Scientists shouldn't debate gaslighters
Last weekend, Twitter and later the mainstream media exploded with a controversy surrounding an invitation to prominent vaccine scientist Peter Hotez to debate anti-vax charlatan and spoiler presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr on the podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. There was an immediate rally around Hotez by scientists and celebrities on Twitter and lots of discussion about why this invitation is a classic anti-science setup.
Hucksters like RFK Jr are skilled at flooding the zone with garbage. Kennedy recently told Rogan that Wi-Fi could open the blood-brain barrier and cause cancer. Absurd statements like this are a trap for scientists. A scientist wants to explain how conservation of energy works and why Kennedy’s assertion violates just about every principle there is in chemistry and physics. This approach sets up two huge problems. First, it gives RFK’s garbage equal footing with principles that have been established by centuries of science. The second is that to a lay listener, the scientist just comes off as fitting the stereotype of a nitpicking nerd and RFK looks like a powerful communicator. Hotez debating RFK about vaccines would produce the same result...
When scientists refuse these “debates,” the other side gets the opportunity to say that they are turning them down for fear of being challenged. The opposition can claim to be “just asking questions,” even though they don’t care about the answers. But these reactions are preferable to giving them a platform.
The latest kerfuffle is another reminder of something important that science has not solved: There are few figures who are rhetorical matches for merchants of doubt like RFK Jr. Most scientists aren’t prepared to take on his firehose of nonsense. The scientific community desperately needs equally skilled pundits to defend science...
In the meantime, we can be gratified at the way scientists and clear thinkers rallied around Hotez, and his poise in the face of all of the online abuse he endured.
[BTW, I am an AAAS member] I came to this Twitter shitstorm via an acrimonious back & forth between the eminent show producer and writer
David Simon (
@AoDespair: e.g.,
The Wire,
Treme, etc
.) and a bunch of poignant anti-vax, anti-science pro-militia "mooks." It was nice to see Dr. Gorski (
@ScienceBasedMed) to chime in w/rebuttal.
The fracas inevitable escalated into overt calls for violence against. Dr. Hotez. to wit:
I, along with many others, immediately reported that "fenix ammunition" tweet to Content Moderation and a number of relevant law enforcement entities. A particularly galling aspect of this was the presence of Twitter owner Elon Musk egging things on, stirring up the haters.
fenix ammunition is a company based in Michigan just west of Detroit. Owned by this guy:
 |
Justin Nazaroff, CEO
42920 W 10 Mile Rd, Novi, MI 48375
|
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| "Bringing the arsenal of democracy back to Detroit, one precision cartridge at a time." |
Below: He thinks this kind of stuff is funny.
DR HOTEZ
An ongoing Twitter debate over vaccine misinformation between podcaster Joe Rogan and scientist Peter Hotez has led a number of individuals—including billionaires Bill Ackman and Elon Musk—to urge Hotez to debate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an online spat that purportedly led anti-vaxxers to show up at Hotez’s home to “stalk” him.
The conflict started Saturday, after Hotez tweeted a Vice article that was critical of an interview Rogan did with Kennedy on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Kennedy presented false claims about vaccines—including links to autism that most experts have discredited—which Hotez described as “nonsense.”
Rogan responded to Hotez’s criticism by inviting the vaccine scientist onto his podcast to debate Kennedy and pledging $100,000 to charity if Hotez agreed.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
This man has lost his mind. His latest? "Wifi causes brain cancer."
One of the recent Twitter comments on this dustup said that "Hotez and Fauci should hang together."
Dr. Peter Hotez discusses how an antivaccine movement became a dangerous political campaign promoted by elected officials and amplified by news media, causing thousands of American deaths.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.
In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans' health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers' eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process.
Below, excerpt, TX Monthly long-read from 2017
One afternoon in October 2016, Peter Hotez holed up in his office at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, where he is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine. Surrounded by obscure science volumes and honors bestowed by dignitaries ranging from Bill Clinton to Greg Abbott, he meticulously set about injecting himself into a battle that most scientists had been careful to avoid. Hotez had spent his career fighting deadly diseases in far-flung corners of the world, but now he began tapping out an essay called “Texas and Its Measles Epidemics” for the scientific journal PLOS Medicine. The modest title belied just how provocative the article would turn out to be.
In it, he recalled the measles outbreaks that had routinely devastated the U.S. before the introduction of a vaccine, in the sixties. The virus killed 6,000 Americans a year in the early twentieth century, and thousands more suffered permanent hearing loss and neurological damage. Globally, it killed millions. Thanks to vaccine campaigns, that number had dipped to under 100,000 by 2013. In the U.S., it was declared eliminated in 2000. Yet as Hotez considered more-recent statistics, he wondered, “Could large-scale measles outbreaks and deaths return to the US?”
He was particularly concerned about Texas. Days earlier, he had been fielding routine emails when a disturbing set of data popped up on his screen: the number of Texas children who had been granted exemptions from school vaccine laws for “reasons of conscience” had increased steadily, year by year, from around 3,000 in 2003 to just under 45,000 in 2015. Until this point, Hotez had watched the state’s anti-vaccine lobby with increasing dread but little urgency. Now a sense of alarm came over him. He was staring at a measles epidemic in the making.
Measles remains one of the most contagious viruses on earth. Studies have shown that populations that dip below 95 percent vaccine coverage become a tinderbox. Hotez noted in his essay that counties in West Texas and the Panhandle were approaching that threshold, and vaccine exemption rates in many Austin-area private schools had already exceeded 20 percent (one had even surpassed 40 percent). “I predict measles outbreaks in Texas could happen as early as the winter or spring of 2018,” he wrote.He feared that the anti-vaccine movement was growing more powerful. Advocates of “vaccine choice,” as they prefer to frame their efforts, have become increasingly confrontational in the past decade. In protests, they’ve marched with posters showing syringe-wielding government agents stopping cars and forcefully injecting wailing babies. They are skilled social media combatants, often referring to public health advocates as “Nazis” and the “medical police state.” Some have launched Twitter and Facebook campaigns to try to discredit doctors who publicly promote vaccines. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has long been the most outspoken critic of the anti-vaccine movement, and he sometimes requires security during public speeches because of death threats made against him and his children. After journalist Amy Wallace wrote a profile of Offit in 2009 for Wired magazine, she received dozens of threatening letters, including one that warned, “This article will haunt you for a long time.” Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, which claims to be dedicated to the prevention of “vaccine injuries and deaths,” sued both Wallace and Offit for libel. (In the article, Offit said of Fisher, “She lies.”) The case was dismissed, but a lawsuit—or the threat of one—remains a potent weapon in the vaccine war...
Again: Long read. Well worth your time.
UPDATE
Science is not Infotainment. People like Rogan lack SME "standing" to demand "debates."
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