Hack conspiracy journalism: Paul Thacker vs. the definition of “physician”

I had a feeling that this week might be a weird one when, first thing Monday morning, I was greeted with an email from a most unexpected source, someone who has been featured on this blog a number of times for his misleading brand of “journalism” (if you can call it that). This time around, I’m referring to conspiracy theorist hack “investigative journalist” Paul Thacker, whom I first discovered and wrote about in 2016 after he had started attacking a scientist named Kevin Folta over GMOs based on the results of an abusive FOIA request. Mr. Thacker only got worse during the pandemic, for example, amplifying antivax messaging by attacking pro-vaccine doctors and scientists (and sometimes even parroting old antivax tropes himself) and publishing what was in my not-so-humble opinion a very deceptively reported exposé of Ventavia, one of the contract research organizations (CROs) hired to help Pfizer carry out the phase 3 randomized controlled trial of its new COVID-19 vaccine.

[NOTE: There is an addendum to this post.]

Truly, with cranks like Mr. Thacker, every accusation is a confession, such as his running a paid Substack entitled The Disinformation Chronicle, where, under the guise of exposing and combatting disinformation, he regularly lays down heaping helpings of it.

Early Monday morning, I got email

Normally, I do not publish private email exchanges without the permission of the person initiating it, but I do allow exceptions. One exception involves threats, be they legal or physical, which I sometimes like to publicize. Another is when the email exchange demonstrates that someone is either lying about or misrepresenting publicly something that I said. At this point, I’m sure you can see where this is going with Mr. Thacker, which is why I hope that at the end of this post you will see that he full deserves having his emails to me publicized.

But first, let me just note that Mr. Thacker emailed this to me at my university email address, cc’ing, as cranks often do to harass me at work, my medical school dean and my department chair:

Hello Gorski,

I’m working on a story, and I need comment back from you by Monday, 5pm EST. Because you have struggled in the past with posting false and defamatory comments about reporters and academic physicians, I’m looping in your department chair and dean to provide you with professional support.

Allison Neitzel has been forced to post an apology on her website and social media for making multiple false and defamatory statements.

Writing for your site, Allision Neitzel is listed as a “physician” which is false. Wisconsin law states that a physician has a medical degree and is licensed. Neitzel does not appear in the NPI registry of licensed physicians. To emphasize, Allison Neitzel is not a physician.

Why have you claimed Allison Neitzel is a physician, and do you plan to continue claiming Neitzel is a physician until she is licensed by either Wisconsin or another state medical board?

Again, I need your response by 5pm EST on Monday.

Thank you,
Paul

Paul D. Thacker
https://www.pauldthacker.com
[email protected]

“Hello, Gorski”? Well, hello, Thacker, I guess. Whatever. And thank you too for allowing me the satisfaction of publicly responding. Also, for those of you who are unfamiliar with her, Dr. Allison Neitzel is a young physician who rose to prominence during the pandemic by becoming a leading voice combatting COVID-19, antivax, and public health disinformation messaging by people like—you guessed it!—Mr. Thacker, in particular in the fall of 2021 for her calling out of Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers for his conspiracy mongering antivax nonsense. She recently posted an apology to the COVID-19 quack group of doctors, the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, and its founders, antivax quacks Drs. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, that was obviously scripted by lawyers. (Click the link above and read it and see if you don’t detect lots of legal-speak.) More on that near the end.

I noticed this missive at around 5:30 AM Monday, when I was in the middle of a pre-work workout at the local gym, leading me to curse myself yet again for having succumbed to the temptation read email and peruse social media during my breaks between sets or while on the bike. At the time, I knew that I likely wouldn’t get to it until afternoon sometime, given that I had to finish my workout, get ready for work, drive to work, attend or cancer center’s breast cancer tumor board, and then go straight to the OR afterward for a relatively long case. I decided then that I’d respond if I had time but not worry overmuch about it if I didn’t. Out of curiosity, however, I did check out the post from the not-so-secret other blog that I edit, Repurposed to Radical: How drug repurposing created a global right-wing market for COVID early treatment fraud, to see just what the heck Mr. Thacker was blathering on about with respect to Dr. Allison Neitzel, whose SBM bio stated, rather blandly:

Allison Neitzel MD is a physician-writer who focuses on disinformation, dark money, and politics in public health with a focus on COVID-19, inspired by her medical school experience during the pandemic in Wisconsin.

