Recently I was told I needed to go to the Youtube channel of Dr Sam BaileyA and watch one of her videosB. So I did. This particular video is called The Truth About Virus Isolation, and yes it’s on Youtube, and no I’m not linking directly because I refuse to link to such a misleading […]
Continue readingTag: social media
evidence vs spin
A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of this blog post by New Zealand’s “Plan B” group. While initially this group opposed the government’s use of lockdowns to manage covid19 outbreaks in this country, they seem to have since moved on to opposing the rollout of vaccines against SARS-Cov-2. And, while they claim […]
Continue reading“doing my own research” & the scientific method
This evening I was engaging in polite conversation (well, I was polite, anyway) on an RNZ Facebook post about – you guessed it! – the covid19 vaccination program. One of those present offered up a link to a blog post by Joseph Mercola to support a claim he was making about the vaccines. When I […]
Continue readinga close encounter of the antivaccine kind
I first wrote this post back in 2017 during a mumps outbreak in my local area. Now, of course, much of the media attention is focused on the ongoing tragedy that is the measles epidemic in Samoa, with 44 dead as of today and nearly 4,000 having contracted the illness so far. The anti-vaccine activists […]
Continue readingadvice about measles: when ignorance is definitely not a virtue
As the rate of measles infection, and of deaths, continues to climb in Samoa, antivaccination activists infectious disease proponents seem intent on doubling down on their claims about vaccination. (Check pretty much any news-media FB post about measles & you’ll see exactly what I mean.) Unfortunately, some of them have a greater reach than others. […]
Continue readingagenda 21 and crank magnetism
What with WAVES, and anti-1080 groups, and Rethink Fluoride (which, like FFNZ, opposes water fluoridation), there’s quite a lot of ‘alternative’ activity on-line these days. It’s actually quite interesting to look at the similarities that you can see in attitudes & opinions expressed on those sites. I mean, Agenda 21, anyone? Back when Making Sense […]
Continue readingtesting the accuracy of another claim from WAVES
Glyphosate is another of those substances (like fluoride & 1080) that can be the focus of a lot of unease. So it wasn’t entirely surprising to see the claim on WAVES’ FB page that glyphosate is found in vaccines. Predictably, various little Gish gallops saw Yellow told that injection & ingestion aren’t the same, & […]
Continue reading‘pregnancy isn’t a death event’ – social media’s window to the dark side
Today I was on leave and, the weather being bad, thought I’d do a bit of catching up on the news. And so it was that I found, on the Stuff FB page, an item about the (lack of) funding for cutting edge cancer drugs. So far, so innocuous (although also somewhat sad) – until […]
Continue readingfacebook – more than just social networking
This is something originally written for the Talking Teaching blog, following a discussion (on FB – where else?) about social media & student learning. Some of my readers here and on Sciblogs will probably have realised that I quite like Facebook – not least because it's a good source of gorgeous images and quirky facts […]
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