This interview by @fullydavid with @ydeigin is the most thorough rebuttal to date of Bret and Heather’s dangerous anti vaccine position. It systematically breaks down just how weak each of their claims are and how badly they misunderstand the research lit.
Yuri is a charmingly cantankerous fellow and a well known advocate for lab leak origins of Covid. So I don’t agree with his assessments universally. But he’s always technically informed & thorough and is entirely spot on here.
There is a stark contrast between his ability to critically assess the quality of studies and the related claims made by advocates and the credulity & sloppiness demonstrated by Bret and Heather.
This is an absolute reconstruction of their position and I’m glad to see it on a channel which is recognised as broadly sympathetic to IDW/Heterdox voices, as this has a much bigger chance of reaching Bret’s audience. So H/T to both David and Yuri for their good work!
BTW if you listen to this and then look at Heather & Bret’s inaugural essay on Heather’s substack it really does demonstrate just how vacuous and low quality the evidence behind their anti vaxx/pro Ivermectin claims are.
*deconstruction! lol

Though I guess he does reconstruct their position by correctly illustrating how empty the evidence base is. Anyway, stupid autocorrect!

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More from @C_Kavanagh

31 Jul
This is one of the problems with Heather, Bret, & Eric. They are utterly disdainful of any ‘mainstream’ sources until they find a single instance that agrees with them (or appears to) then they tout the existence of the article as offering complete vindication of their position.
It’s a clear illustration of motivated reasoning and how their standards for assessing evidence are so lacking. Heather is misinterpreting the study but even if she wasn’t finding a study that makes an argument that supports a view you hold *is not a vindication of your view*.
This is a mistake Heather, Bret, and Eric repeatedly make. They think if a position they hold is represented in an actual academic article or mainstream media coverage that shows it has merit. It does not. It simply shows someone else had a similar view as you & got published.
Read 9 tweets
27 Jul
I’ll advised use of Twitter functionality for a chapter by chapter review of @evantthompson’s #WhyIAmNotABuddhist. Will link the threads with that hashtag. This is the Introduction chapter. Image
The Introductory Chapter is not a perfunctory one. It provides a nice overview of the overall thesis of the book and a lot of relevant details about Evan’s substantial personal & professional background with Buddhism / efforts to combine Buddhist practices & cognitive science.
It’s clear from the opening that this isn’t intended as a polemic but rather as an informed critique from a ‘friend’ who has a deep interest and personal connection to Buddhism and recognizes it as a complex religious tradition with valuable practices and systems of thought. Image
Read 12 tweets
3 Jul
Taibbi tripling down on Bret as free speech martyr being censored for just daring to discuss a controversial issue. This is *not* why he’s gotten strikes. He’s gotten strikes because DH promotes ivermectin as a miracle cure and demonises vaccines. His show has the thinnest…
…veneer of scientific rigor but it’s enough to convince people like Taibbi, Weiss, Carlson, & all of the usual suspects. Taibbi treats these people as if they are ideologically diverse but they are not. On every IDW/anti-SJW issues there is no daylight between any of them.
He’s also wrong to say that Alex Jones banning was roundly cheered. In that the same people who were complaining about that are complaining now. Taibbi thinks Weinstein being demonetised demonstrates an escalation from Jones. It doesn’t. It shows the same rules in play…
Read 5 tweets
30 Jun
Here’s one example of a claim that @BretWeinstein & @HeatherEHeying made that doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. In the video below they claim that the CDC is artificially reducing positive tests for vaccinated people by using different PCR thresholds.
They cite this document as evidence. Claiming that it shows they are using a more stringent 28 PCR cycle threshold to identify positive cases for the vaccinated, as opposed to the more common ~35 cycles. More cycles = more chance to detect virus.
cdc.gov/vaccines/covid…
But this is simply misreading the document. This is not the threshold for a positive result, it’s the threshold for sending a specimen for genetic sequencing to identify the variant. Presumably because above that the sample is hard to extract a reliable sequence from.
Read 7 tweets
24 Jun
Eric frames it as a virtue that he will continue to promote anyone, regardless of what they do or say, as long as they broadly fit within his self referential network. His obsession with cliques & self aggrandizing might be the first documented case of permanent teenage angst. Image
There is such a cloying desperation here that it’s almost tragic. But the depressing thing is that it seems to work with so many people. Eric might be recognized as a delusional narcissist in private DMs by people like Sam Harris, but they won’t ever say that publicly.
Somewhat depressingly it is probably the self serving right wing partisans, like Rubin, that Eric is still desperately pandering to, who can be most forthright in their criticism because Eric’s faux centrist patronage doesn’t bring them much.
Read 4 tweets
19 Jun
No, Taibbi has this completely wrong (shocking I know...).

If anyone spends time looking critically into Bret's content you quickly realise it is extremely similar to Alex Jones act just with a superficial veneer of scientific credibility.

The 'credentialed authorities'... Image
... that Bret interviews are mostly fringe conspiracy theorists. See for example his fawning interview with Geert Vanden Bossche, who claims the vaccines are likely destroying natural immunity, or the recent horror show with 'serial entrepreneur' Steve Kirsch who talked about...
...miscarriages after vaccination with babies heads being split in two.

Bret is the opposite of a careful scientist. He is a conspiracy theorist who just knows how to sound like a scientist.

Hence he claims to have had a Nobel prize discovery that was silenced, to have...
Read 5 tweets

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