There’s nothing objectionable there that I can see. I couldn’t even find any mention of certain people and organizations relevant to Dr. Neitzel’s apology other than a single mention of Dr. Pierre Kory and the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, a pseudomedical organization of COVID-19 quacks and antivaxxers founded by Drs. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, to whom it was addressed.

Also note the deadline: 5 PM EST. Of course, in Detroit we are currently on Daylight Saving Time, not standard time, which, if I want to be pedantic (yes, I’m having a bit of fun with this word, as will soon become clear), he must mean 6 PM EDT. Finally, I know that Mr. Thacker lives in Madrid, which is 6 hours ahead of EDT. Again, why this is all relevant will become apparent—and hilariously so, I hope—by the end of the post.

Moreover, knowing Mr. Thacker’s history, I knew that his impending publication, most likely a post on his Substack, would be a hit piece, not any sort of real journalism. I learned yesterday, when he published his hit piece, that I was very correct, although I admit that being correct about a prediction that anything Mr. Thacker writes will be a piece of hack journalism is akin to being correct prediction that the sun will rise in the east a few hours from now.

Finally, before I discuss the accusations against Dr. Neitzel, other editors, and myself made in Mr. Thacker’s hit piece, Fake Physician Allison Neitzel Caught Running Real Medical Misinformation Site, I really do think that finishing my discussion of the email exchange with Mr. Thacker will be most illuminating as to the believability and reliability of his “journalism.” You can go and read it now, if you like, or wait until I start quoting it and read it then. It matters not to me, as the end result will be the same. I will demonstrate with examples just how much of a hack Mr. Thacker has become and how much he misleads, in this case mainly through omission.

Paul Thacker and I have a…conversation, sort of

By mid-afternoon on Monday, I finally gotten out of the operating room. As there was still some time before Mr. Thacker’s “deadline,” I decided that I would respond after all, because I knew that if I didn’t at best he’d misrepresent my lack of response as evidence of “guilt” or “collusion” with whatever nefarious things he thought Dr. Neitzel had done (although collusion in what would be a very reasonable question). At worst, I knew that he would misrepresent it as something even more nefarious.

I also recognized two things. First, as so many cranks, quacks, and antivaxxers have done before, Mr. Thacker was clearly trying to intimidate me into silence—to cancel me, if you will (word choice intentional)—by harassing me at work or, failing that, at least to cause me agita and anxiety. It’s a ploy that cranks have employed to attack me many times going back to almost exactly 19 years ago (April 2, 2005, to be precise), when William P. O’Neill of the cancer quackery org Canadian Cancer Research Group emailed me legal threats, also cc’ed to my division chief, cancer center director, and department chair. In 2005, I was a newbie, having only been blogging less than four months; so the ploy scared me. Now? I chuckle at such obviousness and was amused when Mr. Thacker sent a reminder at 3:33 PM EDT, again cc’ing my bosses:

Hi Gorski,

You haven’t responded and it’s doubtful you will correct any errors, as your site is not noted for high ethical standards nor attention to factual detail.

But my editor says I have to remind you to reply.

Thank you,

Paul 

Orac laughs. “My editor says”? In a moment, you will see why this was so funny to me.

By the time I saw this email, by coincidence I had just finished composing a reply and was proofreading it one last time before sending it. I reproduce it here in total and note that I sent at 3:50 PM EDT:

Mr. Thacker:

Your question is silly and pedantic, even by your usual low standards. It is also obvious to me that your completely unnecessary cc’ing my chair and dean about something unrelated to my work at WSU is a ploy to intimidate me. After all, it’s not as though you’re the first conspiracy theorist and medical misinformation spreader to do this. People like you have been trying to “cancel” me by complaining about my nonacademic publications and my blog and social media activity to my division chiefs, chairs, deans, and cancer center directors, both at my previous position and here, going back to 2005.

Even so, let me answer your question with a question: Did Dr. Alison Neitzel graduate with a valid MD from an accredited US medical school? (Hint: She did.) As you must certainly know, her bio in her guest post for Science-Based Medicine did not use the narrow, legalistic definition of “physician” that you are pedantically employing as part of what is no doubt a hit piece that you are writing about Dr. Neitzel (and possibly us at SBM). Let me give you another definition of the word. The AMA “affirms that a physician is an individual who has received a ‘Doctor of Medicine’ or a ‘Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine’ degree or an equivalent degree following successful completion of a prescribed course of study from a school of medicine or osteopathic medicine.” Note that there is no mention of licensure status or postgraduate training in this definition. We at SBM will continue to use the AMA definition of “physician” when identifying our guest contributors. I’m sure you’ll do you, though, and write your hit piece wrongly insinuating that we and Dr. Neitzel somehow did something deceptive.

