> why do you think some people trust celebrities like Rogan over a medical expert like Fauci or, literally, the creators of vaccines?
You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
To make things even more interesting, this latest drama is because he had Robert Malone [1] as a guest on his show. Malone is not just a doctor, but he is also a scientist responsible for the early work on making mRNA vaccines possible. That's what's extra crazy about all of this. It's not even some random comedian talking out of his comfort zone. The guest is one of the most informed people about mRNA in the world. The guy literally made his career on mRNA. Yet what he says does not align with the most widely propagated take, so he must be silenced.
I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
"I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong."
Why can you safely assume that? Further, I'm less concerned about what 'most people' are saying about Malone, but more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
Based on his achievements. His achievements are extremely rare. Even most MDs (medical doctors) don't have groundbreaking research to their name, doubly so on specifically the topic they're discussing.
> more interested in what his equally credentialled peers are saying, which is that he's full of shit.
That interests me the most too. Unfortunately all the coverage I've seen thus far doesn't have any takes by equally credentialled peers - that is peers who have spent decades researching mRNA. Most coverage doesn't even have takes by MDs, nevermind equally credentialled.
Your comment and the one you linked exhibit a pattern I have noticed among people who mistake infotainment for science. There is no attention paid to the actual claims, their veracity or scientific validity. Instead there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling. It's the brave mRNA pioneer-cum-renegade standing up to the establishment like a modern Galileo. He could be saying the Earth is flat and it wouldn't matter.
But the distinguishing feature of great scientific figures who challenged the establishment and overturned accepted wisdom is that they were actually right. Semmelweis was right about hand washing. Galileo and Copernicus were right about heliocentrism. So is Malone right that athletes are dropping dead in droves from vaccination? That vaccines might actually make COVID-19 infections worse? That vaccine safety research is false and that the spike protein is highly toxic? Do you personally believe these things?
> people who mistake infotainment for science. There is no attention paid to the actual claims
More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims. I personally try really hard to ignore someone's character and address their core points instead. I think this is generally a good principle. Although it can be exhausting on random non-HN internet discussion boards, where nuanced replies and principle of charity are drowned by zero effort parroting.
That is unfortunately a common theme with most reporting I've seen of this drama. The stories contain vague statements like "misinformation about covid" but no actual claims are pointed out and then refuted. It's like these outlets are so afraid of this misinformation that they think even mentioning these claims would be harmful. The less charitable interpretation would of course be that most outlet reporters haven't even watched the podcast.
> there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling
This is a strategy heavily promoted by pro-vax tribes. Don't listen to random influencers, listen to doctors. It's also something that has been used heavily against Joe Rogan. Criticism that he has non-experts on the show talking outside of their expertise. Now when Joe Rogan got an actual MD on his show, whose life work has extreme relevance to covid - well the appeal to authority story has suddenly vanished. Most coverage of this drama doesn't list Malone's achievements at all, probably because then they couldn't get away with just handwaving away what he says. Most stories focus on Joe Rogan personally, as if he's the one making the statements.
> So is Malone right [? ...] Do you personally believe these things?
He's probably right about some things like corners being cut against protocol with the Pfizer approval. He's probably wrong about vaccines making infections worse. However I don't really have strong opinions on the points Malone is making. I'm participating in this discussion because of the bigger picture.
What I take issue with is the manufactured and/or sloppy coverage of this. Malone's achievements shouldn't be pushed under the rug. His expertise shouldn't be hidden. If he has gone crazy in old age, so be it. However that case should then be made in strength. Instead the narrative is that Joe Rogan spreads misinformation and Malone is just another garden variety conspiracy nut.
> More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims
Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.
The Malone controversy really has little to do with heroes, villains and victims. It's a very straightforward matter: he used his profile to share wildly unscientific claims, hoax videos and delusional "mass formation psychosis" theories to the public. Because this contributes to an existing public health crisis it has invited scrutiny of his person and of platforms that host his content. Cause and effect. Simple stuff.
> Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.
I refute these.
Where is the pathos? There certainly wasn't any intent of emotional appeal, I never do that. Would be good to know which part of my comment triggered an emotional response.
What tribalism? Mentioning that HN has better commentators or mentioning that pro-vax tribes exist? Please do let me know, what part of my comment constitutes tribalism.
As for narrativization, well this is a HN comment not an Excel sheet. All comments here are narratives, including yours. So not sure what to make of that. Seems like a red herring.
