Plandemic 3 - The School Board Edition
Episode: S2 E9
Podcast published date:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
masks, misinformation, vaccine, flash drive, papers, people, talking, published, evidence, science, argument, articles, CDC, virus, pandemic, school board, functional medicine, systematic review, establish, trust
SPEAKERS
Shawn Walker, Michael Simeone
Michael Simeone 00:00
This is Misinfo Weekly, a somewhat weekly program about misinformation in our time. Misinfo Weekly is made by the Unit for Data Science and Analytics at Arizona State University Library. Hello, and welcome. And we're back with another weekly installment of our podcast on misinformation. Shawn, how're you doing?
Shawn Walker 00:21
I'm doing okay, I know we've taken a break. But it seems like a lot of the things we've been talking about are still circulating.
Michael Simeone 00:27
Yeah, I was really worried that, when we finally got our vaccine series together, so we have a multi part series on vaccines that would have come out by the time this podcast comes out that we encourage you to check out if you haven't already. It's taken us a while to bundle it all together and release it. However, the last couple of weeks, we've thought for just a split second, well, maybe this won't be relevant anymore. Vaccine hesitancy, vaccine misinformation, maybe it'll be off the radar, but it seems like this is an evergreen topic.
Shawn Walker 00:57
Yes. And in kind of reviewing the interviews that we did, they all seem super relevant. I mean, true. So, people are trying to understand their risk, they're still trying to figure out if vaccines are safe for their family, or, you know, even booster shots, sort of the language has also evolved with the virus.
Michael Simeone 01:16
Yeah, yeah, you could say that. All of these misinformation strategies resemble some of the stuff we saw last year. But it feels like there might be some, you know, new conspiracies or, or new things that we can observe. Coming into, you know, the latter half of 2021. Today, we're going to talk about a video that has been incredibly popular. Has basically achieved viral distribution on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms. I know someone linked off of it on telegram, although I have a hard time sometimes measuring impact on telegram, right? It's not exactly the same analytics available.
Shawn Walker 01:54
Was that a purposeful viral pun?
Michael Simeone 01:56
No, not necessarily. But I'll take it. But Shawn, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about the video that we're talking about today. You had, you had referred to it as Plandemic 3, which I like as a title for this, but take us inside what this thing is.
Shawn Walker 02:14
So, I think we could call this you know, Plandemic 3, or potentially Plandemic: The School Board Edition. There's a video that was taken during a Mount Vernon school board meeting on August 6, 2021. And someone was presenting to the school board. You know, as in, you know, members of the public can speak outside of to speak to the school board during policy discussions. So, they're having a policy discussion about COVID and their COVID policies. And Dr. Daniel Stock speaks to the school board. And this video went viral, no pun intended, and was very popular in the vaccine hesitant, the anti-vaccine, and the anti-vaccine mandate communities. As you know, here are some reasons why we shouldn't require a vaccine. Here's some questions about the vaccine. Also, here's questions about mask usage and other things, you know, basically our ability to protect people. And I feel like this video somatically just seems like it's in the same family as Plandemic 1, Plandemic 2, America's Top Doctors is the same kind of arguments, but in a new format.
Michael Simeone 03:28
Yeah, this does have a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of feel.
Shawn Walker 03:31
Hmm, yes.
Michael Simeone 03:32
And that this kind of plainclothes every man attends some sort of official proceeding and manages to speak from the people. It seems like that, you know, we can kind of go bit by bit through the video. One of the things that that strikes me about this is that the subject matter is basically just, you know, the same subject matter that a lot of the misinformation has targeted already, which is we're not just talking about the two most effective strategies that are kind of identified by the CDC and a repertoire of responses right masking and vaccination. Those are the two targets for this guy's six-minute address. It is actually like a really interesting mixture of references to publish science and misinformation together. So, you know, to me, this is an interesting video and like we're going to try to describe some of the content here but what he's targeting isn't, isn't particularly new, right? vaccine hesitancy and vaccine misinformation isn't isn't a new thing. And the debate about masks, our, and misinformation about masks is also not a new thing. I'm just really interested in some of the ways that he uses evidence versus how we saw in America's Top Doctors and in Plandemic, which I would describe as being much thinner on evidence.
Shawn Walker 04:55
Yeah, I think that Plandemic especially had more of a…I'm going to date myself here, but Unsolved Mysteries sort of theater vibe to it in the way that, you know, the stock footage was used, the way that, you know, the sort of expose against, you know, the hit on Fauci and others in Big Pharma, for example. Versus this video, I would say, you know, is like Dr. Smith Goes to Washington, you know. We have, like, we talked to Dr. Shegog in one of our three vaccine episodes that we just released, and she's a primary care physician; and she talks about how your primary care physician is the one that you should go to. So now we have this primary care physician standing in front of the school board, basically saying that the CDC is not following their own science, and everything the CDC is telling us is wrong. And here's why.
Michael Simeone 05:50
Yeah, so it feels like there's a flavor of ad hominem in here. But I agree with you. I feel like the Plandemic video series, Part 1 and Part 2, really were much more about trying to understand the motivations. Like it was, it was two videos that were all about the motivation. And we're supposed to believe, you know, the argument about COVID-19. Because the motivations are there to make it correct, right? Like, we're supposed to accept that Plandemic was staged because we're supposed to believe that Anthony Fauci wanted it to happen. And which is very different from trying to even pretend to present evidence that it was manufactured. So, to me, I think there's slightly different ways of trying to convince people, right, there are different strategies for sowing misinformation. One is trying to say the motives are too established for it to not be, right, that feels like Plandemic. America's Top Doctors, I think, you know, really tried to, to use the credibility of the white coat, right, where we had all those positions standing in front of a federal building, trying to talk about basically, this is a very simple matter. And that all we have to do is get down to these very simple remedies and we're going to be okay. Fast forward to now where we have the Dan Stock, Mount Vernon school board meeting. And now he shows up and talks about having a flash drive with published articles on them. He's speaking specifically from his experience, he mentioned specific cases, a little bit of a different approach to spreading misinformation.