Finally, I would also point out that, like Dr. Neitzel, someone whom you clearly admire given your recent appearance on his podcast (Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya) has no postgraduate medical training beyond completing medical school either. (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) Yet Dr. Bhattacharya bills himself as a physician in his bio at Unherd, a publication with a much larger readership than SBM. Now that you know this, may I trust that you will also ask the editors of Unherd the same questions about Dr. Bhattacharya that you have asked me about Dr. Neitzel, given that the State of California defines “physician” similarly as “an individual issued a license allowing them to practice medicine”? After all, if it’s wrong or deceptive for Dr. Neitzel to bill herself as a physician-writer in her brief bio on our blog when she does not have a medical license, then it should also be wrong for Dr. Bhattacharya (who similarly has no medical license or NPI) to do the same thing in a publication like Unherd, shouldn’t it? And you are someone with integrity, who couldn’t possibly have a double standard about things like this, right?

David

P.S. Further communication from you at my job is unwelcome and will not be answered—but will be treated as harassment. If you wish to contact me about issues related to my hobby as SBM editor, use the appropriate email address listed on the blog, not my university email address.

Orac note: That part about Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is totally true. He is a “physician,” even though he too is unlicensed and never did postgraduate residency training after graduating from medical school. (Just look at his published CV, downloadable here, if you don’t believe me.) By Mr. Thacker’s own “reasoning,” both Dr. Bhattacharya and Neitzel are physicians, nor neither of them is. He can’t have it both ways, although I know that he’ll try.

I only regret that I didn’t also point out to him that the Brownstone Institute website also lists Dr. Bhattacharya as a “physician.” Mea culpa. I also whipped out this additional response because I was feeling a bit spicy:

I just responded. Also, you said 5 PM EST. I note that it is EDT now here in the States, so at worst 5 PM EST would have been 6 PM EDT.

Seriously, man. Learn what time zones mean.

David

Orac note: I wonder. Should I have been so sarcastic? Should I have taken such glee in being sarcastic? I think you know the answer to that one.

Also, yes, I did include my dean and department chair on the cc: of my replies, both of them. After all, I had nothing to hide, nor was I embarrassed. I was quite happy to point out that (1) Mr. Thacker was indeed using a picky, pedantic, legalistic definition of “physician” in order to falsely portray Dr. Neitzel as somehow “not a physician,” as had been immediately obvious to me, and (2) he’s a massive hypocrite as well.

Mr. Thacker was not the least bit pleased and quickly responded:

Thank you for explaining that the state law regulating you and Allison Neitzel is pedantic, as well as the lecture on time zones. We are in Europe where it is 10 pm, and have to check in a final time on deadlines before going to bed.

Have a great day,

Paul 

Yes. I know. Mr. Thacker lives in Spain, to be specific, Madrid, if I recall correctly. That’s why I couldn’t resist one last rejoinder, given how obvious it was to me what Mr. Thacker was about:

At this point, can anyone blame me for posting this exchange here? A few of you still think it unseemly? Just wait. There’s a bit more. Mr Thacker was really not pleased, so at 5:32 AM EDT the next morning, he sent this:

Quite the long, extensive response to questions. More this morning, I see.

Since you brought up the fact that you apparently were in surgery, can you explain how you have time for patients when you put in exhaustive hours every day running your website and multiple social media accounts? None of the academic physicians who have brought up your behavior to me understand how you do this. Several researchers have told me they think you don’t even treat people.

Most physicians I know–family members, for example–don’t even have time to monitor Twitter. They’re too busy being doctors and treating patients.

