I Don't Speak German

So, in rank defiance of our recent promise to 'get back to the nazis' instead we continue our James Lindsay coverage. (What... me? Irony? How dare you?) This time, Daniel patiently walks a distracted, slightly hyperactive, and increasingly incredulous Jack through the infamous 'Grievance Studies Hoax' (AKA 'Sokal Squared') in which Lindsay and colleagues Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian tried (and then claimed) to prove something or other about modern Humanities academia by submitting a load of stupid fake papers to various feminist and fat studies journals. As Daniel reveals, the episode was an orgy of dishonesty and tactical point-missing that actually proved the opposite of what the team of snickering tricksters thought they were proving. Sadly, however, because we live in Hell, the trio have only raised their profiles as a result. A particular highlight of the episode is Lindsay revealing his staggering ignorance when 'responding' to criticism.

Content warnings, as ever.

Podcast Notes:

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

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Show Notes:

James Lindsay, New Discourses, "Why You Can Be Transgender But Not Transracial."" https://newdiscourses.com/2021/06/why-you-can-be-transgender-but-not-transracial/

James Lindsay has a day job, apparently. "Maryville man walks path of healing and combat." https://www.thedailytimes.com/news/maryville-man-walks-path-of-healing-and-combat/article_5ea3c0ca-2e98-5283-9e59-06861b8588cb.html

Areo Magazine, Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship. https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

Full listing of Grievance Studies Papers and Reviews. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19tBy_fVlYIHTxxjuVMFxh4pqLHM_en18

'Mein Kampf' and the 'Feminazis': What Three Academics' Hitler Hoax Really Reveals About 'Wokeness'. https://web.archive.org/web/20210328112901/https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-hitler-hoax-academic-wokeness-culture-war-1.9629759

"First and foremost, the source material. The chapter the hoaxers chose, not by coincidence, one of the least ideological and racist parts of Hitler's book. Chapter 12, probably written in April/May 1925, deals with how the newly refounded NSDAP should rebuild as a party and amplify its program.

"According to their own account, the writers took parts of the chapter and inserted feminist "buzzwords"; they "significantly changed" the "original wording and intent" of the text to make the paper "publishable and about feminism." An observant reader might ask: what could possibly remain of any Nazi content after that? But no one in the media, apparently, did."

New Discourses, "There Is No Good Part of Hitler's Mein Kampf" https://newdiscourses.com/2021/03/there-is-no-good-part-of-hitlers-mein-kampf/

On this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay, who helped to write the paper and perpetrate the Grievance Studies Affair, talks about the project and the creation of this particular paper at unprecedented length and in unprecedented detail, revealing Nilssen not to know what he's talking about. If you have ever wondered about what the backstory of the creation of the "Feminist Mein Kampf" paper really was, including why its authors did it, you won't want to miss this long-form discussion and rare response to yet another underinformed critic of Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose's work.

The Grieveance Studies Affair Revealed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k

Reviewer 1 Comments on Dog Park Paper

"page 9 - the human subjects are afforded anonymity and not asked about income, etc for ethical reasons. yet, the author as researcher intruded into the dogs' spaces to examine and record genitalia. I realize this was necessary to the project, but could the author acknowledge/explain/justify this (arguably, anthropocentric) difference? Indicating that it was necessary to the research would suffice but at least the difference should be acknowledged."

Nestor de Buen, Anti-Science Humping in the Dog Park. https://conceptualdisinformation.substack.com/p/anti-science-humping-in-the-dog-park

"What is even more striking is that if the research had actually been conducted and the results showed what the paper says they show, there is absolutely no reason why it should not have been published. And moreover, what it proves is the opposite of what its intention is. It shows that one can make scientifically testable claims based on the conceptual framework of gender studies, and that the field has all the markings of a perfectly functional research programme."

"Yes, the dog park paper is based on false data and, like Sokal's, contains a lot of unnecessary jargon, but it is not nonsense, and the distinction is far from trivial. Nonsense implies one cannot even obtain a truth value from a proposition. In fact, the paper being false, if anything, proves that it is not nonsense, yet the grievance hoaxers try to pass falsity as nonsense. Nonsense is something like Chomsky's famous sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously." It is nonsense because it is impossible to decide how one might evaluate whether it is true. A false sentence would be "the moon is cubical." It has a definite meaning, it just happens not to be true.

"So, if the original Sokal Hoax is like Chomsky's sentence, the dog park paper is much more like "the moon is cubical." And in fact, a more accurate analogy would be "the moon is cubical and here is a picture that proves it," and an attached doctored picture of the cubical moon."

