So, this is probably the worst rebuttal I've seen recently, and this says a lot. I suspect I'm going to have a few things to say so it's time to reach for that 🧵emoji.
So, first strike for a Professor of Ethics, he doesn't link to the video he is responding to. The tweet he quotes doesn't link to it, and the article the tweet links to doesn't link to the video. It's all meta-commentary. So here's the original:
Second strike for a Professor of Ethics, he mentions that he "led WHO's policy brief on the ethics of vaccine mandates". Professor, that's what's called a "conflict of interest". You're supposed to acknowledge it makes your position a little tenuous, not use it as an argument.
Third, and final, strike for a Professor of Ethics: He misquotes his subject, completely twisting her meaning:
Dr. Julie Ponesse says: "My school employs me to be an authority on Ethics" (0:42). A perfectly reasonable sentence.
What does Professor Smith construe that statement to mean? That she calls herself an authority on Ethics. I kid you not, read for yourself:
That's it. That's literally all he has. All the tweets in the sequence keep on bitching about how she calls herself an authority. (kinda like he did in the first tweet when he name-dropped the WHO).
But somehow, it gets better. For his fourth(!) strike, he manages to refute himself in a single tweet. He starts out saying authority should not matter, then ends up faulting her for citing reasons in fields she has no expertise in. Which is it?
What Dr. Ponesse is saying is: a vaccine, especially one not yet approved (as it wasn't at the time in Canada), requires informed consent. This includes absence of coercion. It's routed in Autonomy, the first of the 4 basic principles of Medical Ethics. web.stanford.edu/class/siw198q/…
And so the last strike, his fifth, somehow, I will award Professor Smith is that he failed to steelman his interlocutor. The core of her argument was simple. He chose to twist an unrelated detail, and make a big deal of it, including an ass of himself, and call it a response.
But wait, there's more: in the comments, after this shameful attempt at vilification, he pretends he's all about unity. Though he also says it won't make a difference. I can see why the WHO took a liking to this guy. Strike number ♾️.
The trial says (implies) that it's using "shared control patients". In the "recruitment over time" slide, it shows that the placebo group was recruited in both "stages". Does this mean placebo patients from either stage were used to form control groups for each drug tested?
It also says (last bullet) that this is a "planned interim analysis of the fluvoxamine arm with the data cut from August 2nd, 2021". Does this mean the trial isn't done? What's the rationale for sharing data on other drugs if this was supposed to be about fluvoxamine?
Upon request of @april_harding I will attempt to list some off-the-cuff principles for how my 🧵s come together.
I'm sure others do it differently, this is about how I do it.
That's right. It's a 🧵 about 🧵s.
1. Understanding the medium is important. A thread is not a blogpost. As much as possible make each tweet stand out as a stand-alone idea. The best part about threads is that each tweet can reach different people and generate different conversations.
2. The characters are limited, but you have attachments, QTs, links, etc. Try as much as possible to cite your sources and give people a path to learn more about each of your claims.
A partially effective measure will not only select for the subset of the problem it doesn't address, but the very existence of the measure can worsen the problem by creating the impression it's under control, encouraging people to let their guard down.
1. ADE:
A partially effective vaccine will not only select for the subset of the variants it doesn't kill, but the very presence of antibodies can worsen the infection by giving the virus the body's own signature, encouraging cells to let their guard down.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-…
2. Journalistic best practices not only select for the subset of disinformation they don't address, but their very existence can worsen the problem by creating the impression journalistic outlets have disinformation under control, encouraging people to let their guard down.
I think I know why I was uncomfortable about this one. Her tweet is built on a false fact claim. The evidence is not being hidden, it's right there. So in this case inversion is not making a symmetric tweet. The response is genuinely superior, since it's actually true. Huh.
... And I think this may be the first #tweetInversion that will exceed the original in likes, and it's going to do it in less than an hour. This is somewhat confirmatory of my suspicion above.
I've started trying something that may look irritating, but is testing a hypothesis. Namely:
If a tweet, with minimal modifications, can become a perfectly coherent reply to itself, then the original is vacuous meta-commentary that can be discarded without further consideration.
I've been noticing quite a few of these on-high "pretending to be wise" kind of quips that sound wise until one realizes that they are entirely free-floating and cannot be distinguished from their negatives, which also sound just as wise.
It's perfectly possible that I myself have written stuff like this in the past, though I usually try to write with reference to facts, such that a simple reversal wouldn't work. I'll continue to investigate and refine the hypothesis.
So, our friend "will", is one of the most stubborn, dishonest arguers around. Peruse his tweets if you like: @su3su2u1. If you hear him tell it, he's here to find arguments to convince his family to get vaccinated.
What really attracted my attention though, is that he didn't seem to want my help in that regard. Very, very strange.