Misinformation – Comments on Dr Z podcast

Introduction

This blog reviews a podcast https://zdoggmd.com/peter-mccullough/ on 17 December 2021 by Physician Zubin Damania, who goes by the name DrZ, analysing Joe Roghan’s interview with Dr Peter McCullough, purporting to debunk McCullough’s position.

It contains many gems such as:

Of course people are going to question the dominant narrative, and they should

We should not censor people. We should rather debate.

Who is the arbiter of what’s misinformation and what’s not”? “The mainstream media?

If someone isn’t prepared to change their mind, then they are ideological, confirmation bias driven and are more attached to their ego & confirmation bias and protecting their own identity than they are attached to truth.

We need to recognise our bias; every side is true but partial. We need to make decisions on what’s best for us based upon clear eyed analysis of the facts.

This is fantastic. However, it was interspersed with some fundamental assumptions/ biases that, in the spirit of the above gems, are begging to be pointed out. These relate principally to the tools offered for detecting bias.

Difficulties with the tools to recognise signs of misinformation or science denialism

Framing the issue this way is problematic as it is a heavily biased starting point that presumes misinformation and science denialism exists only on one side – the one he does not favour (he is pro-vaxx). It ignores disagreement within the medical and scientific community over the method of generating immunity. See https://www.bitchute.com/video/dni3GVNa6Pjh/ . It also presumes that no prior gaslighting or astroturfing has occurred (See https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ted+talk+astroturf&view=detail&mid=CC19CAD25894CEE27894CC19CAD25894CEE27894&FORM=VIRE ).

This immediately invalidates the universal applicability claimed for the three ‘tools’ offered, which are nevertheless analysed below.

Mentioning the word “conspiracy”

He says this presumes there is a persecuted minority that’s fighting for the truth against a coordinated effort to hide something either by powers that be or for some profit motive. He says you shouldn’t ever have to rely on that if you have scientific data to support your viewpoint. 

This is very easily falsified. It contains no allowance for prior astroturfing or gaslighting having occurred. Do investigative journalists have scientific proof before they start investigating? No. Do whistle-blowers have full scientifically documented evidence before they blow? No.

It can take a long time to prise out the truth. Furthermore, circumstances where the application of policies and systems are inappropriate often only become evident at the boundaries i.e. when they are applied in circumstances that were not originally anticipated. Many things can seem like a good idea at the time, until we apply them and find they don’t work in the way we had hoped or anticipated. Whoever is adversely affected will know absolutely what’s not working for them. That is truth in their circumstances. It will not come all nice and neatly wrapped up as a publication in an internationally recognised peer-reviewed journal about a randomised control test! It does not become untruth because someone else who hoped it would work has committed financially to it and does not want to lose money if/ when it doesn’t.

Such outcomes will not be discovered if people are discredited for calling it a conspiracy when they are not in a position to figure out what is going on or to recognise systemic issues. Discrediting people for doing so violates elementary change management principles, such as not closing down any ideas during brainstorming, not immediately jumping to solutions before adequately considering the options, and not approaching public/ community consultation from the perspective of attempting to persuade an ignorant populace that the arrogant expert opinion is right, rather than listening to see what the implementation problems will be so that those in authority can adjust their view and find compromise solutions that are properly implementable.

Hard, scientific evidence is hard to get, and its absence does not prove falsehood. Truth is even harder to get when there has been astroturfing, which is effectively a conspiracy by one group to distort the reality of its targets. So it is evident that use of the word conspiracy cannot logically be considered as grounds for determining what misinformation is. In truth, when you hear the word conspiracy used, you should recognise that it is simply someone who has been (or suspects they or their children will be) adversely affected, calling for an explanation of things that are happening that make no common sense.

An alternative rule that could equally well be proposed is using the word ‘misinformation’. You should never have to rely on use of the word ‘misinformation’ to justify your view. If you do, you’ve already lost it logically.

The force of reputational authority and state compulsion is a different matter that should not be conflated with logic.

Impossible expectations to prove you were wrong, never admitting to this and shifting the goalposts

He admits both sides have been doing this as well as cherry-picking data and seeking confirmation bias. People who have been harmed will not necessarily know why and will stick to their position regardless of whatever is brought up attempting to convince them otherwise. They will have only their lived experience to know the truth of their reality. They may not be able to articulate it in the way that scientifically educated people may want. Scientific browbeating will not change this. This is the difference between convincing people one’s position is right and carrying out proper community consultation where all views are identified, so they can be accommodated. The media campaign around vaccination has clearly been the former rather than the latter.

Fake experts.

He says vaccine opponents will often refer to a spokesperson for a fringe minority when there’s a bigger consensus around something else. His presentation periodically lapses into disdain for and dismissal of the opinions of those without medical qualification. One wonders who will judge these and what authority any supposed judges may hold.

Furthermore, medicine is not practised in a vacuum. There are other aspects apart from scientific investigation of pharmaceuticals and therapeutics, for which medical/ scientific knowledge is not a prerequisite. There are broader matters of ethical review (to community accepted standards), management and legality. These are areas where medicos will not be the relevant experts unless they are double degreed. It depends on which area is being considered as to which experts will be most relevant. If the discussion is about medical error or litigation for vaccine induced injury, it makes little sense to be dismissing people with substantial experience in that field. Medicos and manufacturers may not want to discuss such views, but they are relevant to governance of their field as well as to the broader community gaining a full picture. An expert in a field outside medicine with knowledge relevant to these matters does not become a fake expert just because some medico or pharmaceutical company wants to dismiss the importance of an issue or distract attention away from it. The rest of the working world is subject to this sort of multi-dimensional scrutiny and there would appear to be no grounds for medicos and their supplier industries to be expecting exemption from this. It is just medical arrogance to dismiss other expert views simply because the expert is not a medico.

