There are plenty of bright people who convince themselves of something that's crazy and unsupported by evidence. It's classic confirmation bias.
Linus Pauling was one of the founders of molecular biology and spent part of his later life advocating that people megadose vitamin c to cure heart disease, something that could have very well hurt people who chose that over a more evidence-backed treatment.
Steve Jobs tried treating his cancer through juice cleanses until it became too late-stage to treat conventionally.
Malone really should not be given a platform. We know that being unvaccinated can make covid way more severe and puts you at 14x higher risk of death from covid, and there is a huge body of evidence on covid vaccine efficacy from the literal billions of people worldwide who have been vaccinated.
People will almost certainly die because he lends credibility to anti-vaccination arguments.
Where was his involvement in the development or testing of the vaccines we’re actually using? The extensive safety and efficacy reviews which were conducted in multiple countries prior to authorization? The ongoing review since then?
That’s what matters when discussing his expertise on the subject of the COVID vaccine. It doesn’t matter how great he might have been at one of the many parts of the scientific process which got us here, what matters is the topic we’re actually discussing. Scientists are not like you see in the movies: nobody is an expert at everything and they’re not perfect, either — that’s why the process is built around adversarial review since everyone makes mistakes. Linus Pauling was a Nobel laureate and by all accounts a brilliant researcher but that didn’t mean he was right about vitamin megadoses.
He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety and speaking at antivax events. He doesn’t need to believe what he’s saying - plenty of people find it profitable not to - but that’s irrelevant because his public statements have the same impact whether or not he believes them.
> > His last tweets: "Pfizer, Moderna Vaccines ‘Dramatically Increase’ Heart Attack Risk, Renowned Cardiologist Warns"
> Malone received criticism for propagating COVID-19 misinformation, including making unsupported claims about the alleged toxicity of spike proteins generated by some COVID-19 vaccines;[2][12][4][24] using interviews on mass media to popularize self-medication with ivermectin;[25] and tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted.[2] He said LinkedIn suspended his account over what he claimed were posts he had made questioning the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines.[26] Malone has also claimed that the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 infections.[1]
I wonder why people get off track so far at some points. Same with AIDS french researcher whose name escapes me at the moment.
It’s baffling that anyone thinks a quote from an unnamed “medical researcher” is a logical debunking of all of modern COVID science.
The vaccine unquestionably reduces severe infection, hospitalization, and death. It’s not even a question at this point.
I suppose this is why Rogan’s anti-vaccine conspiracy drivel thrives despite not even being logically self-consistent: There’s an appetite for contrarian information, and those who enjoy this contrarianism will unquestionably absorb anything, no matter how illogical, as long as it’s contrarian.
It's because he makes constant clearly incorrect scientific claims, says conspiratorial things about vaccines that are obviously wrong. We haven't hidden the deaths of millions of people who got the COVID vaccine. We just haven't. And for all the billions of people who got the vaccine, I'm sure there were a handful of people that had serious reactions. But contrast that with the millions of people who literally died just in the US. He is trying to reverse that equation and claiming that it's all a big secret with no evidence, that's the problem with people like him.
If you're debating whether he was the true creator of the mRNA technology or if he has some anti-vax bias influencing is opinions you're completely missing the point.
Whether you like it or not, Dr Malone should be part of the conversation on the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines and the treatment of COVID because if he is not qualified to speak or have an opinion on this topic then literally who is?
It's absolutely ridiculous that we're still at each others throats on this. If there was some hypothetical pro-vax radical at Pfizer pushing the need for quarterly boosters then they should equally be part of the conversation. This isn't Alex Jones anymore, these are educated and previously respected people with huge followings who should have a voice in a supposedly free, democratic country. Wake up.
He also retweeted claims that the Covid vaccines killed twice as many people as they saved.
Being critical of the vaccine is one thing, but that crosses into an extraordinary and borderline mathematically-infeasible claim that defies virtually all the published data and observations provided by the rest of the scientific and medical community, and requires strong evidence to support it.
It is misinformation because it is outright wrong. Follow Malone for a couple of weeks and you will see he has nothing else to share but: Vaccines are bad, Vaccines are killing people.
> As we prevent three deaths by vaccinating, we incur two deaths.
> "Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed?"
This is what got him banned from twitter.
Why don't you try to investigate a bit yourself? People with credentials can have no other motive to spread misinformation and all the motive to "save the humanity" ? Sad to see this on HN.
Respectfully, Dr. Malone's entire platform is contrarianism. He is opportunistically acting on his own behalf in my belief.
Recently, he published an article highlighting a noted increase in insurance claims (death and disability) in Indiana. He then intentionally implied a link and placed blame on the vaccine.