Thanks,

Paul

It hadn’t really been morning when I sent my last email, merely 4:21 PM EDT (my time), or 10:21 PM CEST (Madrid time). Also, let me just say: 2005 called. It wants its attack on physicians who blog back. Seriously, this one is very old, an attack that cranks like Mr. Thacker have been throwing my way ever since I started this blog in December 2004, and the funny thing is that these days I’ve been slowing down. I spend a lot less time on my blogs and social media activities now than I did, say 10-15 years ago, far from “exhaustive hours every day.” I was half-tempted to ask Mr. Thacker if he wondered how, for example, someone like Dr. Marty Makary, a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins who has come under a lot of criticism at my not-so-secret other blog for spreading COVID misinformation, has time for all his social media activity, appearances on Fox News and podcasts and other interviews and writings, but I decided that it just wasn’t worth continuing, because cranks never give up.

At this point, you might wonder why I thought Mr. Thacker’s reference to his “editor” was so funny. Simple. I wondered who Mr. Thacker’s editor was and strongly suspected that he was his own editor because he was planning on publishing his “journalism” on his Substack, which made his talking about himself in the third person cringeworthy and chuckle worthy at the same time. It turns out that my suspicion was almost certainly spot on. Mr. Thacker’s hit piece wasn’t published in any reputable magazine, website, etc. It was indeed, as I predicted, published on his Substack. Unless Mr. Thacker has hired someone as editor of his Substack (unlikely, but I must admit the possibility, however implausible), then he was pretending that his “editor” had told him to “remind” me.

As for the results, in the next section, I take a look at just how bad the product of Mr. Thacker’s “research” is.

Quoth Mr. Thacker, “pedantic” and “AMA”

With the above email exchange as background, let us return to Mr. Thacker’s actual hit piece. The headline, of course, tells you how in his post Mr. Thacker tries to portray Dr. Neitzel as “not a physician,” and after our email exchange I knew exactly how he was going to do it, and, predictably unimaginative conspiracist that he is, that’s how he did it.

Mr. Thacker started by quoting Tracy Høeg, of all people (and of whom I am not a fan). Dr. Høeg, it turns out, it still very upset that Dr. Neitzel once called her a “hag” and is quoted oh-so-condescendingly saying, “The fact she [Dr. Neitzel] has not nearly completed her training but has appointed herself as an expert physician in pointing out misinformation strikes me as both odd and ironic.” You know what else also strikes me as “odd and ironic”? It’s the fact that a sports medicine physician like Dr. Høeg, despite having studied epidemiology and having no relevant expertise in infectious disease, public health, or other aspects of epidemics or pandemics, someone who has even published mind-numbingly bad papers based on dumpster-diving in VAERS, has appointed herself as an expert on infectious disease epidemiology, public health, and even vaccines. That’s exactly what Dr. Høeg has done since the pandemic hit. Also mentioned, but portrayed as somehow unhinged and deceptive is Dr. Neitzel’s entirely appropriate, even fangirlish criticism of quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ spreading of COVID-19 antivax misinformation in 2021, something that I have done myself.

Then:

Despite spreading false information about Rodgers, Neitzel’s letter and purported medical bona fides proved catnip to reporters at MedPage Today, Mother Jones, and NBC, who quoted her as a physician exposing medical misinformation. Columns Neitzel has written for websites WhoWhatWhy and Science-Based Medicine also claim she is a physician focusing on disinformation.

And this is where the circus fun begins, because famed medical misinformation expert Allison Neitzel is not now, nor has she ever been, a physician.

Orac note: WhoWhatWhy published an excellent exposé by Karam Bales of the Dr. Pierre Kory and the FLCCC’s promotion of ivermectin as a cure-all for COVID-19 that you should read.

Do tell, Mr. Thacker. And why? Let’s find out:

The first social media trace I could find for Allison Neitzel is a 2019 Facebook post by the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Third-year med student Allison Neitzel helped teach young students how to use blood pressure cuffs, listen to heart and lung sounds through the use of a stethoscope, how to perform CPR and more.”

But when Neitzel jumped into the national conscience in 2021, she began claiming she was a “physician.” A group called the National Association of Medical Doctors (NAMD) posted Neitzel’s letter criticizing Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in their Journal of Medicine, where she signed as “Allison Neitzel is a physician.”

Well, yes. If Dr. Neitzel was a third year medical student in 2019, then she should have graduated from medical school by May 2021 at the latest. A news report from the fall of 2021 lists her as a “recent graduate” of the Medical College of Wisconsin, which tells me that she graduated in the spring of 2021 and therefore was a physician when she wrote her letter to Aaron Rodgers.

Not that that stops Sherlock Thacker:

But when you look into Wisconsin law, you find the state defines a physician as “an individual possessing the degree of doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy or an equivalent degree as determined by the medical examining board, and holding a license granted by the medical examining board.”