Shawn Walker 07:21
I mean, if we go back to my my favorite movie, not really, but just because you don't Jurassic Park, right? This is sort of misinformation finds a way, right? This is, I would argue, this is an adaptation. So, the folks that are spreading mis and disinformation are using different techniques. And they're adapting those techniques to the moment. So, this is contextually more appropriate than say, in the beginning, when the first Plandemic video was released, that we need to go out and put our feet in this, you know, ocean sand, and protect our, you know, that will boost our immune systems versus now we're in a different state, right? We have vaccines. So, we have to talk about the science of those vaccines and refute that in order to say the vaccines are dangerous versus before there wasn't a vaccine. Before there were questions about really, what is this COVID thing? Now? I think there are less questions about what COVID is. So, this is an adaptation to those, you know, the current time that we're in?
Michael Simeone 08:18
Yeah, that's interesting. I, I think about, you know, back to the idea of adapting to your to the current circumstances, right, there's a lot more about Dr. Fauci and Plandemic 1. I don't recall any specific reference to Dr. Fauci in this school board address that went all over social media. But it feels like it might be timely, because the lab leak theory is back in the news or has been in the news. Why do you suppose the approach here is to attack the vaccines from a kind of medical perspective, without saying a word about lab?
Shawn Walker 08:51
I think that's the only legitimate way to attack the vaccines. I think that the only way to refute the vaccine is to try to step up and make a semi scientific argument. Because we're making scientific arguments about the vaccines. We're showing data about effectiveness, we're showing data about the actual risk, which is fairly low in taking the vaccines. So that means that you have to have a parallel conversation in order to potentially try to refute it or to have these discussions. We can, otherwise it's really lopsided. You know, we're talking science from the vaccine crowd, and we're talking about something completely different. That does isn't even the same ball field.
Michael Simeone 09:36
Yeah, I keep going back to audience here. In that, I have a hard time believing that this isn't staged in some way. But let's just assume for a minute that this was misinformation delivered locally, either as part of the performance or as part of the entire intention. But the audience is a little bit different. Like back to your point about having to keep this the kind of argument you make to a school board, if you want to be effective, is going to be different than what you just post on the wider internet. If its first audience is going to be Facebook, or if it's first audience is going to be a broader representation of people who have all different kinds of beliefs; but a whole lot of skepticism about institutions, right. Plandemic wasn't designed to be shown at a school board meeting. It wasn't designed to run on the news. It was designed to compete with those fora. And so, it seems like it has a much more antagonistic relationship to institutions. Here, you know, he is skeptical of the CDC, but isn't averse to calling on or at least signaling towards published science, right? He, if you watch this video, and we'll, I don't know, should we make this available in the show notes, we'll, we'll decide one way or the other, if that's the right way to go here. But, you know, in this video, you see him refer to plenty of different articles, he keeps referring to a flash drive that has published science in it. It does feel a little bit to me that he's playing to the audience that he thinks he's addressing here. And that's part of the adaptive strategy. And I think that might be an interesting takeaway, when we think about how does misinformation adapt? The audience matters?
Shawn Walker 11:13
And the differences, Plandemic really didn't address children, children are a game changer, right? We do so many things to keep children safe. And it's difficult to make an argument, you shouldn't do X or Y, if it might keep children safe. So, you have to construct a different argument, especially around keeping children safe, then sort of a more broad argument where Plandemic didn't address children.
Michael Simeone 11:36
Right, and talking about keeping children safe in a different way than say, QAnon talks about keeping children safe, or, or other ways of making this happen. Although I think, the parallel to QAnon I don't think it's completely trivial, in that, you know, once you establish that you're looking out for the children, you kind of have prior or permanent moral superiority, right, you already have the high ground, your cause is just a kind of erodes some of the requirements for the rest of what you have to supply in terms of an argument. Because you're there for the children. I see a little bit of that happening.
Shawn Walker 12:09
And many school boards are data focused, right? So, we would look at curriculum, we look at student success, those are all metrics, so much of the work that school boards do is data driven, so we're going to have to make a data driven and science driven argument in order to convince them of something. And I agree with you that I think there were two audiences for this, there was the audience of the people in the room and the local school board, but I think this speech was given with a national audience in mind.
Michael Simeone 12:42
Yes, a little bit of a performance here. You know, I don't know if it's quite like mugging the camera in front of a federal building, like America's Top Doctors, one of the videos that we talked about. But I do think that yeah, there's there's just something kind of performative about this. Where yeah, there's no way I believe it was just for one audience. So, his line of argumentation, what's his basic approach? So, we've established that he tries to draw on medical facts, we've established that he tends to beat up the virus and beat up masks as solutions. What's his, what's his angle here in his address, what's his play?
Shawn Walker 13:16
What his opening play, I find to be very interesting is saying that the CDC is not following their own science, which some folks might be like, oh, well, that's interesting. But that's a big slap in the face to the CDC itself, that you're not following your own science. That's a huge accusation in the scientific world. And then it kind of flows from there, a carefully curated set of points, I think, that often miss the context that are paired with a carefully curated set of journal articles. So, peer reviewed publications, potentially, that are on a nefarious flash drive. And then you said there's some additional articles that are not on the flash drive that are also referenced. So, it's this kind of combination argument of they're not following their own science. Here's the science they're not following and then here's why vaccines, masks, all these things are dangerous, and we should go back to natural immunity.
