Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

Ah, thanks for pointing that out.

These people really annoy me.

Yes, there may be some data integrity and procedural integrity issues with one, or two, or even three of the hundred plus sites/contractors used to collect data on any given vaccine trial. However, by using modern statistical methods, and auditing, we minimize the impact of these possible errors.

In addition to this, the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer has now actually left trial and been ADMINISTERED TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!!!!! So we actually have data now, in some cases from 6 months ago and longer, showing that, at least for effects that are short term visible, there is very little to worry about. How do we know this .... THROUGH ACTUAL MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF VACCINATION DATA IN THE GENERAL POPULATION. The trial data is LESS AND LESS RELEVANT.

This BMJ may have been a reputable publication at some point ... I'm not going to assume it wasn't ... but if you read the study and the article posted you'll very soon realize that this is some shoddy bloody journalism. AND, YES, it will misinform people, because Joe Rogan and the like do not apply suitable skepticism when considering the claims of these "scientific skeptics".

I wish everyone could actually take the time to read these long medical articles. But most people can't. I happen to be working on a project where I have to occasionally read and digest "fact finding" content to judge its accuracy. And even I am growing exhausted with what I have a financial interest in doing, because of the sheer stupidity of the interpretations of data by the Joe Rogan crowd ... and it's always something you need to dig a layer deep to uncover too. So sometimes reasonable people without free time can get bamboozled because Rogan and Co. seem to have neocortexes that operate with some strange parameters.

P.S. In general I agree that "fact-checking" is a bad idea. I prefer crowd-sourced fact-checking from a community ... basically like Hacker News comments. A lot of fact-checking is just mirroring the prevailing political mood.

This one is a more in-depth rebuttal to the article and indeed BMJ itself; I found it compelling. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-t... It argues that the article was disingenuous to the point of being propaganda.

The emergent truth inherently obvious to those with reliably observation, pattern recognition, cognitive ability is far more reliable than the knowledge preached by academic priests from within ivory towers. The rejection of "fact checking" is a rejection of the academic model of institutional knowledge in general. Science (not empiricism mind you, but "science" as a class of researchers and Phds) has been found wanting and the masses no longer trust it.

TLDR, citations are for those who are incapable of making the arguments themselves and must outsource their very thought to other men they unquestioningly revere.

Facebook and Twitter have very specific policies against hate speech and inciting violence. This caused a lot of extremists on the American political right to be banned.

That isn't elitism or censorship. It's enforcing their ToS, which as a private business, they have every right to do. I also think you're confused about what an 'elite' actually is. Spoonfed, entitled, whining, bitching opportunists like Trump fit that bill. And don't even pretend this isn't the side you're on.