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Computers and social media Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad team up to lecture social media about “obsessive criticism”

Formerly respectable academics John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad published a complaint about “obsessive criticism” on social media. Hilarity ensued, and many irony meters were reduced to sparking, smoking, sputtering ruin.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience

Can you get Omicron every three weeks?

A recent article claims that Omicron reinfections confer “no immunity” such that it’s possible to be reinfected with Omicron variants every two to three weeks and calls COVID-19 the “forever plague.” Although it makes a reasonable point that “natural” postinfection immunity doesn’t last long because of variants, the article is undermines its reasonable criticisms of COVID policy with maximal fear mongering.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

AAPS joins the legal thuggery against medical standards

The crank fake medical professional society Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) filed a lawsuit this week against medical specialty boards seeking to rein in COVID-19 misinformation. Coupled with previous suits, I can’t help but see this legal thuggery as increasingly coordinated with prior lawsuits by right wing groups.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

Nazis. With the Brownstone Institute it’s always Nazis.

The Brownstone Institute is once again promoting the tired narrative that public health interventions for COVID-19 are incipient fascism and those supporting them Nazis. Unfortunately, this false narrative resonates.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience

When new school antivaxxer Steve Kirsch met old school antivaxxer Andrew Wakefield

Steve Kirsch interviewed Andrew Wakefield, demonstrating that there is no distance between “new school” and “old school” antivaxxers anymore. Also, they are antivaccine, with Wakefield saying there is no safe vaccine.