Michael Simeone 14:15
Yeah, I mean, I feel like within a certain range of years, in popular music, you could almost bet on there being a really high probability of DJ Khaled being part of the song and saying the name DJ Khaled just as part of the music and I feel like the same level of consistency we can expect out of like, you know, health misinformation between 2019 and whenever this ends of mentioning that we should mistrust the CDC, right? It's just this thing that you just like everyone goes back to. It's becoming part of a genre, is that we have to sow mistrust in the CDC.
Shawn Walker 14:49
But I think it's also more than genre. We've talked about this before. This then plugs in so, Dr. Stock then connects with that entire community that might have questions, concerns or complete distrust of the CDC. Now they're like, oh, you're my friend, I should believe you. Because we have this common ground where we either questioning or uncomfortable, or totally disavow the CDC.
Michael Simeone 15:16
Yeah, I like that. But that it basically helps him signal where he lines up in terms of his trust of institutions, then it seems like right after he's very quick to demonstrate that he is fact based and scientific, which is a really interesting move. And again, like if we're thinking about something like Plandemic, not totally dissimilar, right, we like to call attention to Judy Mikovits credentials and her brilliance as a scientist. Just not a scientist that was approved by you know, the system. And it feels like this guy might be trying to fill a similar role, which is someone who is proficient but an outsider.
Shawn Walker 15:53
And also, a difference is that in Plandemic, they didn't cite specific journal articles or specific cases. In his six-minute-long speech. There are some cases where he's very specific, and other cases where he's pretty vague.
Michael Simeone 16:06
Yeah, I think we tried to establish the reputation of Judy Mikovits and Plandemic to talk about how brilliant she was, and the kinds of different papers that she published. I think this guy is working less on trying to establish his reputation by talking about his reputation. This is interesting about Plandemic is that we establish Judy Mikovits as a scientist, and then she does not argue like a scientist. In this particular case, this guy does the same move, which I really liked that you identified; which is, I'm going to talk, I'm going to talk bad about the CDC, so I can just let you all know where I line up. But then he proceeds to try to argue, like a scientist, which is a really different realm of argumentation than what we saw in something like Plandemic. Which is trying to sow fear without any evidence about, you know, what he could possibly read referring to when he says things like, masks don't work. The droplets are too small for a mask to stop it, right? That's false. But like, he says it and then refers to papers that purportedly say those kinds of things. And you know, the list goes on here, but the the style of argumentation, I feel it's different.
Shawn Walker 17:07
It is, and he opens by saying, you know, I'm Dr. Daniel Stark. I'm a family physician specializing in functional medicine.
Michael Simeone 17:16
Okay, so that sounds really official, let's let's do two things here. What is functional medicine? And why do you think it was important for him to list that as a CV item when he introduced himself, rather than saying, I'm a family physician?
Shawn Walker 17:30
Well, what he says after is that my specific focus in functional medicine is on inflammation. And we can often go back to a lot of concerns around COVID, especially in the misinformation circles about inflammation, saying that this is due to inflammation, it's due to issues with the natural immunity, those kinds of things. So, he's tapping into that. Functional medicine is a form of alternative medicine. In the medical community functional medicine is questioned quite a bit, it's not possible to receive continuing credit, in functional medicine, as Dr. Shegog talked about an episode, doctors have to continually take this, they call it continuing education credits, to learn new things in medicine to stay up to date. But the American Academy of Family Physicians does not allow those courses to be taught for credit. So, it's a pretty questionable area or not accepted area of alternative medicine.
Michael Simeone 18:32
So, I really like what you said about inflammation. Specifically, about how that is a way of whistling to people about where he's going to line up as a so-called expert. And it's interesting to think about functional medicine as well as another one of these things that it is an established field of practice. It's just outside of a lot of the halls of institutional approval, if you will. And so, by saying, I'm a doctor, I don't trust the CDC, I do functional medicine, and my expertise is in inflammation. In 20 seconds, he's already identified a very specific spot of medical and political discourse that he's going to be engaging in. It's really efficient.
Shawn Walker 19:12
It's impressive too.
Michael Simeone 19:13
Yeah, it really is.
Shawn Walker 19:14
I mean, I wish I spoke as well and connected to so many things.
Michael Simeone 19:18
Right? If this guy were saying stuff that I agreed with, I would, it would be exhilarating, right to listen to somebody just lay all this out for any kind of decision-making board, right? I would, I would be just jumping up and down excited. I understand why people got excited when they saw this because I think they saw a champion.
Shawn Walker 19:36
I think even more than just a champion. This is a champion with potentially a pedigree.
Michael Simeone 19:42
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And so where should we go from here? Do you want to talk a little bit about the mysterious flash drive, like we talked about his style of argumentation that always goes back to some kind of publish... published science or he references articles? One thing that keeps coming up is this flash drive.
Shawn Walker 19:58
Yeah, so he references in the beginning of, flash drive that has been given to all members of the school board. And it says that there are six articles on that flash drive, and then goes on to reference those articles and more in his speech.
Michael Simeone 20:16
So, he keeps referring to it. What? What do you think is on it?
Shawn Walker 20:20
I don't know, I've not seen the flash drive. In the video, you don't see him hand out the flash drive. Again, the back of my head, I was thinking like, who gives out a flash drive? Like why wouldn't you just send a link to a Dropbox or put this on his website? It says, very interesting technique of this, like this flash drive, this physical artifact. But yeah, I don't I don't know, except for what he references. I don't know what's actually on the flash drive.
Michael Simeone 20:42
It's kind of like a black box for evidence. You're listening to it. And he's like, I have the goods. But I'm writing a check. My evidence is in the form of a check payable later when you read this flash drive. Interesting move.
