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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

If 2022 was the “year of the gaslighter,” expect a lot more gaslighting in 2023

“Gaslighting” is a term that refers to the manipulation of someone in order to lead them to question their own reality and even sanity. Last month, a COVID-19 minimizer and antivaxxer declared 2022 the “year of the gaslighter,” revealing yet again that it’s always projection with science-denying propagandists. Unfortunately, 2023 looks to hold a lot more of the same in store.

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Politics Quackery Television

Did Columbia University cut ties with Dr. Oz?

Decades after “America’s Quack” Dr. Oz pioneered “integrating” quackery into medicine and after many years of promoting diet scams and quackery on a nationally syndicated daily television show, Columbia University might actually have quietly downgraded his status. What took so long?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine

Is “mRNA vaccine inventor” Robert Malone “being erased from Wikipedia” for his claims about COVID-19?

Robert Malone claims to be the “inventor of mRNA vaccines,.” Whether his claim is legitimate or not, his fans are editing Wikipedia, and he’s spreading COVID-19 misinformation of the worst kind.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

The latest antivaccine lie about COVID-19 vaccines: “They’re gene therapy!”

There’s a new antivaccine talking point in town, and it’s just as much disinformation as other antivaccine talking points. It’s the claim that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are not really vaccines but “medical devices,” “gene therapy,” or “experimental biologics” and that they were falsely classified as vaccines in order to bypass safety testing. Here, we discuss why this claim is utter nonsense based on the highly deceptive use of terminology.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine

The “Disinformation Dozen” vs. public health

A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that nearly two thirds of antivaccine disinformation on social media comes from 12 sources, dubbed the “disinformation dozen.”