Category: Science and the Media
Misinformation is pervasive, and AI will turbocharge it
Is it possible to refute an infinite amount of AI-generated health misinformation?
Trust in science and vaccines continues to decline. Why?
Recent evidence shows that public trust in science and vaccines has declined markedly since the pandemic. Why is this, and is there anything we can do about it?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes home to his antivax roots…again
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the keynote speech at the second annual meeting of his antivax organization, Children's Health Defense. Once again, he demonstrated that not only is he still antivax as hell, but that his proposals are even more bizarre than before. Truly, it was a homecoming for him.
Misinformation, Trust, and Non-Evidence-Based COVID-19 Treatments
Misinformation drove 1 in 20 Americans to use useless therapies like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 infections.
Quoth quacks, “The medical consensus has changed before, making my quackery science!”
Brave maverick doctors (i.e., quacks) have long tried to portray themselves as "innovators" challenging an ossified medical consensus for the good of patients. This tradition continues among COVID-19 quacks, in particular the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and its founders.
Examining COVID-19 misinformation propagated by US physicians
A new paper documents COVID-19 medical misinformation shared by US physicians on social media
The return of marketing hype for “whole body scans”…now with AI!
Two decades ago, I cut my skeptical teeth countering advertising for whole body scans by companies making extravagant promises for their products. This particular medical fad faded for a while, but now it's back with a vengeance...with AI! Looking at these products, what I see is basically the quackery that is functional medicine on steroids and powered by AI.
RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan: Putting the old denialist technique of bad faith “Debate me, bro!” challenges on steroids
Joe Rogan conveyed a challenge by antivax crank turned Presidential candidate RFK Jr. to vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez to "debate me, bro!" In the week since, wealthy right wingers have added money to the inducement, and through an awful op-ed by Ross Douthat this weekend, even the New York Times has amped up the pressure for a "debate" about vaccines with...
Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. antivaccine? Judge him by his own words!
Last week, an antivaxxer on Substack—where else?—tried to argue that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is not antivaccine by encouraging you to judge him by his own words. I agree. You should judge RFK Jr. by his own words, as they show definitively that he has been antivaccine since at least 2005.
“Subscription science”: Physician-influencers, social media, and conflicts of interest
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, Substack show that not all conflicts of interest are from industry or even financial.