Reviewer 2 Comments on the Dog-Park Paper

"I am a bit curious about your methodology. Can you say more? You describe your methods here (procedures for collecting data), but not really your overall approach to methodology. Did you just show up, observe, write copious notes, talk to people when necessary, and then leave? If so, it might be helpful to explicitly state this. It sounds to me like you did a kind of ethnography (methodology — maybe multispecies ethnography?) but that's not entirely clear here. Or are you drawing on qualitative methods in social behaviorism/symbolic interactionism? In either case, the methodology chosen should be a bit more clearly articulated."

Counterweight. https://counterweightsupport.com/

"Welcome to Counterweight, the home of scholarship and advice on [Critical Social Justice](https://counterweightsupport.com/2021/02/17/what-do-we-mean-by-critical-social-justice/) ideology. We are here to connect you with the resources, advice and guidance you need to address CSJ beliefs as you encounter them in your day-to-day life. The Counterweight community is a non-partisan, grassroots movement advocating for liberal concepts of social justice including individualism, universalism, viewpoint diversity and the free exchange of ideas. [Subscribe](https://counterweightsupport.com/subscribe-to-counterweight/) today to become part of the Counterweight movement.""

Inside Higher Ed, "Blowback Against a Hoax." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/08/author-recent-academic-hoax-faces-disciplinary-action-portland-state

Peter Boghossian Resignation Latter from PSU. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-university-sacrificed-ideas-for

We revisit the subject of our very first episode, Richard Spencer, catching up with his more recent exploits, all in an attempt to emphasize that a) he's still around, b) he's still dangerous, and c) he means what he says.

Content Warnings.

Podcast Notes:

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

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IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod

Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper

Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_

IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1

Show Notes:

Our previous episode on Richard Spencer, Episode 1

The New York Times, How a Small Town Silenced a Neo-Nazi Hate Campaign

Rafi Schwartz, Discourse Blog, America's Top Nazi Is a Broke Little Booger Who Can't Get a Table

• The punch, which prompted plenty of handwringing and pearl-clutching over whether or not it's okay to ever punch a Nazi (it sure is!), occurred during what should have been the height of Spencer's career as a full-time racist — the inauguration of Donald Trump. Instead, it forever branded him as "that Nazi who got his clock thoroughly cleaned" and helped define him as the ur-bigot of the Trump era. This, I think, is crucial to the arc of Spencer's seeming cancelation by the people of Whitefish. It's much easier to identify a Nazi — and identify what should be done to them — when that Nazi has already become an internet joke for both being a Nazi, and facing the consequences thereof. Were Spencer not memed into oblivion as "the Nazi who got smacked," my guess is that it wouldn't have been quite so easy to rally an entire community to oppose him. Yes, it would likely still have happened in some form, thanks to the sincerely hard work of both activists, and ordinary citizens on the ground in Whitefish and elsewhere, but I can't help but think that the moment Spencer got blasted in the jaw, his cancelation, or silencing, or whatever doofy substitute for "getting what he deserves" became inevitable.

Tablet Mag, No, White Supremacist Richard Spencer Didn't Seriously Endorse Joe Biden

• And yet, countless credulous accounts—many on the pro-Trump right, but also some on the anti-Biden left—uncritically shared Spencer's posting as though it was on the level.
• That a disingenuous racist like Spencer would pretend to support Biden in order to get attention and undercut the former vice president is not surprising. What is surprising is how many people still fall for Spencer's transparent trolling.
• In reality, Spencer and other white supremacists have a long history of purposely adopting their opponents' causes and pretending to back them in order to undermine them. That's exactly what Spencer did in 2018 by pretending to support "Zionism," when he actually has a long history of hate towards both Israel and Jews, and claims that the Jewish state and its supporters control America.

Daily Progress, RIchard Spencer-led organization ordered to pay $2.4 million in Unite the RIght lawsuit

• The biggest sum was awarded last week by an Ohio judge who ordered the National Policy Institute to pay Burke $2,444,461.15 for the harm he suffered as a result of the rally. The white supremacist think tank, which is led by UTR participant and University of Virginia graduate Spencer, was found to be in default approximately a year ago.

Integrity First For America, Sines v. Kessler

Eat the Rich Episode 91 on William Regnery II

Paul Gottfried coins the term "alternative right."

Richard Spencer introduces Ron Paul at the Robert Taft Club, October 11, 2007.

Richard Spencer full NPI speech 2016, the origin of "Heilgate".