Shawn Walker 20:54
It is but also, it's like, when I plugged the flash drive into my computer?
Michael Simeone
I wouldn't.
Shawn Walker
I mean, not part of the technique. But it's, but it is very interesting as a technique to reference this flash drive of like, I'm giving sort of physical evidence in a way, right? These, these documents, like instead of printing them, I'm giving you these digital documents that backup my argument. Which would assume that the school board is prepared to read journal articles in medicine, which, you know, the average person outside of medicine is probably not really prepared to read journal articles in medicine.
Michael Simeone 21:30
Sure. I mean, I don't know if I'm prepared to read journal articles in medicine. All right, well, what if I told you that I have the contents of that flash drive? Today? Right now?
Shawn Walker
I mean, did you buy a flash drive off of eBay? Or how did you get this?
Michael Simeone
Ah, so a number of people have actually posted on various blogs and YouTube presentations of this video, all the different things that he refers to, or allegedly, has in the flash drive. And so, it's a list of around 22 different studies that range from, in publication from kind of like more kind of blog posts, all the way to published science in an Elsevier journal.
Shawn Walker 22:18
And just for clarification, Elsevier is one of the major publishers of academic research in the world.
Michael Simeone
Yes.
Shawn Walker
So, but what you're saying is you have a list of what he refers to?
Michael Simeone 22:30
Yes.
Shawn Walker 22:31
We don't actually know what was on the flash drive.
Michael Simeone 22:34
So, I don't know it was on the flash drive. I tried to find out the studies referenced during the presentation are listed on YouTube and listed on a couple different blogs. So, I want to draw a line here, that even though as much as I enjoyed my game show presentation of this particular segment of the podcast. I cannot confirm that this, any of this was actually in the flash drive itself, right? This is someone else's attempt to recreate what he possibly could have been talking about. I have checked this out, and it looks like these things line up. Although what I don't want to say is he had 22 articles on that flash drive. I'm not trying to say that. It looks like people have done some sleuthing to try to figure out what it was he was referring to. That is very interesting to me. That people have gone back to try to track down what it is that he's talked about. But then other people have posted debunking’s at the same time. And so, he does refer to... this is really, this is interesting to me. Like, he'll post an article that's published that says 'Yeah, masks don't really work.' And it's published in a journal, a journal that's published by a real academic publisher. It's... It's interesting, though, because there there is no evidence right for, say, vaccines, magnifying the virus. To me, I have like a kind of pet theory about why all of this works, right. But I just want to mention that the things he refers to and the things allegedly on the flash drive, it's not all 100% lies from things that would fail an information literacy litmus test, right? Which is where I really want to come down for my protracted commentary here. Is that some of this stuff wouldn't pass the smell test of an information literacy battery, right? If you want to ask where the source is, who published it, you know, what's the style of argumentation? Do they cite? Anything like that, right? So, some of this stuff wouldn't pass muster. But some of this stuff would?
Shawn Walker 24:31
Well oftentimes, we've talked about this before, mis and disinformation become like two truths and a lie. Where we're pulling from some truth. So, for example, in some of his claims about masks.
Michael Simeone
Yeah, the mask one is interesting.
Shawn Walker
So, for example, for the masks. What he's saying is true. Technically, the size of the COVID-19 virus itself is smaller than the openings in the mask. So, as we breathe through, right, the masks are permeable. So, as we breathe through there, there are openings in the mass so that we can actually breathe in and breathe out. But what he misses is that the virus whenever we project it out, we sneeze, we speak, the virus is suspended in water molecules. The virus inside of the water molecules are larger than the openings in the mask. So those get caught by the mask.
Michael Simeone
Oh, that you're talking about the droplets?
Shawn Walker
The droplets, yes. So, these, these droplets. So, it's true that...
Michael Simeone 25:30
It's true that a single molecule can probably pass through the mask?
Shawn Walker 25:34
Yes. If it was just like dry COVID, not suspended.
Michael Simeone 25:38
If only water, yeah, walked around as one molecule.
Shawn Walker 25:42
Yes, then it'll go through the mask. But what he's missing, and I think in almost all the cases, he's missing the context, the greater context within which all of this operates. So, it's that, yes, the COVID virus itself is smaller than the openings of the mask. But he doesn't tell you then that it's suspended in droplets of water, and the mask prevents the droplets of water, or significantly decreases the amount of droplets that get past the mask. Let's put it that way. And so, the mask is stuck in the water, right, these droplets. So yes, masks are effective in that sense. So, he's telling the truth. But in a way, it flips into a lie, because he doesn't really acknowledge the entire context within which aerosols droplets and COVID operate. Does that make sense?
