In 2008, I tried to answer the question: How do doctors become contrarians, quacks, and antivaxxers? A Twitter encounter suggested to me not just answers but that an update to that post is massively overdue.

In 2008, I tried to answer the question: How do doctors become contrarians, quacks, and antivaxxers? A Twitter encounter suggested to me not just answers but that an update to that post is massively overdue.
The pandemic has brought scientists who have rejected science with respect to COVID-19 public health measures a disturbing level of influence. Recent research suggests reasons why and who among the public susceptible to such misinformation remains persuadable.
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.
John Ioannidis’ “science Kardashian” article is the bad science that keeps demonstrating why we should have no superheroes in science. Ideology can warp any of us.
John Ioannidis has used a satirical bibliometrics index to portray Great Barrington Declaration signatories, who argue for a “natural herd immunity” approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the underdogs mobbed by “science Kardashians.” Why?