>not handling his Covid-related conversations with the diligence a pandemic ethically requires
I like Joe Rogan but when it comes to vaccines he becomes incoherent. I didn't listen to the episode at the center of this but I listened to another one where he was pushing unsubstantiated statistics on the vaccine and myocarditis. The guest had to correct him with official data on multiple occasions.
>Yes, that one. Rogan never really corrects himself. He starts pushing back on the data source and then they just transition on to something else. I did see that later on Twitter he did seemingly admit to being fact checked. And blames it on it being a long form show where the topics aren't disclosed up front.
Ya that's fair. He does seem surprised when they fact-checked the data during the conversation.
>In those cases why do you submit a thesis, rather than simply stating, "I don't really know the facts here"? That's what reasonable people do all the time. Rather he is counting on you to not know the facts or be able to fact check him in real time. He just steam rolls you.
I don't think that's fair. They fact check real-time constantly. There is a guy in the room who's job it is to fact check real time. They would start a conversation then discuss aspects of it, and the person would look up what they are discussing and show the results. This fact checker was the person who brought up refuting evidence to the myocarditis claim.
His show reminds me of the old Dick Cavett or Phil Donahue type long form shows, except it's 3 hours long. A conversational show like that is different from a show where you have a set agenda with strict talking points you don't deviate from, like a newscast would have.
Also to be fair, he has a lot of people on who are professionals in their relevant fields. One of the guys the media is currently lambasting as a covid "misinformationalist" is an MD that helped create the technology used by the covid vaccine.
>With Trump in particular I felt that the "mainstream" media largely gave him a pass on most of his speeches unless they were nationally televised. Some of his worst comments were stump speeches that never were aired nationally, but could be found on YouTube and other sites. I think he was much worse than most America believes.
It seems to me the news blew things he said out of proportion that they didn't need to. As someone who looked at some of the source material, what the news said he said and what he actually said didn't match up. It definitely hurt their credibility, IMO. Perhaps they ignored the more egregious things you are mentioning in stump speeches, which seems like an odd tactic.
> This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity
You mean his instinct is to let his guests speak and let the listeners make up their own mind? I wonder why Rogan is so popular.
> Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines.
Rogan has stated openly many times that his guiding ethos is literally to have people on that he finds interesting or wants to learn more about. I've seen nothing to really contradict this. This likely just intersects with controversial and/or popular in some or many cases, but it's disingenuous to then claim that this was the motive all along.
> I completely disagree with his stance on vaccinations but I also disagree that he's some sort of major source of disinformation.
Just to play with this a bit. Joe Rogan is unvaccinated himself, and he at least has recommended young people not to get vaccinated.
In the meantime ICU beds are/have been occupied by overwhelmingly unvaccinated people (proportionally) pushing out other urgent medical care, all over the world.
I agree that we can't blame everything on something/someone specific, but JRE is the biggest podcast on the planet, so I think it's fair to say he's probably one major source (among others).
> I'm comfortable enough with my intellect that I can listen to these (or not) without having my brain turned to mush
It's an interesting turn of phrase, because there's a very real pipeline in which people with less-trained critical thinking skills listen to Rogan -> cannot distinguish openness from endorsement -> believe Rogan is endorsing anti-vaxx voices -> contribute to an aggregate increase in community transmissibility of communicable diseases with proven neurological impacts -> said diseases turn immunocompromised people's neurons to "mush" at an increased rate, through no fault or Rogan-listening of the victims' own.
Rogan has consistently made a decision to prioritize the "vibe" of his podcast over pushing his interview subjects in a way that would make it clear that his provision of a platform is not endorsement. Sure, he challenges things as you have mentioned, but when he challenges anti-vaxx voices no more or no less than he would a guest who, say, had an opinion about hunting he didn't like, that creates a responsibility that I think does scale with audience size.
> I’d much rather that people adopt Joe Rogan’s humble attitude of “I don’t know” than cop an overconfident attitude because they think they know everything.
The problem is that Joe has some really strong opinions and uses the "I don't know" schtick as a cudgel to avoid confronting contrary evidence. Look at how he responds when pushed on aliens, COVID, etc.
Thankfully he's not like that in the majority of interviews, but anything dovetailing a conspiracy is painful is listen to.
Well, it wasn't really an example at all as he's petty open about how silly he was to believe it, but ok.
Rogan invites anyone on who he finds interesting. Yes, he has a proclivity to want to believe things that are a bit out there, but he challenges a lot of those "wackos" as well. He also brings on many field experts just to hear what they have to say.
I think you're wrong about Joe fishing for clicks. He's been doing this a long time now and his format hasn't really changes. He's not purporting to be an expert of any kind (hell, he doesn't even claim to be intelligent) and he's an intellectually open person.
His show is not a platform for guests who won't offend your sensibilities, and he has no obligation to censor for you. If you don't like what a guest is saying then great; make up your own mind. He's not trying to convince you.
The trouble with Joe Rogan is that he tends to invite people on who agree with his existing worldview (in this case, vaccine skepticism), and he tends not to challenge them whatsoever, so they are allowed to spout whatever nonsense with zero pushback. I don’t think this is out of malice by the way, I think he just doesn’t realise they’re spreading misinformation.
From the article:
>>> Joe Rogan seems like an affable guy. He reminds me of many men I have met in the gym: cheerful bros who are open-minded to an alarming degree, meaning to the point where no idea is so insane that one can be sure they won’t find it persuasive. They could vote for Bernie, they could go Nazi, they could start believing in alien abductions or QAnon or chemtrails. They are not deep thinkers, so they can be excessively impressed by the fact “a study found” something, or “a doctor says” it. They are sincere in wanting to know the truth, they are not outright malicious, they change their minds (sometimes daily), but they are not trained in the research and critical thinking skills that are vital in sorting science from pseudoscience (or the loopy conspiracies from the true ones). >>>
Admission, I've listened to Rogan here and there for a few years, rarely getting to the end of a podcast. I happened to pick one randomly last month, after not listening to any for awhile, and it was the one with the doctor who claims to have invented mRNA vaccines.