Full text of that speech

• We need to remind ourselves of these things. None of this is natural. None of this is "normal." This is a sick, disgusting, society, run by the corrupt, defended by hysterics, drunk on self-hatred and degeneracy. We invade the world and frantically invite entire populations who despise us. We subsidize people and institutions who make our lives worse just by the sheer fact of their existence. We run up deficits and pretend the laws of history simply don't apply to us because of "American Exceptionalism."
• This cannot go on any longer. And it won't.
• At some level, we demand the impossible. Even those half-joking memes about Donald Trump as God-Emperor or as the progenitor of some glorious Imperium testify to the yearning for something more. Yes, we should insist on our dreams – on the conquest of space, on the development of revolutionary technology, for a humanity that is greater than we are today, for a race that travels forever on the upward path.
• But at another level, what we want is something normal, something almost prosaic maybe even boring.
• Why is something as simple as starting a family, owning a house, and leaving a legacy to your children seen as an almost impossible dream for so many Americans? Why must there be two incomes for a family simply to break even? Why is it impossible to build a real civic society because the whim of a federal bureaucrat or a Social Justice Warrior can impose Section 8 housing, refugee resettlement, or some other population transfer scheme deliberately designed to break apart functional white communities?

Buzzfeed, Spencer's Wife Says in Divorce Filings that He Physically and Emotionally Abused Her

• The wife of Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader, has accused him of being "physically, emotionally, verbally and financially abusive" throughout their marriage, according to divorce filings in Flathead County District Court in Montana.
• Nina Koupriianova, who married Spencer in August 2010 and has two young children with him, alleges that Spencer physically abused her, including instances where she was "being hit, being grabbed, being dragged around by her hair, being held down in a manner causing bruising, and being prevented from calling for help."
• Koupriianova — who went by Kouprianova in some public interviews and N.K. in the documents — "has been reluctant to call police or seek an order of protection for fear of further reprisal by" Spencer, her lawyers said in court documents. "Much of the abuse has occurred in the presence of the parties' children."

So, we here at IDSG have lots of plans for the future. Good stuff is coming. But we need a bit longer to provide it. Just a little bit. So, to tide you over - because it's been a couple of weeks since you've heard from us - here's one of our bonus episodes, previously for Patreon backers only. (They got it months ago, along with seven other bonus episodes... consider bunging one or other of us a dollar a month for access to this exclusive bonus content.) This episode sees Daniel and myself, both Orson Welles fans, chatting about The Third Man. Enjoy, and see you soon with new material.

Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts

Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true

Our friends Jeff Eaton and Kristin Rawls from the Christian Rightcast return to help us wrap up our Bret & Heather coverage, at least for now. Daniel takes us through the horrors of the 'Better Skeptics Project', Bret and Heather's escalating (yet crumbling) project of puffing Ivermectin as a Covid treatment, their spat with Yuri Deigin and Quillette, etc.

Content Warnings

Show Notes:

Christian Rightcast https://rightcast.substack.com/

CHristian Rightcast on Twitter https://twitter.com/crightcast?lang=en

Kristin's Twitter https://twitter.com/kristinrawls

Jeff's Twitter https://twitter.com/eaton

Thread by Ben Collins on the origins of the Ivermectin craze: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1431040456364810242

Decoding the Gurus, Special Episode: Welcome to Weinstein World with special guest David Pizarro

Yuri Deigin, Lab-Made? SARS-CoV-2 Genealogy Through the Lens of Gain-of-Function Research

• Furin Cleavage Site
• Similarities to RaTG13

Dark Horse Episode 93: School of Rocks

"No such thing as a biologist" -- 40:50ish

Claire Berlinksi and Yuri Deigin, Looking for COVID-19 'Miracle Drugs'? We Already Have Them. They're Called Vaccines

Sam Harris with Eric Topol, Making Sense Podcast #256, A Contagion of Bad Ideas

Rebel Wisdom YouTube

Rebel Wisdom, Better Skeptics for the Dark Horse

Rebel Wisdom, Ivermectin, For and Against, with Tess Lawrie, Graham Walker, and Gideo Meyerson-Katz

Rebel Wisdom, Eric Weinstein: Vaccines, Ivermectin, & Dark Horse

Rebel Wisdom, Yuri Deigin Responds to Bret Weinstein on Vaccines, Ivermectin, and Quillette