Michael Simeone 26:31
Yeah, and I mean, I've looked at some of these papers. And some of them are, you know, like, peer reviewed journal studies that say, we don't think masks work. And even you know, recently, there was a randomized control trial that came out just trying to look at the differences in COVID infection rates, depending on you know, if we increased masking by 20%, or 30%, or some figure like that. We'll try to track down the link for the show notes. But the main idea being that for some age groups, it didn't look like masking actually reduced the infection rate. But for some age groups, it really made a difference. And so, it seems like again, the last time I took a biology class was way too long. But it seems like if you just look at the published science, there is some evidence to suggest that masks work. There's some evidence to suggest that they're not brilliantly effective or a solution for everything. But it's it's interesting that what we have here is this idea that masks are some kind of farce, right? And this goes back to kind of like how the United States really didn't do the whole masking thing very well, right at the very beginning, masks weren't helpful, then masks were helpful, then they were mandatory, then they're banned, then then they're mandatory, and it's banned to have the mandatory and now we're trying to figure out what exactly there is, that has to happen, right? So as a tool for trying to control the virus at a population level, right? It doesn't seem like many credible sources are going to say ‘Actually, yeah, masks just don't work,’ right? No one is saying that, who looks at like the collection of published science, or I haven't found anybody yet, who's willing to go out on that limb. You can, however, cherry pick a couple articles that say, actually, in this study, we found that masks don't work. But this is what gets me back to the idea of arguing like a scientist. But the conclusions don't really indicate scientific knowledge synthesis, which is a long way of saying, if I find one study that tells me one thing doesn't work, that's one study that tells me one thing doesn't work. I shouldn't just mention that as saying, well, I have a published study that tells me masks don't work. And then I'm done. Most of the time in science, right, and this is very basic, one published study is not nearly enough. And so that there is some kind of controversy, or that you know, 60% of the evidence points one way and 20% of the evidence points the other way, and the other stuff is still up for grabs. But the more recent stuff, let alone like just because something is peer reviewed and published doesn't necessarily mean that it's at the highest possible quality. All of these things go into how we actually interpret and contextualize a single published article or even three published articles on a random flash drive, right? We can't take every published article and consume it as if it's speaking the truth. We have to look at the consensus of the published literature, which is the toughest part about all of this. Is that presenting someone three articles and saying, here's my evidence, isn't the way that people argue in science. In order to even do that, to even have the right to present three articles, you have to provide a literature review. Normally, if you're doing published science, then you have to give your reader review to understand exactly what the real fair and square contours are of the field that you're going into. And then give a rationalization why your new perspective is actually the one that you want to adopt. For folks who aren't in academia or academic science, this boy plate format for articles for scientific publication is so, is so widely adopted, it's just automatic and predictable. That this is something you do when you do research. And the reason I'm going off on this is, is how you don't do research, is list the name of four studies without any context or gesture towards what kinds of controversy there might be or how you might be wrong or other things that you might consider. So, his entire kind of freight train delivery of here's my fact one, here's my fact two, here's my fact three, boom, I'm a scientist, you should believe me, right? Is like science on TV, not science in practice.
Shawn Walker 30:38
So, kind of CSI versus how the, you know, the police would actually come to a crime scene.
Michael Simeone 30:43
Yeah, that’s so much better explanation of what I just said, the CSI version of science is what we got.
Shawn Walker 30:50
And this has been a common theme throughout the pandemic, is that understanding how science works, scientific certainty or uncertainty, the evolution of science, I think it's really important to go back to the reason why this is a novel Coronavirus. Sorry for kind of continuing to bring that up. But it's novel because the virus is new. We haven't seen this before. So, there's a gap in our knowledge. So, we have to do a lot of work. And sometimes that means our initial investigation is incomplete. And so, we keep building more and more scientific knowledge. So, if we think about where we were in the pandemic, a year ago, versus six months ago, versus today on September 3, 2021. A year ago, we didn't have any treatments to potentially assist someone who's in the middle of COVID. Now we have monoclonal antibodies, we have other types of treatments that we can use, that aren't 100% effective, or anywhere near half percent effective, but we've decreased the death rate due to COVID. So, science has made progress. But that takes time. And sometimes we fumble, sometimes what we think is corrected when moment in time, then with new information and new research, we then have to pedal and sometimes like what's the Delta Variant for example, the virus itself changes the game. And we have to figure out, what do we do differently now?
Michael Simeone 32:21
Yeah, the short history of how this pandemic has been handled by different institutions in different countries is an object lesson in a). people are figuring it out, b). contradictions don't mean that something is automatically wrong. Contradiction isn't the same as falsity. It's just a contradiction.
Shawn Walker 32:39
So, to go back to Dr. Stocks video, I think it's also important to point out his main sort of bullet points, so if you kind of went through his major points that he connects to, those bullet points are the same points that are circulating in the anti-vaccination or the extremely hesitant vaccination communities. So, this idea of mastering effective, this concept that vaccines are ineffective.
Michael Simeone
They make the virus worse, right?
Shawn Walker
Yes. So, there's... he does bring up this idea that we've heard it's called ADE or antibody dependent enhancement, where basically the vaccine causes the body to help the virus infect us. And this is a concern with some vaccines. This is actually legitimate ADE is a legitimate medical term and something that has happened with some vaccines they've tested in the past, but those vaccines never make it through clinical trial. But that's not the case with COVID. Initially, scientists were aware of and concerned about ADE. But we found that that's not an issue. That's the scientific consensus is no, this is not a thing. But we even have, for example, the president of the Arizona State Senate, has been tweeting articles about ADE and concerns about the vaccine. So, he's tapping into basically all of the major top hits of the anti-vaccination community.
Michael Simeone 34:09
Yeah, and I look, I can't get over how important it is to turn everything on its head when making these kinds of points. Right. So, we talked about how this is a seemingly more robust form of argumentation, to get to a similar set of points, although he does have different emphases, right, we don't want to say this is just an exact rerun of Plandemic, as we've already discussed. But it's so important to establish that masks rather than saying, you know what masks might be marginally effective, and universal masking might not solve it all. But there's some evidence that leans towards this going to save lives, right? That is the weakest phrasing of the mask argument, right? Some people will say, we'll come out much stronger in terms of the efficacy of masks, we're going to learn more and more, but at the bare minimum, it seems like this is kind of where people are at right now. Is, why not? Even if you have more and more evidence indicating that it does help. They need, right, people making this kind of argument, need masks to be a complete zero. They need masks to have no effect at all. In fact, they need masks to be harmful.
Shawn Walker
Yes.