Operation of our democratic system

We have assigned the label ‘democratic’ to our system from the way we make civic decisions. This is despite government departments and corporations happily operating on authoritarian, autocratic decision-making principles within it. But decision-making is not the same as determining truth. Voting does not determine truth. It just quantifies what most people think, in a way that can be managed according to pre-determined rules that avoid us killing each other over it. This has advantages in many circumstances, but it is subject to influence. Consequently, any alignment with truth may be incidental.

Democracy can descend into mob rule. Astroturfing and gaslighting provide means of doing this. These techniques can, of course, be used by anybody, but they require a lot of money to implement. Authority can purloin resources and funding to do so. When those who are adversely affected by it realise what is happening, they then have to mobilise to coordinate and fund a response. So it is pretty disingenuous for those in positions of privilege or authority to criticise their opposition for employing the same tactics, especially when their starting line is a long way back and their initial resourcing, organisation and funding is nil.

Appeal to this argument is a pseudo-scientific attempt to appear unbiased when the person is actually sitting in a position of significant advantage or privilege. It is quite possible they may not recognise this. But, nevertheless, it amounts to an abuse of power which those at the wrong end of it will very quickly recognise and resist in whatever way they are able, no matter what supposedly scientific red-herrings are dragged across the path in front of them.

Furthermore, just because a person you have a difference of view with makes a mistake and gets some things wrong doesn’t mean that everything they say will be wrong. Debate and analysis can identify this, provided all sides are given airtime (which hasn’t happened with the vaccine debate). Who of us has not ever made a mistake? Debate guards against human fallibility. We laud people for coming out and having a go – for everything except questioning the vaccine???

DrZ’s assessment of Joe Roghan’s interview with Peter McCullough

Many of his views/ questions/ assessments are addressed either by my comments above or in my previous blogs:

https://medicocapture.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-captureof-medical-profession-by-its.html and

https://medicocapture.blogspot.com/2022/02/this-blog-examinesstrategic-management.html

, but there are some items deserving further/ special mention.

Natural therapies

He is condescending towards Pam Popper, dismissing her because she is a naturopath. Privilege is so hard to see when you are immersed in it. Medicine has abdicated interest in longer term natural treatments. Natural health practitioners are the only ones attempting to do this. But they have had one hand tied behind their backs since they and the black medical schools were run out of medicine by the Flexner Report over 100 years ago in the USA. That began the world-wide capture of the medical profession by the pharmaceutical industry that has starved non-drug therapies for funds, research and access to medical testing facilities ever since.

Through such condescension, DrZ is inadvertently supporting a (very financially successful patent and drug driven pharmaceutical) business model rather than anything to do with health.

Experimental vaccines

McCullough says the vaccines are experimental. DrZ reckons that’s “total bullshit” because “it’s FDA approved”! Good grief! Being a medico, he might still need to “kiss the ring” (as he puts it) of the FDA, but the rest of us don’t. Who is the FDA funded and controlled by? Isn’t it full of medicos? who are not likely to see outside the pharmaceutical bubble? The technology hadn’t been tried before. And no one yet knows the long-term effects of these vaccines because they haven’t been around for the usual ten-year period (twenty for pregnant women). That’s what’s meant by experimental!

Nurenberg

DrZ shares McCullough’s bias against anyone pushing mandates. He says mandating is a liberty violation, but it isn’t Nurenberg. He says you don’t have to make an appeal to loony-bin stuff Nazi stuff like that to win an argument. Well, maybe, but see rule 1 on conspiracy theories misinformation. You can astro-turf people, so their reality is confounded. That’s what’s happened with vaccines and that’s what the Nazis did to the German population. It is the process/ technique/ underlying system that is being referred to. Of course, there are no gas chambers popping up. But there are many other ways of harming people, both deliberate and accidental. Exaggerating and attempting to ridicule the possibility of the Nazi outcome occurring overlooks and distracts from the process that is being employed, which is no different.

VAERS database

DrZ criticises quoting the absolute numbers in this database rather than the relative number when compared with the background rate for the age group. He claims they match for the older age group, although he does admit that the vaccine could tip some older people over the edge.

This may well be so, but it takes a long time to investigate each of these cases and this should also not be conflated with proving safety. It would be months, maybe years before it could be concluded definitively that vaccines were safe. So, given the potential for harm, would it not have been better to adopt a risk management approach and not proceed until there was some confidence of outcome, and until some means of testing for likelihood of adverse reaction had been implemented?

It seems there was no brake on the medical profession’s embarrassment at not being able to control the pandemic, nor on pharmaceutical industry’s marketing efforts.

Conclusion

It is difficult to see privilege and advantage when you are sitting in it and think it is normal.

I agree with his support of Vanai Prasad in saying never become attached to anything in the science, keep looking at the process and find truth rather than validate an ego.

By the way, DrZ does a great podcast at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=353148179713420.

I wish him well with his drive towards what he calls Medicine 3.0.

Dr Steve