorite ineffective treatment actually does "work".

They Have Names
Reality is not "fear-based messaging", and fewer children will die moving forward if their parents know a bit more about what the virus can do and how the vaccine can keep children safe.

FTC targets physicians’ COVID claims with cease-and-desist letters
The FTC recently announced it had issued 20 more cease-and-desist demands to physicians and others claiming their products and services prevent or treat COVID-19 without sufficient scientific backing. Unfortunately, this has not stopped many of the targets from making other bogus health claims.

Mercola and Kennedy sue Sen. Elizabeth Warren for combating their COVID misinformation
Quack tycoon Joseph Mercola and anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming she violated their First Amendment rights when she complained that Amazon was peddling COVID misinformation, citing Mercola’s recent misinformation-filled book on COVID as an example.

John Ioannidis and the Carl Sagan effect in science communication about COVID-19
We have been critical about John Ioannidis over a number of his statements about the COVID-19 pandemic. Now he's done it again, producing a poor-quality paper whose unwritten assumptions suggest that the Carl Sagan effect, in which scientists are penalized professionally by their peers for becoming popular science communicators, still holds considerable sway in science and medicine.

Echoes of measles outbreaks in 2019: Antivaxxers are targeting Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn with COVID-19 misinformation
About a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, large measles outbreaks among Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and Rockland County were linked to misinformation targeted to their communities by antivaxxers. History is repeating itself with COVID-19.

About those “19 Errors,” Part Two
A critical and evidence-based response to the alleged errors journalist Jesse Singal found in my guest post reviewing Abigail Shrier's book on trans youth. The second of two parts.

A New Covid-19 Myth?
A correspondent suggested I should have known that the pandemic was over months ago. That's obviously a myth. But where did that idea come from?

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 2
A few months ago, Scott Gavura wrote about how the veterinary deworming drug ivermectin has become the new hydroxychloroquine in that it is being promoted as a highly effective treatment against COVID-19—and by many of the same people who previously promoted HCQ—despite evidence that is, at best very weak and at worst completely negative. Unfortunately, with the publication of two new and...