Michael Simeone
So that even if he's not saying this is a tool of social control, by saying that masks are zero helpful, it is so suspicious if you're going to rattle off an argument that talks three things arguing one way when there are 12 others that argue the opposite, right? And he needs masks to be zero, because the implication there's, it's just a tool of social control, or it's just a frivolous exercise of state power, followed by if you're already not trustful of the CDC, right? You're on board with that idea that it's a frivolous exercise of state power at all, all those chickens land in the same coop.
Shawn Walker 35:52
I think your points are important here, he's signaling to some of these communities. But he's not using the exact same language, which might make folks in the vaccine hesitant or vaccine questioning community uncomfortable. If he comes in and says that, you know, masks are going to kill us, and that we breathe in our own CO2 and the COVID virus and infects us, that's more of an extreme argument that might turn off this sort of hesitant or questioning community. But by the way, his rhetoric is structured, he then kind of gets a two for one deal, where he appeals to the very strongly anti vax and anti-mask community, but he's also appealing to those that are on the fence.
Michael Simeone 36:40
Yeah, and the same thing with the vaccine where we don't need the vaccine to be ineffective, we need the vaccine to be harmful. Right. So that actually, the evidence has been staring us in the face the whole time doing this as another exercise of state control that is completely out of balance. And here we are, again, with the same basic idea. And to your point, I don't think it's necessarily the case that he means to signal all of these different, you know, consistent themes, that he's doing it on purpose, because he wants his video to dog whistle as many vaccine hesitant direct anti Vaccine groups on social media as possible. Honestly, I don't think that's what he's doing. I do think that's what explains the success of this particular diatribe. I think it explains the appeal and it's another one of the reasons why it has become so popular is because he has a kind of softer version, or a safer for TV version of what is ultimately the same contempt for institutions and the practices of science. So, we have evidence without science, we have medical language without the evidentiary procedures of medicine.
Shawn Walker 37:46
I like how you kind of put this he's like he's the broadcast TV version, not the cable TV version of this argument.
Michael Simeone 37:54
Yeah, it's polished up and ready for broader consumption.
Shawn Walker 37:58
But also, less aggressive language. So that, say, language that might not be appropriate for nine o'clock local news versus cable news where people can say some pretty extreme things.
Michael Simeone 38:12
Yeah. And think about the ask when you share something, right? When you share something on social media, it's always interesting, because your kind of asking something of the folks who are consuming your feed. Right? So, if I share Plandemic, the video, Part 1, and I say, hey, check out this video. I'm asking you to do a particular thing, I want you to click on this video, and I want you to consume this video as if it is a documentary that is credible. I am like signing off on this. It's different when I'm like, hey, this guy seems to be talking a lot of sense, right? He's not, the Plandemic is produced, it has a very specific message. its existence is not incidental. It is a stronger endorsement of some of these anti medicine, anti-science and anti-government themes. If I want to say hey, this piece of media is far more incidental, this guy sounds like a professional. And he just seems kind of like an every person. I feel like that's asking a little something different of your audience. They don't have to buy in completely. This rather than appearing documentary in nature, documentary, like a film appears to be literally documentary like. Hey, this guy was talking, here's some video of it. What do you think, right? It's a lot less intimidating of an encounter on social media.
Shawn Walker 39:24
But I don't think this is one of those videos that Google or Apple is going show on their made-on Android or made on iPhone page.
Michael Simeone 39:31
You don't think?
Shawn Walker
No.
Michael Simeone
I mean, the video quality is actually pretty remarkable for what it is.
Shawn Walker 39:35
Yeah, that might be a little bit out of their marketing department's comfort level. One other thing that he focuses on is these anecdotal case studies. Where he talks about, I treated 15 patients. So, for example, he talks about how well the COVID treatments are working. So, Vitamin D, Ivermectin, Zinc, all of the treatments that he discusses are not treatments that are approved by the FDA. And are all treatments that the FDA has slapped humongous warning labels on to say, either these are completely ineffective, or we don't know yet; and this is dangerous until we know more.
Michael Simeone 40:15
Yeah, and I think this is a really good point. And this, this, again, speaks to the idea of why would somebody believe this more than something like Plandemic. Plandemic is a film that has, is making an argument, this is some guy, or appears to be some guy.
Shawn Walker 40:30
Some doctor.
Michael Simeone 40:31
Some doctor, right? And who, who walks, talks, and cites evidence like people expect a doctor to. And also, again, the artifact itself is just a guy talking to a school board, it's very casual. It is much easier, right, we know this, people tend to consume misinformation from people that they trust or from trusted sources. And so, there's like a gap. You know, if a celebrity says something, then that's not the same kind of trust network, as if a local celebrity says something. Right? So, it could be that actually, I believe that this guy establishes a certain kind of credibility that only a non-celebrity can have, that only somebody in a casual context can really have the only somebody who's not in a highly produced video, not in Washington, DC, right? This is a person out in the middle of Indiana. This person is either or resembles somebody's family doctor. And, as our interview with Dr. Shegog pointed out that is a high trust contact for many people, many people do trust their family doctor. So, we've got this guy who doesn't seem like an intimidating white coat, official, bigwig, doctor, like America's top doctors, this guy seems like your family doctor. And because of that, I think he's able to cultivate a certain kind of trust, or people anticipate trusting this guy in a way that they might not for some of the other films that were talked about before. So again, trying to explain the success here.
Shawn Walker 42:01
I mean, he also puts on this sort of cloak, I mean, he's not wearing a white coat in the video. But he kind of puts that on his introduction. But then he also uses scientific language. He's also talking about how he wants to protect children. I mean, this is a whole pronged strategy to make him seem so genuine and wholesome. Except if you understand the science under his argument, then your head explodes. And you're like, this is...this is misinformation.