Malone received criticism for propagating COVID-19 misinformation, including making claims about the toxicity of spike proteins generated by some COVID-19 vaccines;[4][19][6][31] using interviews on mass media to popularize medication with ivermectin;[32] and tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted.[4] He said that LinkedIn temporarily suspended his account over a post stating that the Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation was also a board member at Pfizer, and other posts questioning the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines.[33][34] Malone has also falsely claimed that the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 infections,[1] and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August 2021.[35] In November 2021, Malone shared a deceptive video on Twitter that falsely linked athlete deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, the video suggested that Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player who died of sudden cardiac arrest, had died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West died in 2013 from an undiagnosed heart condition. Malone deleted the video from his Twitter account after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from West's family. Malone later said on Twitter that he did not know the video was doctored.[36] On December 29, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Malone from its platform, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy",[37][38] after he shared on that platform a video about supposed harmful effects of the Pfizer vaccine.[39][40]
On December 30, 2021, Malone claimed on the The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that something called "mass formation psychosis" was developing in American society in its reaction to COVID-19 just as during the rise of Nazi Germany.[41][42] The term mass formation psychosis isn't found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is not based on factual medical information, and is described by Steve Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, as "more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact."[43] Clips of the podcast episode were removed by YouTube from their platform for violating the site's Community Guidelines.[42] 270 physicians, scientists, academics, nurses and students wrote an open letter to Spotify complaining about the content of the podcast.[44][45] On January 3, 2022, Congressman Troy Nehls entered a full transcript[2][46] of The Joe Rogan Experience interview with Malone into the Congressional Record in order to circumvent what he said was censorship by social media.[2][47]
On January 23, 2022, Malone spoke at an anti-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandate rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[36][48]
> You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
Rogan is providing his guests with a massive platform that can be used to disseminate information, so I think he has a responsibility to make sure his guests aren't spreading misinformation. Imagine if a popular influencer with a young fanbase had a guest on that swore eating Tide Pods was good for your health. Would you think a simple "wow" would be enough to absolve that influencer of responsibility for the message being disseminated?
> I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
From what I can find he contributed one building block 30 years ago. There's been 3 decades of research and development involving hundreds or thousands of people since then. Was he involved in the space at all in the last 2 decades prior to Covid? I tried to find if he kept up with the field, but search results are saturated with the latest controversy.
The best I could do for myself to understand his claims was a fact check website that references the sources that Malone was citing on Rogan's podcast [1]. The thing that really jumps out at me is that he's willing to use preprint sources that haven't been peer reviewed, so they haven't undergone any scrutiny or survived any criticism. Some of the authors of the sources even say he's misinterpreting or misrepresenting the results.
Malone:
> “[T]here is signs in some data […] from Denmark, among other places of negative efficacy against Omicron as a function of the number of vaccinations up to three”
vs:
> The first author of the preprint, medical statistician and epidemiologist Christian Holm Hansen, explained to Health Feedback that the claim misrepresented their results. He said that this effect often arises due to biases, which “are quite common in VE estimation from observational studies based on population data.” These biases include potential differences in detection, testing, or behavior between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
So am I supposed to believe Malone or the author of the paper that Malone is citing? One of them is actively working on the topic as their day job / career and the other is touring around doing talk shows like a celebrity. Do you think Malone knows more about a paper written by Christian Holm Hansen than Christian Holm Hansen does?
Malone isn't doing any original research from what I could find, so if the author of work he's citing refutes him, I think that's adequate to call it misinformation or misrepresentation. And I think that harsh label is warranted because he never comes back around to correct the record. If Malone was concerned about his long term credibility and corrected himself then I would call it a misunderstanding.
I've seen Malone giving information compared to Fauci giving information and that's not a reasonable comparison IMO. At best Malone is a small cog in a big machine while Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Malone is presenting an individual opinion while Fauci is presenting a consensus opinion that's expected to be the aggregate of the entire industry.
Also, Rogan calling Malone "the inventor of mRNA" is a bit of an embellishment. That's like having Tim Paterson on a podcast and calling him "the inventor of MS Azure" because he wrote DOS 30 years prior.
I'll finish by saying I think the politicization is terrible for us long term. In Canada we have some provinces with strict lockdown measures and some with none. The ones with strict measures are collecting detailed stats to substantiate their viewpoint and some of the provinces without are planning to de-emphasize stat collection.
That's a big loss for everyone because we're going to miss out on an opportunity to analyze the effectiveness of strict social restrictions vs none. The problem is that it's a political death sentence for the anti-lockdown choice if the data says they were wrong, so the solution is to hide the truth even if it could end up supporting that position.
We're also at risk of losing out on the highest value health related incident post-mortem in the history of mankind because the politicization will prevent everyone involved from being honest and upfront about things that worked, things that didn't work, mistakes that were made, improvements that could be made in the future, etc..
So, in the context of politicizing the topic, I think entertainers like Rogan are doing a quite a bit of harm.
You seem to be somewhat misinformed. It's not what Joe Rogan says that is under fire, it's what his guests say. Rogan mostly says stuff like "wow" and lets his guests speak.
To make things even more interesting, this latest drama is because he had Robert Malone [1] as a guest on his show. Malone is not just a doctor, but he is also a scientist responsible for the early work on making mRNA vaccines possible. That's what's extra crazy about all of this. It's not even some random comedian talking out of his comfort zone. The guest is one of the most informed people about mRNA in the world. The guy literally made his career on mRNA. Yet what he says does not align with the most widely propagated take, so he must be silenced.
I personally don't know enough about mRNA to have a say, but what I can safely assume is that Malone knows more about mRNA than most people who are saying he is wrong.
--
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
PS. Another great HN comment about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30219457