Rebel Wisdom, Vaccines and Dark Horse, an Investigation

Rebel Wisdom, Ivermectin, the Backstory of the FLCCC. Eric Osgood

David Fuller, Ivermectin -- For and Against, Briefing Document

David Fuller, On Bret Weinstein, Alternative Media, Ivermectin and Vaccine-Related Controversies

Megyn Kelly, Bret Weinstein on Tech Censorship, The Value of Conversation, and COVID Treatments

• Kirsch and Malone and the Other Side Starts around 17:20

The Better Skeptics Project

Alexandros Marinos Twitter

Alexandros Marinos [thread about Fuller and Better Skeptics]https://mobile.twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1422301544737738762?s=19

Alexandros Marinos thread about the Sam Harris/Eric Topol Making Sense

Better Skeptics, [Launching the 10K Ground Truth Challenge]https://www.betterskeptics.com/launching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge/

• We think it is worthwhile to take full accounting of the quality of the statements uttered in these podcasts. This is almost 11 hours worth of live speech, so it would be unbelievable if the number of false statements is zero. Should some false statements be identified, it will be for the world to see how the interested parties react. We want to compose high-quality fact-checking from average-quality ingredients: normal people, with our own biases and internal contradictions.
• A detailed description of the challenge process and rules is available here. In a nutshell: Anyone who identifies what they believe is a false statement will be required to submit their claim to us via public Twitter message with a specified hashtag. Three referees will evaluate each submission across two rounds, and all submissions scoring 9 or above will be awarded the $100 prize.

Ground Truth Challenge: The Rules

We've chosen and transcribed four recent podcasts featuring Bret Weinstein which discussed COVID-19 vaccines and/or Ivermectin. These are:

• Covid, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century. June 1, 2021. Video - Transcript
• How to Save the World in Three Easy Steps. June 11, 2021. Video - Transcript
• Joe Rogan Experience #1671 - Bret Weinstein & Dr. Pierre Kory. June 22, 2021. Video - Transcript
• Bret and Heather 87th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: We Must Drive this Virus to Extinction. July 12, 2021. Video - Transcript

Ground Truth Challenge: Results!

• So what of the outcome? In the end, only 3 challenges succeeded. Of these, two provided effective counter-arguments, not entirely refuting the target quote but providing sufficient counter-evidence to warrant narrowing or rephrasing it. The third is a straightforward factual error that was no longer true at the time of the podcast (see table below).
• The material consisted of 11 hours of live, unscripted speech put under extreme scrutiny, and with no prior warning to the speakers. We therefore feel it's remarkable that so few challenges ended up as successful - however, this was our first such challenge, so we have no point of comparison.

Natural Selections Substack, On Driving SARS-CoV-2 Extinct

• If we are interested in minimizing harm from SARS-CoV2, we need to use prophylaxis to force extinction. Prophylaxis refers to action taken before exposure to prevent an event. A condom is prophylaxis against pregnancy. Doxycycline is prophylaxis against malaria. Vaccines and repurposed drugs such as ivermectin have both been presented as prophylaxis against Covid-19. In order to clear our planet of SARS-CoV2, we need safe and effective prophylaxis distributed so widely that it drives the virus to extinction.
• How we do this is up for debate, and of course there will be disagreement along the way. Some people, including the authors of a recently published Quillette article, see one and only one way forward: vaccination of every person with access to currently authorized vaccines. Other people, including ourselves, believe that the current vaccines—which are non-sterilizing, cannot quickly reach the entire world, and provide only narrow, short-lived immunity—cannot accomplish the goal, not even in principle. Any viable strategy for extinguishing SARS-CoV-2 in the near term must therefore include effective prophylaxis beyond the current crop of authorized vaccines. For now that means drugs taken to prevent infection for those who are unvaccinated and who have not had a confirmed case of Covid (and therefore lack natural immunity). It may also require prophylactic medicine for vaccinated people as fading vaccine-induced immunity and new variants evolving in response to the vaccination campaign render the current vaccines ever less effective.
• This is a departure for us, running exactly counter to our typical expectations. Ordinarily, we are enthusiastic about vaccines and decidedly skeptical about pills. On this issue though, with these vaccines, our position has flipped. There are several reasons for this: the novel and non-sterilizing nature of the vaccines being deployed, the potential for perverse incentives involved in a vaccine only strategy, emerging concerns about vaccine safety, and the logistical reality that vaccines alone cannot, and will not, get the job done. In addition, the most promising prophylactic medicine is also extremely well known, with a four-decade long and unusually clean global safety record. This reasoning is discussed in episode #87of our podcast.

Gideon M-K thread on the Carvallo ivermectin study.