Michael Simeone 42:29
Yes, yes. Although I think he's done, you know, there's two things, one is appearing trustworthy; and the next thing is distribute misinformation. I think he like, whatever performance he provides, I think, you know, even as somebody who thinks that his argumentation is, you know, I don't agree with it. And I think it's dangerous and harmful. I think it is a successful performance of being a trusted local figure. I think he nails it.
Shawn Walker 42:58
Oh, I agree. And that's why I think those sort of last part of his talk is even more effective than the first part. I mean, once he establishes himself, which I think is very effective, I mean, and we do the same thing, right? We're two professors and researchers at, you know at a research one institution, we have doctorates, right? So, we should kind of display our pedigrees a bit like a peacock, you know, like he does.
Michael Simeone 43:21
I feel like we display our idiocy very frequently as well. But you know, that's just keeping both sides of the ledger ballots.
Shawn Walker 43:27
Well, possibly too, but we use the same kind of thing. But then you jump to the last part and I think this is a huge problem in mis and disinformation where it becomes tricky is this anecdotal evidence. I mean, politicians use it all the time. You know, a politician gets up, gives a speech, you know, I was talking to Mary, Mary has four children, she's a single mom, she's struggling with health care, right? That like, anecdote, that personal anecdote, just like rips your heart out.
Michael Simeone
Right.
Shawn Walker
And you're like, oh, we must deal with this. Or if you're on the opposite side, it’s kind of rips your brain out, and you're super angry. So, either way, we have an appeal, or we kind of turn it into like a sort of anti-appeal in a way. But he does the sort of similar thing of like, I have personally treated 15 patients. And these treatments are amazingly successful.
Michael Simeone 44:20
Yeah.
Shawn Walker 44:21
That's brilliant, as a technique.
Michael Simeone 44:24
Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of times in kind of information literacy training, we talk about can I trust the source? And of course, that's a valuable question. But I also think that's important if you're consuming media online anyways, to just ask, why do I trust this source? Because sometimes you find yourself trusting as an automatic read of the situation, rather than something that you're just you know, cogitating for 30 seconds to a minute while you look up some references. Sometimes you can find yourself in a situation where you're like, I trust this person. And it's important to take a step back and say, wait a minute, why do I trust this person again? So, it's subtle, but I think it's important especially when you get in a situation like this one, where it doesn't seem like an insidious video. It doesn't seem like somebody spent a bunch of money to make it. It's just a cell phone video, somebody's talking to people who are in power. I think that is a very seductive format. And I think we are exposed to these kinds of videos all the time, because cell phone video is just a thing that's really exploded right over the last 20 years. So, to me asking why you trust something is just as important as why should I trust somebody?
Shawn Walker 45:28
I think we need to add, seduction factor as one of our discussion points for future pieces of mis and disinformation.
Michael Simeone 45:35
Yeah, like why why is this easy to like, is super important, right? I think, I asked myself at the same thing, watching this, right? Where in combing through some of the articles as I understand why this appears convincing, because it takes actually a lot of effort to say, oh, okay, on balance, here's where this guy's argument sits in the broader field of published work. And, and I think it's suspicious that he didn't mention that before. That's a that's really time consuming. That's a lot more time consuming than anything that we saw presented here.
Shawn Walker 46:06
Yeah. So, I want to go back to the flash drive real quick. Can you give us sort of a texture of the kind of range of resources that were either sort of mentioned or supposedly on the flash drive?
Michael Simeone 46:17
Yeah, so I'll read off some of the headlines or the titles, if that helps. SARS-CoV-2 transmission among marine recruits during quarantine, is the first paper.
Shawn Walker
Where does that come from?
Michael Simeone
That's in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Shawn Walker 46:28
So, New England Journal of Medicine, that's like a household name, like Mayo Clinic, for example. That's a household name in, you know, gold standard medical research, right?
Michael Simeone
One-hundred percent. Yep. Then another in the Journal of Pharmacology, and I can't even pronounce these words, right. Pharmacotherapeutics. “Experimental assessment of carbon dioxide content and inhaled air with or without a face mask and healthy children” is the next one. And that is actually just a research letter published by the American Medical Association.
Shawn Walker
So, what's the difference between, say, a peer reviewed journal article versus a research letter?
Michael Simeone 47:09
Right, about three months of people arguing with you about whether or not you're right.
Shawn Walker 47:13
So, a research letter, in some ways, is almost like an academic version of a letter to the editor.
Michael Simeone 47:21
Sure, sure. Yeah. As, I as I understand, I think it might be different for every single publication, right? But I think even if we were to zoom out, say, you know what, I am going to believe every single thing that's on this guy's flash drive, instead of saying, oh, I think you know, journal, New England Journal of Medicine really whiffed on this one, right? They published trash. I'm going to say, that right? Or, you know, some of these might be more opinion than non-opinion. I don't even think we have to go there, to be able to understand that this is what cherry picking looks like. Right. I think sometimes people don't appreciate the volume of published articles in biomedicine. Right. It is 1000s upon 1000s of articles published every year, just on a given topic, right with a given keyword. Right. If it's a popular topic, you might have 20,000 articles published in say, PubMed just on a particular subject, right. Or Web of Science, right, any of these different services, that kind of aggregate academic papers that are peer reviewed. So, we are talking about 1000s of papers. And so, and that is the ocean of evidence out. And if someone makes six outrageous claims, and they have brought with them 20 papers that collectively backup their six outrageous claims, when you consider the 1000s of articles that are published on that subject, possibly in a year. That is an unsettling strategy. That is not actually scientific and considering all the evidence, even though it may sound principled and rigorous, incredible.
Shawn Walker 48:56
I mean, it's not like COVID was an unpopular keyword in the last year and a half, right?
