2. I've had antivaxxers deluge the board of governors of my uni with complaints about a nonexistent "COI" trying to get me fired, disciplined, or at least silenced. 3. I've had a believer in a cancer quack complain about my blog and me to the state medical board. 2/
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4. I've had a cancer quack send emails complaining about me to every faculty member in my department whose email address he could find. 5. Six years later, that same cancer quack still occasionally surprises me with such an email to everyone. in the deparment. 3/
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6. Most recently (last week), I was on the receiving end of abusive, threatening, angry rants left on voicemail at my cancer center office by believers in chronic Lyme disease. 7. A few years ago I and every other
@ScienceBasedMed blogger were sued by a "Lyme-literate" doc. 4/Show this thread -
The bottom line is this. Harassing critics and defenders of science-based medicine at their place of work is a feature, not a bug, of the strategies used by science-denying cranks and quacks. It's happened to me so many times over the last 16 years I can't remember how many. 5/
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Fortunately, in academia, these tactics *rarely* work, because of the ethos of academic freedom. Indeed, one of my bosses routinely jokes when he sees me that he hasn't had any complaints about me recently. My response is usually to say that I must be falling down on the job. 6/
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However, if you're working for a private company, quite often these techniques will be effective because management doesn't want to deal with the hassles of cranks bothering them about an employee's social media activity. Also, they can just fire you if you don't stop. 7/
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Similarly, another technique of cranks to silence an employee is to flood the social media pages of the university or company with abusive messages. If the critic is a physician, posting fake negative reviews on physician review sites is another favorite tactic. 8/
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And people wonder why so many of us on social media who stand up for science like to remain pseudonymous. Of course, your pseudonym has to be bulletproof, because the cranks are VERY good at doxxing. 9/
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This is the reality for those who would push back against pseudoscience, quackery, misinformation, and disinformation. 10/10
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Yep. They’ll take photos of your kids and manipulate them. I have had my photo fused with Satan before. An NP quack put my address in the local news in the comments section. Erin called me transgender and said she had an FBI file. They mock you secretly in their groups, stalk u
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2/ they’ve threatened to “beat my ass” or have me fired(I was not working at the time lol). They’ve threatened my life and my family. A friend got a pipe bomb mailed to him. They’ll call you every name in the book. They’re a lovely bunch.
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