• "20/n Given that the graphical and written representations of the primary outcome of the study appear to conflict, and the results tables differ between the pre-registration and the publication, it is worth asking whether this study even took place at all"

Gideon M-K at his Medium, Ivermectin Shows No Clear Benefit in the Treatment of Covid-19

• The new study in question is called the Together Clinical Trials, and it's a truly amazing collaboration between a number of universities and research groups to study the effects of repurposed drugs on people with Covid-19 who attend hospitals as outpatients.
• Basically, they look at people who are at moderate risk but are experiencing relatively mild disease, randomize them to either get one of several drugs or a placebo, and then see if those drugs have any benefit in treating Covid-19. The full protocol is a masterpiece of science—well worth reading if you're interested in trial design.
• This trial has already demonstrated that hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir are unlikely to be beneficial treatments for people with Covid-19 in outpatient settings and, because of the hype around ivermectin, had included the drug in a treatment arm to see if it worked. The results from that part of the trial, including over 1,300 patients, were released in summary form late this afternoon.
• They showed no benefit for ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19. None whatsoever.

Gideon M-K, Medium post Is Ivermectin for Covid-19 Based on Fraudulent Research? Part 2

• Most research is OK — it has some virtues, some oversights, some charms, some flaws. Some is excellent and transformative, some is terrible and harmful. When I first became interested in ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication being tested for Covid-19, I expected a combo plate of the above — just like everything else.
• Maybe, and this is a worst-case scenario, a few cheeky papers that had been doctored or altered noticeably, something bad enough to leave a clue.
• I did not expect what has happened, what is happening.
• I hesitate to put this into words, because it scares me, and because I know the consequences of such statements. But there is no sugar thick enough to coat this:
• Ivermectin literature contains a staggering volume of scientific fraud. Not mistakes, or oversights, or gilded lilies. Fraud.
• My sincere opinion is that at least a third of the evidence supporting the use of ivermectin as a Covid-19 therapeutic is not just ' based on shaky data', but consists of studies that may never have happened at all.

Dark Horse 94, Is It Later Than We Think?

• Around 26:00, repudiating the Carvallo et al paper.

Become a backer of Daniel or Jack to get exclusive access to a new bonus episode in which we chat about museums, historical memory, war, the Bomb and various atrocities.

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Content Warnings.

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

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With - once again - apologies for the gap between episodes, here is a very special edition in which Daniel plays host to Kristin Rawls and Jeff Eaton of the excellent Christian Rightcast podcast, to chat about the areas where their work - on the Christian Right, if the name of their show didn't tip you off - intersects with ours. Lots of laughs in this chat about depressingly awful people.

Content warnings.

Podcast Notes:

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper

Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618

IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod

Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper

Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_

IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1

Show Notes:

Christian Rightcast https://rightcast.substack.com/

CHristian Rightcast on Twitter https://twitter.com/crightcast?lang=en

Kristin's Twitter https://twitter.com/kristinrawls

Jeff's Twitter https://twitter.com/eaton

Hbomberguy on Davis Aurini https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hbomberguy+davis+aurini

ADDENDUM by Kristin:

"...[S]omething I was trying to get out yesterday didn't come through about the Reconstructionists, which is that... Yes, they think of themselves as the intellectuals of the Christian Right, but we aren't really agreeing with their assessment. And it's partly that they think charismatic/pentacostalism is "fairly tale nonsense," which is a direct quote from Rushdoony. Yes, that's racialized. But it's partly also that he thought he was better and more intellectual than institutions like Liberty because, like, he actually read books and was steeped in classics (this is where the pseudo-intellectual sheen of it comes from, which is a big thing that Wilson has carried on in starting the classical Christian school movement and a Great Books college). Those colleges are of course dead white man studies and nothing more than that, but it's kind of unusual in the Christian Right to actually read books. Which is to say, if there is any way in which their self-assessment is accurate, it's because the entire Christian Right is fundamentally anti-intellectual. This makes them unique for reading Plato.

"So, it's partly that they're anti-charismatic in racialized ways (although the huge charismatic megachurches like Hillsong that get a lot of their scorn are VERY white). They also think Liberty and similar institutions are embarrassing, and they're embarrassed by "red state America" even though Wilson said "it's all we've got right now." This is about their pseudo-intellectual veneer and also has to do with classism and stereotypes about red state rednecks. It's all of a piece. They think they're better than the rest of the Christian Right and are heirs to some great Christian culture that they're going to rebuild by reconstructing all of life under "God's law." All of this is why they dovetail so easily with IDW people and racist defenders of "Western civilization.""