Michael Simeone 49:01
People have been doing so much COVID research over the last 18 months. That's the other thing I think people should understand is that if someone pulls out a paper on COVID, you'd understand that people have been doing research on COVID at a massively accelerated rate, because not only is it topical, but different funding agencies have been incentivizing it. And so, and different journals have been incentivizing it. So, it is so interesting that you should expect the volume of research to be massive. And so, if someone shows up with six papers, and they all kind of orthogonally shore up one idea, and you've got 500 papers out there that also take up that idea, that is a way of misleading somebody.
Shawn Walker 49:44
And it's not as if the COVID research operates in a bubble, right, it stands on top of a whole history of research, say, just in aerosol research alone. We have a whole history of that. So, we don't just cite stuff from this year, right? We have a whole lineage in history. Have research to then draw on of, well, we know aerosols operate in these ways. And there are hundreds of papers on that that could be cited. So, if a student turned in a literature review on this topic with 20 references, and some of those references are the blog posts, and some of those references are to, sort of research notes, which are not peer reviewed publication.
Michael Simeone
Right.
Shawn Walker
I wouldn't be super jazzed about that, would you?
Michael Simeone 50:26
Yeah. I mean, I certainly would want more time to vet it, I would be more suspicious of the person who would expect me to believe it. More than anything else.
Shawn Walker 50:34
Some red flags would go off. But I don't think his audience was the actual scientific community, right?
Michael Simeone 50:45
Yeah and I mean, I think here's a great example. Right? So even though the majority of his papers are single studies, right, one of the papers that he cites is actually a systematic review. And for those who don't know, a systematic review is basically like, people go in and read a bunch of articles on a topic, and do a lot of work synthesizing all that information and create a systematic review of a particular subject, right. Or a particular topic, right. So here we have Vitamin D for prevention of respiratory tract infections, a systematic review and meta-analysis. Alright, what is the conclusion of the systematic review is that Vitamin D supplementation decreases events related to respiratory tract infections and that there's a need for more well conducted clinical trials to reach a certain conclusion. So normally, you don't pick up a systematic review like that and say, see Vitamin D works. You might say, there might be suggestive evidence, but we need to know more. But what we don't do is pass that off as definitive proof of anything whatsoever, unless you're being misleading. So, it's another example of, you know, the papers that he refers to are a mix of different genres, right, comments, papers, systematic reviews, blog posts, and it's very easy to stretch the truth with scientific publications, because scientific publications, most of the time, are incredibly conservative about what they indicate. Because the whole point of this is for all the papers to pile up and create a consensus of knowledge. The whole idea is not to have a single paper, be the evidence for the rest of your practices for all time to come.
Shawn Walker 52:14
Because that's, I mean, most people would in research would be like, well, that's preposterous to have a research paper, that's here's how we treat COVID. There'd be no such paper, because we have to be so narrow, due to the expertise, due to all of the potentially studies and testing that's required. We have to kind of combine that together into a package. It's not just one paper that's going to do all of that, that work by any means. And...
Michael Simeone 52:41
Yeah, his field was far more entertaining than any of the papers that he cites, right?
Shawn Walker 52:45
Well, but Well, okay, I have to give it to him. He's much more entertaining than reading a journal article.
Michael Simeone
But, low bar.
Shawn Walker
I don't think anyone's ever really been accused, except for a handful of hilarious philosophy papers of being entertaining.
Michael Simeone 52:59
Yeah. And I mean, there is this mythology of the single paper that changes everything right in there are very influential papers. But normally an influential paper creates a tide of papers that follow up, that adopt or test, or try to validate that particular perspective or try to see how it works. It's very different than just having a single paper that changes how we think forever without any additional follow up. That really doesn't happen.
Shawn Walker 53:23
So, well, paper might open up a new gap, and then a whole bunch of studies then flow through that gap.
Michael Simeone
Right, we don't just close the book...
Shawn Walker
To either support it, or throw nuclear weapons at the paper whenever it doesn't turn out to be true.
Michael Simeone 53:40
Right, exactly. Alright, so where does this leave us? This leaves us feeling. I don't know, I feel worse since we started having the conversation.
Shawn Walker 53:47
I feel seduced in a way. If I can use that word, now. I don't know, maybe that word makes me uncomfortable. I see. The term I would use is I think this is a pretty sexy speech or diatribe as you put it, I think it masterfully joins together common themes of misinformation around COVID, anti-masking, anti-vaccination, as well as just this a perfect drive through where it connects to all of these communities. I mean, this is just, this is Emmy Award winning work right here.
Michael Simeone 54:23
Yeah, I mean, I think it helps drive home the point that oftentimes entertainment we accept as a substitute for truth, even if we're not aware of that transaction as it's happening to us.
Shawn Walker 54:38
I want to keep say, I want to say, this is like a TED talk, but I think that would be a bad move.
Michael Simeone 54:43
Yeah, not not quite. Although your your comparison earlier made me think of a commercial that will never happen from Apple, but a filmed on iPhone that just takes all of the Parler videos that have been captured from the January 6th event and then just use that as material for filmed on iPhone,
Shawn Walker 55:00
I think that's a great place to leave it. I think this video is a masterful example of basically what we've been discussing since the inception of the podcast and the techniques used.
Michael Simeone
Yeah, and we have a fun ethical dilemma about whether or not we should release the link to this for people to look at. Yeah, that'll be a fun, a fun thing to think through.
Shawn Walker
Well, thank you for joining us for our return. We look forward to more timely production of episodes in the future, and be well.
Michael Simeone 55:27
For questions or comments, use the email address datascience@asu.edu. And to check out more about what we're doing, try library.asu.edu/data