Thank you, @DKThomp for doing the unpleasant work of documenting (a fraction) of Alex Berenson many many (I can only conclude deliberately) wildly misleading and flat-out-false claims.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/ …
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It's an interesting case because I'm wary of labeling things misinformation too quickly. Science is much wider than whatever scientific authorities have digested at the moment, and freewheeling and yes, even acrimonious debate goes with the territory.
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But there's clearly a line between people having (heated and rancorous) intra-science debates, and are flat-out attempting to mislead, misinform and misrepresent. That line is hard to tell if you are not steeped in the field, and someone is deliberately pretending to be former.
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Replying to @zeynep
Watching Berenson slide from crankish skeptic to full-on conspiracy theorist has been interesting. There were a couple weeks last March--eons ago--when he was actually doing a good job puncturing some of the claims being made while pushing a cockeyed view.
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Replying to @avizvizenilman @zeynep
This also happened with marijuana. He actually is a pretty good reporter/skeptic -- but then he pushes his own theories, has an ego the size of the moon, and things get really nasty very quickly.
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Replying to @zeynep
I thought this was smart-- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/does-the-king-of-the-covid-19-contrarians-have-a-case … delinking him from institutions exacerbated his worst tendencies over time
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Replying to @avizvizenilman @zeynep
I think of him and Michael Flynn in a similar boat--investigative reporters, and military intelligence officials are rewarded for being accurate and insightful conspiracy theorists, and when you take away the institutional safeguards the tendency that was rewarded is unchecked
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Yeah. One form of conspiratorial thinking is scientific curiosity without guardrails, increasingly separated from empirical reality checks and progressively more embedded in a social-reward feedback system.
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