Become a backer of Daniel or Jack to get exclusive access to a new bonus episode about 2009's In The Loop, satire of the political machinations leading up to the invasion of Iraq, written/directed by Armando Iannucci (et al) and starring Peter Capaldi as Not Alisatair Campbell. Also features much embarrassing old geezer reminiscing.

Becoming a patron also brings access to all other bonus episodes.

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Content Warnings.

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod

Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper

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Bret and Heather and Ivermectin. Oh my.

IDSG returns from it's 17 year absence with a banger of an episode in which Daniel dishes out THE FUCKING TEA on Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying (again) and their irresponsible spreading (in hushed, reasonable voices) of potentially lethal conspiracy theories and bad science re Covid, Wuhan, vaccines, and Ivermectin.

Content Warnings.

Podcast Notes:

Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month.

Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper

Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618

IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod

Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper

Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_

IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1

Show Notes:

Bret Weinstein Odysee

Bret interviews Yuri Deigin.

Yuri Deigin, Lab Made? SARS-CoV-2 Geneaology Through the Lens of Gain of Function Research

Indeed, virologists, including the leader of coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, have done many similar things in the past — both replacing the RBM in one type of virus by an RBM from another, or adding a new furin site that can provide a species-specific coronavirus with an ability to start using the same receptor (e.g. ACE2) in other species. In fact, Shi Zhengli's group was creating chimeric constructs as far back as 2007 and as recently as 2017, when they created a whole of 8 new chimeric coronaviruses with various RBMs. In 2019 such work was in full swing, as WIV was part of a $3.7 million NIH grant titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence. Under its auspices, Shi Zhengli co-authored a 2019 paper that called for continued research into synthetic viruses and testing them in vitro and in vivo:

Bret and Heather on Real Time with Bill Mahr on the Lab-Leak Hypothesis

CLIP (Bret and Heather on BIll Maher Lab Leak) – starts at beginning of clip.

Andersen, et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

Garry, Robert. [Early appearance of two distinct genomic lineages of SARS-CoV-2 in different Wuhan wildlife markets suggests SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin](https://virological.org/t/early-appearance-of-two-distinct-genomic-lineages-of-sars-cov-2-in-different-wuhan-wildlife-markets-suggests-sars-cov-2-has-a-natural-origin/691

This Week in Virology 762: SARS-Cov-2 origins with Robert Garry

CLIP (Two Covid Lineages in Wuhan Market) – Starts about 39:00 in TWIV762

potholer54, Did SARS-Cov-2 start in a Chinese Lab?

potholer54, More "man-made" SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak malarky

Scott Gavura, Science Based Medicine, "Ivermectin is the New Hydroxychloroquine"

There has been interest in ivermectin since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, because it was observed that at high concentrations it had antiviral properties against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

However, there was an important red flag in that finding. A few weeks after the initial finding was published, a short paper appeared in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology that described the considerations for using ivermectin as an antiviral. While it acknowledged the antiviral properties of high concentrations of the drug in laboratory (in vitro) experiments, it noted that it would likely not be possible to achieve the same concentrations of the drug in the plasma of the blood, because the drug itself is tightly bound to blood proteins. Even giving 8.5 x the FDA-approved dose (1700mcg/kg) resulted in blood concentrations far below the dose identified that offered antiviral effects:

This Week in Virology 766: The Corona Project with David Fajgenbaum

CORONA project 18:58, 46:32

"How To Save the World in Three Easy Steps"

Clip "Ivermectin End the Pandemic" – starts around 3:30

Bret Weinstein, "COVID, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century - DarkHorse Podcast with Pierre Kory & Bret Weinstein"

With Dr. Robert Malone (invented mRNA vaccine technology) and Mr. Steve Kirsch.

Clip "Bret Doctors as Scientists from CotC" – Starts around 19:00

With Pierre Kory

Science Based Medicine, Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 2

Last week, über-quack Joe Mercola published an article entitled "COVID, Ivermectin and the Crime of the Century", naming it after an episode of Bret Weinstein's podcast. It features an interview with Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the most prominent proponents of ivermectin for COVID-19 by evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, who has become prominent as a COVID-19 contrarian and spreader of disinformation, particularly about the "lab leak theory" of SARS-CoV-2 origins and now likes to Tweet about "persecution" by Twitter:

It also turns out that Dr. Pierre Kory is president of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and has testified before Congress. During that testimony, Dr. Kory claimed that ivermectin, used with other medicines such as vitamin C, zinc and melatonin, could "save hundreds of thousands of people," and cited more than 20 studies.