So I looked up Neitzel in the National Provider Identifier Standard (NPI) which lists everyone licensed as a physician in the U.S. And guess what?

Allison Neitzel isn’t a physician.

As my email exchanged shows above, Mr. Thacker is just plain wrong here. The worst you can say about Dr. Neitzel is that she is an unlicensed physician. She is, however, still a physician, no matter how much Mr. Thacker tries to deny it.

Moreover, as Dorit Reiss pointed out on X, the hellscape formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Thacker’s definition was misleadingly cherry picked from Wisconsin law:

You do not have to be a legally practicing physician in a state to be a "physician". Under that standard, most of the doctors coming from out of state to a medical conference in any state will no longer be "physicians". Doctors are usually licensed in specific jurisdictions.

— (((Dorit Reiss))) (@doritmi) April 3, 2024

Not that that stopped not-a-physician (by Mr. Thacker’s definition) Dr. Bhattacharya from retweeting Mr. Thacker’s Tweet linking to his Substack article:

Jay retweeted it. 😂 pic.twitter.com/5qabwmHjkA

— Kyle Berkopes (@kberkopes) April 3, 2024

That amusing aside dispensed with, Dorit Reiss continued to explain.

Here is his source in the article. https://t.co/8hh12kInjs

This is the section about licensing physicians. It addresses the medical board and discipline, too.

It's for licensing and disciplining physicians in Wisconsin, not a general "who is a physician" definition.

— (((Dorit Reiss))) (@doritmi) April 3, 2024

Which addresses interstate licenses and disciplines. And this is not a universal physician either.

Mr. Thacker should know that legal definitions are generally specific to a statute, and in context. If he does not, someone should tell him.

— (((Dorit Reiss))) (@doritmi) April 3, 2024

If he could show Dr. Neitzel claimed to be a "licensed physician", he would have a point.

He can't, so he does not. His attack is unjustified, inaccurate, and problematic.

— (((Dorit Reiss))) (@doritmi) April 3, 2024

I agree with this last part. Nowhere have I seen Dr. Neitzel represent herself or allow herself to be misrepresented as a licensed physician.

Of course, intellectual honesty is not Mr. Thacker’s intent here. Attacking Dr. Neitzel’s credibility, by whatever misleading means he can, is, which Mr. Thacker starts to do by first complaining mightily about how in stories by reporters Kiera Butler and Brandy Zadrozny Dr. Neitzel was described as a “physician,” the implication being that the press is trying to mislead you and elevate Dr. Neitzel by somehow lying about her professional status. After that discussion, in light of our email exchange, let me quote the passage relevant to my not-so-secret other blog. You can decide for yourself who is the misleading one:

Neitzel also wrote a column for the site “Science-Based Medicine” where her bio states she is a physician. Science-Based Medicine is a marketing site for the biopharmaceutical industry run by David Gorski, a Wayne State University surgeon, self-described “misinformation debunker,” and ardent vaccine cheerleader.

After the European Medicines Agency concluded in April 2021 that unusual blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, Gorski called foul on the regulator. The UK government eventually stopped offering the AstraZeneca vaccine, and The BMJ reported last year that dozens of patients had launched legal action against AstraZeneca after suffering the same vaccine side effects that Gorski claimed were nonexistent.

In an email to Gorski, I asked why he lists Neitzel as a physician when she doesn’t meet the legal requirements for a physician in Wisconsin where both he and Neitzel reside.

Gorski called the question “pedantic” and said he will ignore Wisconsin law in favor of a definition for “physician” that he found on the website for the American Medical Association.

Note: That accusation against me (and Steve Novella) about me having “called foul on the regulator” was answered in depth in this post.

Seriously. Go back and read my response to Mr. Thacker and then reread the passage above. Then decide (1) whether my calling the question “pedantic” was justified and (2) which of us comes off looking more credible. Also, note that I do not reside—nor have I ever resided—in Wisconsin. Some “investigative reporter”! Everyone who knows my real identity knows the university where I am faculty and the cancer center where I practice are located in Detroit. That’s why I screenshot the post, so that when he inevitably changes it to cover up the shoddiness of his research, I still have a record. I’ve also downloaded the web archive.