I listened with an open mind, but my alarms went off as the guy started injecting more and more hyperbole and FUD into the conversation. There were a lot of things he said that made me go, "well, what about this?" E.g. my gf and my ex both missed their periods the month after the vax. But they came back, and there hasn't been some mass sterilization event that we'd surely be aware of if, as this guy claimed, the vaccine produced spike proteins in sufficient quantities and that those were attracted to and decimating womens' eggs and ovaries. What I heard was a guy trying to use his science degrees and a vague history in immunology to push a long-running antivax fearmongering tactic about women being sterilized, which as a conspiracy theory goes back to the old "great replacement" and antisemitic theory. And I was kinda angry listening to it, because my question to him would be, if it sterilizes people then how come Israel gave it to everyone? I'm pretty sure that Israel is in the business of keeping Jews alive and having (us) reproduce, and avoiding another genocide.
But Rogan didn't ask anything, and I had to turn it off after about an hour and a half, because Rogan kept just saying "oh, wow." and "oh, no really?" Like... give the guy room to talk, sure, but the whole incredulous act and like, really, doctor, you don't say thing... it just struck me as BS. As insincere.
And that episode I randomly listened to turned out to be the one that Neil Young went nuts about, and all that. So I listened to Rogan's apology and thought I'd try one more time tonight; and his newest is with a climate scientist from BP who talks like my dentist and is about as convincing, while Joe keeps going "oh no, really? And they're suppressing you? Omigod!"
At some point you have to just accept that he isn't the openminded bro with no agenda that you want him to be, and he's actually just trolling and platforming trolls. OTOH maybe this is the point where a lot of gullible people kind of realize that (myself included).
> 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.
> 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.
>So you think Rogan has more influence than the CDC's guidelines
That's not really the point but, for some, yes, he does have more influence. That "some" apparently includes you.
>You don't think he gets negative press or death threats?
Again, not the point. You asked why Fauci and others weren't challenged. My response was that, not only is he challenged, but he's also been the target of personal attacks, conspiracy theories, and death threats.
>Rogan has a diverse assortment on his show, and admits he is not an expert
Yet, he continuously pushes a counter-mainstream narrative that you seem to be repeating here.
>However, when bodies of so-called authority or expert credentials make policy you and your family will have to live by
To each his/her own, but I think those credentials are meaningful. We've had expert public health guidance for decades brought to us by the "so-called experts" and it's generally served us well, as evidenced by the fact that you've probably never had polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, etc. And, you're also not likely to die from a case of diarrhea.
>You are free to go after Rogan.
Yes. I know. But, I wasn't going after him, as much as pointing out the reality that people (seemingly yourself included) respect his opinions over those of public health officials.
What were the exact things that Rogan or his guests said that were misinformation? I don't watch him, but the excerpts I watched from the Robert Malone interview weren't misinformation. The guy even seemed to be pro-vax.
> 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 am opposed to the boiling down of a non-establishment discussion podcast to the singular word "misinformation.
Right, but they are calling some of the specific content misinformation. The fact that it’s an open discussion on a non-establishment podcast is irrelevant to the content being verifiable or reliable or rational.
And no, we don’t need more open discussions about every single viewpoint, regardless of feasibility. Just being anti-establishment doesn’t mean you have something worth saying or sharing. You need to have a little more substance than just doubting the establishment for the sake of doubting the establishment.
If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because you’re a virologist and have a theory that can be tested or a question about the research or development process that the establishment can’t answer adequately, great, let’s get that view out there. If you doubt the vaccine efficacy because doing so gets you attention from Rogan’s ~11M listeners per episode, or because you just want to challenge the establishment then sorry, you’re not adding value to the national conversation.
> So, I read the articles and, importantly, the comments. Rarely do I see criticism beyond simple ad hominem attacks.
My theory is that there is an ongoing media campaign being waged to discredit and demonize Joe Rogan. Ever since he publicly claimed his course of Ivermectin treatment he has been treated as some kind of public enemy by most news media. I find it strange because he has essentially promoted smoking DMT on his podcast - a practice which is likely quite bad for your health, but no really gave that any attention aside from a few memes. But he mentions taking an antiviral and everyone starts treating him like a serious threat to society.
"the citations are WHO or studies from Israel / Great Britain / Canada". Discreted doctors can cite discredited studies on Rogan's show with absolutely no pushback. They can also cite good studies but suggest a wrong conclusion based on their own interpretation.
Note: I'm a PhD-trained scientist with extensive background in medical biology. I'm obviously not the target for Rogan's show, but what I can say is that I'm a damn good judge of bullshit and Rogan is allowing people to state total bullshit with zero checking if the statements are scientifically accurate or not.
> Rogan is clearly pandering to an audience who already know what they want to hear.
I don’t think that’s the case for the majority of his listeners. I like him because he’s a good interviewer and has lots of interesting guests from across the political (and apolitical) spectrum. And I’m tripled vaccinated, since I guess that’s needed for credibility now.
Serious question: is there a point-by-point debunking of the alleged “dangerous misinformation” appearing on his show?
I think funding something like that would have been a better use of Neil Young’s Spotify royalties than just giving them up.
Rogan has a long history of false vaccine claims on his show, presented both by him and his guests:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misi...
He'll surely challenge a guest when he thinks they're wrong, it's his own mistruths and the ones he ignores that are at issue here.
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