The narrative of Mercola's article is eerily similar to the narratives we heard about hydroxychloroquine a year ago, namely that ivermectin is a cheap, safe, and effective drug that "they" don't want you to know about that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if not for doctors' fetish for randomized clinical trials.

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, part three

Before I move on to more of the ivermectin conspiracy theorists and potential reasons for them, I can't help but repeat what I've been saying all along about ivermectin. Combining preclinical studies that show antiviral activity against SARS-C0V-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in vitro (cell culture) but only at much higher concentrations of ivermectin than can be achieved with safe doses in the bloodstream with the equivocal clinical trial results lead to a conclusion that this drug almost certainly does not work to treat COVID-19. This is particularly likely given that the highest quality existing randomized controlled clinical trials of ivermectin are all basically negative. I note that when I discussed how poor the evidence for hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 was, I routinely received criticism that I "wanted patients to die" and was "hoping" that the drug didn't work. I'm getting some of the same nonsense now that I've finally been prodded to write about ivermectin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even though, now that there are safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, the need for a cheap and effective drug that can treat COVID-19 is not as desperate as it was a year ago, it is still acute given how large swaths of the globe still do not have access to the vaccines. Moreover, now that Oxford University has added ivermectin to the protocol of its massive PRINCIPLE Trial of treatments for COVID-19, it is possible that there might turn out to be a benefit due to ivermectin in treating COVID-19, clearly just not as massive as claimed by advocates and conspiracy theorists. I'd be just fine with that, as I would have been overjoyed if hydroxychloroquine had been shown to be as effective as its advocates had claimed it was. It's just that, right now, the evidence is trending strongly in favor of the conclusion that ivermectin, like hydroxychloroquine before it, doesn't work against COVID-19 in humans.

Gideon M-K; Health Nerd

What this means is that, if you exclude some of the low-quality research on ivermectin, the paper goes from showing a massive benefit to no benefit at all. On top of this, there's an interesting point — even if you don't agree with these assessments, taking the only three studies that the authors of the meta-analysis considered to be at a "low risk of bias" (i.e. high-quality), you find that these high-quality studies have failed to find any benefit for ivermectin. In other words, while the conclusions the authors came to are very positive, the results section of the paper seems to show that the evidence for ivermectin might not be strong after all. The devil really is in the details with research like this.

Jack Lawrence aka TimPoolClips Why Was a Major Study on Ivermectin for COVID-19 Just Retracted?

Even if the paper's authors end up providing an innocent explanation for all this it would be puzzling why it took them so long to notice their error. Whether the final story is one of purposeful fabrication or a series of escalating mistakes involving training or test datasets, this research group has still screwed up in a big way.

Although science trends towards self-correction, something is clearly broken in a system that can allow a study as full of problems as the Elgazzar paper to run unchallenged for seven months. Thousands of highly educated scientists, doctors, pharmacists, and at least four major medicines regulators missed a fraud so apparent that it might as well have come with a flashing neon sign. That this all happened amid an ongoing global health crisis of epic proportions is all the more terrifying. For those reading this article, its findings may serve as a wake-up call. For those who died after taking a medication now shown to be even more lacking in positive evidence, it's too late. Science has corrected, but at what cost?

Ivermectin is the new hydoxychloroquine, take four

Of course, as Meyerowitz-Katz observed, just the results of the study raised a lot of red flags. Elgazzar 2020, if you take the authors at their word, enrolled over 400 people with COVID-19 and 200 close personal contacts and allocated them either to ivermectin or placebo groups, reporting that ivermectin treatment decreased mortality from COVID-19 by a whopping 90%. As Meyerowitz-Katz observed, if this were true, that would make ivermectin the "most incredibly effective treatment ever to be discovered in modern medicine." While as a physician I might quibble about that a bit (we do have treatments that are greater than 90% effective at eliminating the diseases or conditions that they treat, especially a number of vaccines), he is correct if you restricted this to antiviral drugs. If this study's results were accurate and generalizable, ivermectin would be the most most incredibly effective antiviral treatment ever to be discovered. That result alone should have raised a number of red flags, and it did among authors doing meta-analyses who were not ivermectin advocates from the BIRD Group or the FLCCC, which is why they excluded it from their analyses.

Meilssa Davey at The Guardian Huge sttudy supporting ivermectin as Covid treatment withdrawn over ethical concerns

A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper, leading to the retraction. He first became aware of the Elgazzar preprint when it was assigned to him by one of his lecturers for an assignment that formed part of his master's degree. He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.

