Results for: quacks
“Base Spike Detox” and Signature Spike Support Formulas: Nattokinase quackery to treat COVID-19 and COVID-19 “vaccine injury”
Dr. Peter McCullough and a number of "anti-COVID-19 vaccine" antivaxxers out there has pivoted to quackery to "detox" from the supposedly malign effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Everything old is new again, this time with nattokinase.
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...
When an antivax physician “dies suddenly”: The case of Dr. Rashid Buttar
Last month, Dr. Rashid Buttar, a prominent antivax "integrative medicine" practitioner, died suddenly. Because he hadn't been vaccinated, antivaxxers struggled mightily to reconcile his death with their conspiracy theory about COVID-19 vaccines killing thousands "suddenly." It turns out, however, that that Dr. Buttar had not been a well man since 2016 and was as much a victim of quackery as his patients...
“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.
ProtocolKills.com: Misinformed refusal on steroids
Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed "misinformed refusal," a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized "informed consent" by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinated. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments with the help of "hospital hostage negotiator" Laura Bartlett, who views COVID-19 treatments in hospitals...
Retracted papers about COVID-19 are more highly cited than they should be
Earlier this 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.
ProtocolKills.com: Repackaging an old narrative about conventional medicine versus alternative medicine for COVID-19
Quacks claim that medicine, not the disease, kills, with their nostrums as the cure. ProtocolKills.com shows that victims and their families are often their best spokespeople because they are so sympathetic and questioning their testimonials is easily portrayed as attacking very sympathetic victims. Cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski used to do this, weaponizing his patients against any critics and using them as foot...
Why antivaxxers reject the concept of scientific consensus as a “manufactured construct”
Neil deGrasse Tyson invoked the concept of a scientific consensus while supporting vaccines in his debate with Del Bigtree. Why was his statement about how "individual scientists don't matter" compared to scientific consensus so triggering to antivaxxers? Why do antivaxxers reject the very concept of a scientific consensus and promote a hyper-individualistic view of how science should be conducted?
Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the unforced error of “debating” antivax propagandist Del Bigtree on The Highwire
Last week, astrophysicist and famed science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on The Highwire, an antivax video podcast, to "debate" its host, antivax propagandist Del Bigtree. This incident demonstrates quite well why it is almost never a good idea for a scientist to agree to "debate" science deniers.