Thread by @NafeezAhmed

The Great Barrington Declaration claiming to represent over 5,000 medical & public health scientists to promote herd immunity from #COVID19 is a gigantic fraud. Here's how I know. To test it out, *I* signed it pretending to be such a scientist with a Harvard degree. Easy. /1

There are no meaningful standards, checks or controls for new 'scientists' signing Declaration in addition to original signatories. I used the name 'Mad Scientist', masqueraded as Professor, faked my Harvard PhD, and used a Zipcode from New York University School of Medicine. /2

My fake profile for the Great Barrington Declaration allowed me, myself and I to confirm the fake information I submitted, allowing me to receive a simple email verification to get my 'Medical & Public Health' scientist signatory status confirmed /3

Result. And the lesson here is: Anyone who wants to masquerade as one of thousands of 'Medical & Public Health Scientists' endorsing the Great Barrington Declaration can easily do so. Sign up now! Use fraud to support Science! /4

Forgive me for the tongue-in-cheek approach, but in all seriousness, this is appalling. Media outlets & politicians claiming that the Barrington letter is supported by over 5,000 medical and public health scientists are promoting unverified and unverifiable fake news. /END

There's something you can do about this as a concerned British citizen. Write formally to the BBC, Mail and other media as well as the regulator, IPSO, complaining about the inaccuracy of their reporting on this Declaration representing thousands of scientists. Thank you.

Oh, one more thing by way of further circumstantial evidence of fraud. In around just 10 minutes, the 'scientist' signatory count jumped by 35. That's a lot of 'scientists' being automatically added with no checks by the good folks in Barrington where it was shortly after 6am.

And now it begins to make sense. Documents and corporate records suggest that the Declaration is sponsored by a climate science denial network funded by Koch foundations bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/cli…