It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. "Humorously, this led to them changing 'severe acute respiratory syndrome' to 'extreme intense respiratory syndrome' on one occasion," Lawrence said.

The data also looked suspicious to Lawrence, with the raw data apparently contradicting the study protocol on several occasions.

"The authors claimed to have done the study only on 18-80 year olds, but at least three patients in the dataset were under 18," Lawrence said.

Dark Horse 85: YouTube and The Truman Faux Medical Show

CLIP "DH85 Save Three Kill Two" – Starts Around 50:00

Dark Horse 86: They've Got That Covered

CLIP "DH86 Retraction" – Starts around 19:00

"Scientists quit journal board, protesting 'grossly irresponsible' study claiming COVID-19 vaccines kill"

Several reputed virologists and vaccinologists have resigned as editors of the journal Vaccines to protest its 24 June publication of a peer-reviewed article that misuses data to conclude that "for three deaths prevented by [COVID-19] vaccination, we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination."

Since Friday, at least six scientists have resigned positions as associate or section editors with Vaccines, including Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Katie Ewer, an immunologist at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford who was on the team that developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Their resignations were first reported by Retraction Watch.

"The data has been misused because it makes the (incorrect) assumption that all deaths occurring post vaccination are caused by vaccination," Ewer wrote in an email. "[And] it is now being used by anti-vaxxers and COVID-19-deniers as evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are not safe. [This] is grossly irresponsible, particularly for a journal specialising in vaccines."

The paper is a case of "garbage in, garbage out," says Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccinologist who directs the Vaccine Datalink and Research Group at the University of Auckland and who also resigned as a Vaccines editor after reading the paper. Diane Harper, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who was founding editor-in-chief of Vaccines, also resigned, as did Paul Licciardi, an immunologist at Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Parkville, Australia, and Andrew Pekosz, a respiratory virologist at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Epoch Times, Dr. Bret Weinstein, "Perverse Incentives in the Vaccine Rollout and the Censhorship of Science"

*

Anna Merlan at Vic; two excellent summaries:

1. 'Why Is the Intellectual Dark Web Suddenly Hyping an Unproven COVID Treatment?' https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5z5y/why-is-the-intellectual-dark-web-suddenly-hyping-an-unproven-covid-treatment

2. 'The Ivermectin Advocates' War Has Just Begun' https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3d5gv/ivermectin-covid-treatment-advocates-rogan-weinstein-hecker

Jef Rouner at Houston Press on Bret https://www.houstonpress.com/news/a-possible-new-anti-vaccine-scam-is-on-the-rise-11591162

Decoding the Gurus on Bret & Heather and Ivermectin https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/brett-heather-weinstein-why-are-they-suppressing-ivermectin-the-miracle-cure

Bret platforms Geert Vanden Bossche https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyAovuUxro&t=6s

Vaxopedia on Geert Vanden Bossche https://vaxopedia.org/2021/03/14/who-is-geert-vanden-bossche/?fbclid=IwAR3u1myW15pERVxvcopv5NlWBr12QakfzVMHsoHHopLuJWKSUGfockqYhBo

ZDoggMD on Geert Vanden Bossche https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEyQi__zTuo

Potholer54 on Covid and vaccines etc https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoWneZjR0wiidhGkAMOeIYAS

QAnon Anonymous feat. scientist on 'Lab Leak' theory https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/unlocked-premium-episode-129-lab-leak-hypothesis-feat-dr-alex-greninger

Citations Needed Pod vaccine inequality https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/size/5/?search=vaccine

Clip from start; Charlie Kirk cites Bret to Tucker Carlson https://twitter.com/uberfeminist/status/1418033997398020102

Eiynah's panel on 'Mergegate' (feat. D. Harper) Part 1 https://soundcloud.com/politeconversations/panel-24-defending-new-atheism-maybe-just-dont-pt-1

Daniel's guest appearance on Decoding the Gurus https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-episode-interview-with-daniel-harper-on-the-far-right-idw-criticism

It's been a while since we released a new episode and, for one reason and another, it's going to be a little while before we release another (though we still hope to make our monthly quota of two new public episodes and one new backer-only bonus) so, to tide you over, and make sure you don't forget about us, here's the first of our bonus episodes - on Peter Watkins' Punishment Park (1971) - originally released exclusively for our patrons back in January. If you wish you'd been able to hear this six months ago, consider bunging us some cash.

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