NOTE ADDED on 4/5/2024, 12:25 PM EDT:

In the day or so since my post was published, Mr. Thacker has altered its text to remove his sloppy mistake about my state of residence without—of course!—noting anywhere that he had altered it and admitting his error (as an honest journalist would do), and I just had to insert a screenshot here:

After this interruption, Orac now returns you to the text of the rest of the original post…

Even more hilarious, Mr. Thacker had been emailing the editor of MedPage Today, even though, as Dr. Neitzel notes, her article on Aaron Rodgers had not been published on MedPage Today but on Medscape:

Med*scape*https://t.co/sKBayxRX3A

— Allison Neitzel, physician (AMA's version) (@AliNeitzelMD) April 4, 2024

Med*page*https://t.co/RnJwrGVhU6

— Allison Neitzel, physician (AMA's version) (@AliNeitzelMD) April 4, 2024

And for the sake of completeness, also Med*page*.

You can type my last name into the search bar in the top right corner to find all of these. https://t.co/mufoPExt2Y

— Allison Neitzel, physician (AMA's version) (@AliNeitzelMD) April 4, 2024

Truly, the sloppiness of methodology exhibited here by Mr. Thacker should be a rebuke to The BMJ, which published his nonsense about Ventavia and then, when criticized for it and found Mr. Thacker’s article labeled as misleading by Facebook, defended its peer review and Mr. Thacker’s journalism, while lashing out at Mark Zuckerberg. Between publishing Mr. Thacker’s deceptive “muckraking” and its having hired an antivax-adjacent editor, I no longer take The BMJ‘s “journalism” seriously, nor should you.

Given all this, I was thinking that maybe I should have done the same as all the editors and reporters whom he contacted for having described Dr. Neitzel as a physician and ignored his emails.

Nahhhh.

Here’s the thing, though. I probably would have just ignored Mr. Thacker’s email if he hadn’t decided to try to intimidate me by gratuitously cc’ing my bosses. Even though I know that my department chair is very familiar with people like Mr. Thacker trying to harass me through him—he ignores them and sometimes makes bemused remarks about them—our dean is still relatively new in his position. Although I suspect he’s likely more than savvy enough to have recognized Mr. Thacker’s email for what it was, I still thought it better not to take the chance that, like many high ranking academic physicians, he might be oblivious to the tactics of misinformation merchants like Mr. Thacker. So I seized the opportunity to demonstrate to him who people like Mr. Thacker were; that is, if he bothered to read at all, given the deluge of email that he likely gets every day.

Thanks, Paul, for giving me the chance to show people who you really are!

And who he is is a conspiracy theorist who is either dishonest or unteachable, take your pick, as shown by his exchange on X:

🤷‍♂️https://t.co/OtaPsxjBce

— Kyle Berkopes (@kberkopes) April 3, 2024

Thacker’s response was disingenuous in the extreme:

That would matter if she was claiming she was licensed. Which she doesn’t. It would be hilarious if she counter sued. She has actual work to do though.

— Fricking Delight (DEI Higher) (@blikethecheese) April 3, 2024

Given that Mr. Thacker lives in the EU, in Spain, it would indeed be interesting to see how he would fair under European libel laws. (Maybe someone knowledgeable in Spanish law could let me know in the comments.) Unfortunately, we will probably never know, at least not on this case. However, as Dorit Reiss notes:

And unlike FLCCC, which he is helping attack her, Dr. Neitzel does not have unlimited funds to harass critiques and charlatans.

— (((Dorit Reiss))) (@doritmi) April 3, 2024

I would be more than happy to provide my email exchange to Dr. Neitzel, complete with headers, should she ever decide to sue Mr. Thacker.

That being said, this exchange brings up something else. To me, Dr. Neitzel’s “apology” sounds very much like the result of some sort of legal settlement with the FLCCC. If you don’t believe me, read the apology for yourself. It has all sorts of indications of having been carefully crafted by lawyers—or at least written with the heavy input of lawyers. Why would that be? Of course, I can’t know for sure given that there is no public trail that I have yet been able to find, but it seems likely to me that Dr. Neitzel was being threatened with legal action by the FLCCC and Drs. Kory and Marik. I further speculate that, being young and fresh out of medical school (as well as not being able to practice medicine), she likely did not have the resources to defend against the lawsuit being threatened. Of course, I could be mistaken. If I am indeed mistaken, I’m sure that Mr. Thacker or the FLCCC will be happy to provide me with evidence to show me that I’m mistaken and specifically what my mistakes are in thinking that Dr. Neitzel’s apology was forced as the result of legal threats, so that I can correct any errors in what I have written here.

