Don't care about RFK Jr one way or another, but I checked a few claims in the article and every fact check failed. This is the most maliciously written article I've ever seen on Ars Technica :(
Examples:
> Kennedy published a story in Rolling Stone and Salon.com titled "Deadly Immunity," which ... described Offit as "in the pocket" of the pharmaceutical industry and claimed RotaTeq was "laced" with thimerosal.
They don't link to the article but the only place "in the pocket" appears is a direct quote from Offit himself arguing that he is immune to conflicts of interest [1].
> Rolling Stone and Salon amended some of the article's problems, but eventually Salon retracted it and Rolling Stone deleted it.
The wording implies that the article had so many factual errors by RFK Jr it was pulled shortly after publication, but Salon actually deleted it six years later in sync with the release of a new book on public health by a Salon staffer. Nor were any of the errors material to the case the article made, and Salon apologized to RFJ Jr in writing for introducing them as they reduced the word count of his article. None of this section is remotely close to what really appears to have happened.
> Looking back, Offit said he was sandbagged. "He's a liar. He lied about who he was; he lied about what he was doing. He was just wanting to set me up," Offit said.
Nothing in the article "sandbags" Offit in any way. He's treated with kid gloves and only appears twice, both times via direct quotes from himself.
> But Kennedy has frequently used thimerosal as a vaccine bogeyman over the years, claiming it causes harms (there is no evidence for this).
It's literally toxic.
> he doesn't believe in a foundational scientific principle: germ theory ... Kennedy is a germ theory denialist and terrain theory embracer
And yet Ars admits (much later) that "Kennedy seems to accept that bacteria and viruses are real" and that terrain theory obviously does have merits. People who have read his book (I haven't) have said Kennedy just wants a better balance between improving people's general health and specifically pathogen-targeted pharmaceuticals.
Examples:
> Kennedy published a story in Rolling Stone and Salon.com titled "Deadly Immunity," which ... described Offit as "in the pocket" of the pharmaceutical industry and claimed RotaTeq was "laced" with thimerosal.
They don't link to the article but the only place "in the pocket" appears is a direct quote from Offit himself arguing that he is immune to conflicts of interest [1].
> Rolling Stone and Salon amended some of the article's problems, but eventually Salon retracted it and Rolling Stone deleted it.
The wording implies that the article had so many factual errors by RFK Jr it was pulled shortly after publication, but Salon actually deleted it six years later in sync with the release of a new book on public health by a Salon staffer. Nor were any of the errors material to the case the article made, and Salon apologized to RFJ Jr in writing for introducing them as they reduced the word count of his article. None of this section is remotely close to what really appears to have happened.
> Looking back, Offit said he was sandbagged. "He's a liar. He lied about who he was; he lied about what he was doing. He was just wanting to set me up," Offit said.
Nothing in the article "sandbags" Offit in any way. He's treated with kid gloves and only appears twice, both times via direct quotes from himself.
> But Kennedy has frequently used thimerosal as a vaccine bogeyman over the years, claiming it causes harms (there is no evidence for this).
It's literally toxic.
> he doesn't believe in a foundational scientific principle: germ theory ... Kennedy is a germ theory denialist and terrain theory embracer
And yet Ars admits (much later) that "Kennedy seems to accept that bacteria and viruses are real" and that terrain theory obviously does have merits. People who have read his book (I haven't) have said Kennedy just wants a better balance between improving people's general health and specifically pathogen-targeted pharmaceuticals.
[1] https://archive.org/stream/deadly-immunity-by-robert-f.-kenn...