However, he took no care whatsoever to do any thoughtful analysis of the data before presenting the conclusions he did. He did not even attempt to perform a comparative analysis between Indiana and other states based on vaccination rates. This is low-hanging-fruit simplicity that could have either disproven his claim or supported it - if he cared to. He did not.
This is not the type of information I expect to see come from someone supposedly claiming to be on the right side of science here.
And yet it remains heavily influential, reaching millions of people via Twitter, Joe Rogan, and other mediums, reducing critical analysis to trivial opinion masking as expertise.
If there were significant harms then they would arise is the rigorous trials done before a vaccine is released. This isn’t exactly an unstudied area and his extraordinary claims have no scientifically reviewed evidence. He’s just a guy saying things.
Well now, Robert Malone was recently deplatformed for his views on the Covid Response[1], despite being an expert in the sort of tech used to build these vaccines with citations going back to at least 1990. I'd hardly call his opinion 'irrelavant'.
In his own words, he's a scientist that believes in vaccines, but believe that too many shortcuts has been taken in developing the Covid-vaccines, and that big pharma has too much influence in forcing them onto everyone.
Don't know if this is true or not, but just a quick summary of what his stance seems to be.
Uh oh. This post seems to have a lot of red flags.
- Custom TLD specifically for this one expert
- VERY emotional language, lots of blame
- Implicitly wants people to die [1] because he doesn't believe vaccines work faster than viral evolution
- Oh ok, this guy is a well-known vaccination sceptic [2]
[1] "I am truly afraid that these dynamics will eventually allow for the natural selection of individuals with uncompromised innate immunity while eliminating those without it."
> He’s making false claims about the vaccines’ safety
Like what? From your Atlantic piece this seems to be the closest to a false claim and its pretty underwhelming. These pieces read more like I should be upset because he appears is in the same sentence as Steve Bannon or the Proud Boys than the actual content of what he has said.
"Malone may keep company with vaccine skeptics, but he insists he is not one himself. His objections to the Pfizer and Moderna shots have to do mostly with their expedited approval process and with the government’s system for tracking adverse reactions. Speaking as a doctor, he would probably recommend their use only for those at highest risk from COVID-19. Everyone else should be wary" [1]
> and speaking at antivax events.
The one linked in your second article is an Anti-Vaccine Mandate event, which is not the same thing as being anti vaccine. It's possible to appreciate the benefits of vaccines and simultaneous think the government shouldn't force everyone to take one.
You just used an easiy disproved oblique ad-hominem to lessen his credibility without even having actually researched the man. It sounded like a "sources have indicated" TV hit piece.
He developped part of the early treatment protocols Covid everybody is using in Spring 2020. Before that, he was one of the foremost authorities in clinical cardiology in the US, full Professor at a major university (Texas A&M), Masters in public health, also editor of two journals, and is in the five most cited researchers in the US.
He was "the man" in his field, and people around the world can thank his discoveries for having survived Covid.
Yet, he somehow started being a misinformer and losing credit the moment he talked about the vaccines in a less than flattering way.
The "talk" page tab of the same wikipedia page you are citing is quite revealing in that regard.
Hmm... let's pick one of these guys at random. Okay, Malone. Let's pull up his file (from WP):
Starting in mid-2021, Malone received criticism for propagating COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, including making "dangerous" and misleading claims about the toxicity of spike proteins generated by some COVID-19 vaccines; using interviews on mass media to popularize medication with ivermectin; and tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted. ... 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 succumbed to sudden cardiac arrest, had actually died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West had died years earlier, in 2013, due to an undiagnosed heart condition. ... On December 29, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Malone from its platform, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy", after he shared on that platform a video about supposed harmful effects of the Pfizer vaccine. In an April 1, 2022 interview, Malone made the unfounded claim that COVID-19 vaccines are "damaging T cell responses" and "causing a form of AIDS". Malone claimed that he had "lots of scientific data" to back up his claim, but did not cite evidence.
Bhattacharya and Atlas went on to promote the antivax Great Barrington Declaration, sponsored by a liberatarian think tank known until that point mostly for rabid climate change denialism.
Point being: it's a huge stretch to say these guys were "proved right". And quite alarmist to assert that de-platforming them "proved deadly".
Linus Pauling was one of the founders of molecular biology and spent part of his later life advocating that people megadose vitamin c to cure heart disease, something that could have very well hurt people who chose that over a more evidence-backed treatment.
Steve Jobs tried treating his cancer through juice cleanses until it became too late-stage to treat conventionally.
Malone really should not be given a platform. We know that being unvaccinated can make covid way more severe and puts you at 14x higher risk of death from covid, and there is a huge body of evidence on covid vaccine efficacy from the literal billions of people worldwide who have been vaccinated.
People will almost certainly die because he lends credibility to anti-vaccination arguments.
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