Whatever the events that led to Dr. Neitzel’s apology might have been, whether he was ever a decent journalist or not before he started slagging scientists almost a decade ago (and I’m beginning to suspect not), Paul Thacker has since degenerated into the worst kind of conspiracy-mongering hack. From my perspective, he ceased to be any kind of legitimate journalist long ago, assuming that he ever was one before, and has since become a propagandist more than anything else, barely a step removed from Alex Jones or Mike Adams. His credibility is subterranean, and this latest interaction with him followed by the results of his “investigation,” namely a hit piece on Dr. Neitzel that is John Stone-level misleading removed any doubt in my mind.

If you don’t know who John Stone was, know that back in the day in the beforetime (before the pandemic, that is) he was a rather prolific faux “journalist” for that wretched hive of scum and antivax quackery of an antivax blog, Age of Autism, and then just search this blog or Left Brain Right Brain if you’re curious what a dishonest antivax fake “journalist” Mr. Stone is. To get you started, I’ll just cite a post of mine from 2010 making fun of Mr. Stone for not knowing what a corresponding author and this lrbr post on his cluelessness about autism.

Finally, again, this ain’t my first rodeo, nor is Mr. Thacker anywhere near the first conspiracy mongering crank looking to smear me or cause me trouble at work. I survived Mike Adams. Dealing with Mr. Thacker will likely be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

ADDENDUM 4/7/2024: Finally! I have confirmation that the FLCCC and Drs. Kory and Marik definitely threatened Dr. Neitzel with legal action, forcing her under threat of litigation to publish that “apology.” It comes from Russ Baker, founder, Editor-in-Chief and CEO of WhoWhatWhy, the nonprofit, noncommercial online news organization devoted to covering and uncovering stories and angles ignored by the media that Dr. Neitzel had contributed to. In an article on his Substack entitled Contrived Anti-Vaxxer “Exposé” on WhoWhatWhy Writer Reveals Movement Strategy, Mr. Baker notes:

Two doctors promoting the counter-scenario aggressively pursued her, and a process server even gained access to her apartment building to dramatically serve her at her door.

And — on advice of counsel to avoid a long, drawn-out litigation (though they were certain she would win) — she agreed to a very measured apology of sorts in return for their dropping their action. 

The apology relates to minor mistakes or transgressions — trivial in their impact compared to the consequences of the allegedly bad science that Neitzel was calling out.

I agree. The “errors” that Dr. Neitzel was forced to “apologize” for were really mostly minor rookie mistakes coupled with intemperate speech. No doubt Mr. Thacker knew damned well that her “apology” had been forced, as did all the antivaxxers trumpeting it as some sort of vindication.

Also, more than ever, I’m sure that Drs. Kory and Marik targeted Dr. Neitzel because she was young, female, and not affluent. It has been my observation that bullies like them only rarely go after old established white dudes like me.

Also of interest, Mr. Baker relates how Mr. Thacker used exactly the same stupidly implausible shtick on him that he used on me:

On Easter Sunday evening, a non-working email address at WhoWhatWhy (the news organization I founded and lead), received what presented as an urgent request.

It was addressed to an independent writer, Allison Neitzel, a 31-year-old from Wisconsin who has contributed several essays to us — all concerned with the ongoing public debate about deceptive information promoting anti-vaccine positions. This young woman has dedicated years of her life to investigating and clarifying what people need to know about the COVID-19 scourge.

The email had an arresting subject line: False claims of being a physician. Need response by Monday 5pm EST.

It stated that she had until 5 p.m. the following day, a Monday, to comply with a demand to submit her answer to a question for an article the sender was writing.

The next morning, I personally received a similar note. The deadline was still 5 p.m. that day.

What was so urgent? Why such a tight deadline? Why reach out with this demand the holiday night before? The man didn’t say. And then came another email:

Hi Russ, my editor said to remind you that we need a response.

What editor? What publication? He didn’t say.

The answer came soon enough. The publication was…. his own personal substack, The Misinformation Chronicle; thus, it would seem, he is his own editor, or at least has final decision-making authority.

I laughed. So Mr. Thacker pulled the same bullshit act about his “editor” with Mr. Baker. Of course he did.