Tag: COVID contrarian
The “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration” promotes antivaccine misinformation
The signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration and its "spiritual child" the Brownstone Institute, swear up and down that they are not anttivaccine. If that's so, why are Brownstone-affiliated academics spreading antivaccine misinformation in Uganda?
Why are physicians threatened by efforts to report doctors to their state medical board for COVID-19 misinformation?
It's not "cancel culture" to delicense physicians promoting dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. It's quality control. Why do so many physicians think it is?
Substack: Where quacks and antivaxxers all go now
With social media companies like Twitter and Facebook/Meta deplatforming those spreading misinformation, COVID-19 quacks, antivaxxers, and conspiracy theorists are flocking to Substack, where they can monetize their misinformation while Substack profits.
Tennessee hamstrings medical board fight against COVID misinformation and unproven treatments
A new Tennessee law hampers the state medical board's efforts to rein in COVID misinformation and will make disciplining physicians prescribing unproven COVID treatments impossible until the board goes through cumbersome rule-making procedures, an effort that could outlast the pandemic.
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.
BOO: Or how “magic dirt” became a MLM miracle cure scam for COVID-19
"BOO" stands for Black Oxygen Organics, a "cure" for COVID-19 that got the attention of regulators last week. Basically, it's dirt billed by its believers as "magic dirt" that sells for $110 a bag (plus shipping) through a multilevel marketing sales model. What can this latest COVID cure tell us about the relationship between alternative medicine and COVID-19 denial?
What the heck happened to The BMJ?
Last week, The BMJ published an "exposé" by Paul Thacker alleging patient unblinding, data falsification, and other wrongdoing by a company running three sites for the massive clinical trial of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. It was a highly biased story embraced by antivaxxers, with a deceptively framed narrative and claims not placed into proper context, leading me to look into the broader...
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.
How we got here with political and health misinformation: The case of “Hacker X” and Mike Adams
Ars Technica recently published a story about Hacker X, who helped Mike Adams expand his online empire of health fraud into an empire of fake news and political disinformation, thus intertwining health and political misinformation into the deadly combination we see now.
Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 6: Incompetence and fraud everywhere!
Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, a drug repurposed for COVID-19 that almost certainly doesn't work but is still being touted as a "miracle cure" by quacks, grifters, and political ideologues. Are the data supporting it all fraud?