Scientists don't debate science.
...and what a glorious weekend it was for getting this message out
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It was a busy weekend for science communicators on Twitter.
On Friday, VICE published an article called “Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan's Vaccine Misinformation”, criticizing Rogan’s continued promotion of anti-vaccine crackpots and crackpottery; in this case, how he recently gave anti-vaccine champion Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. an unchallenged platform to vomit disinformation over the world’s entire podcasting audience. Vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez — nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in January for co-developing a patent-free COVID vaccine — tweeted in support of the article.
Rogan then tweeted an offer to Hotez of $100,000 to charity if he’d come on the show and debate RFK Jr. Elon Musk followed it up with flame emojis, as if to say it would be awesome. Soon after Musk tweeted “He’s afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.”
Hotez then suffered the full force of being at the receiving end of the wrath of the bottom of the world’s barrel of Internet dudebros, the Roganites and Elongelicals, who worship every word their masters drool. Hotez had people showing up at his house to harass him in person and countless death threat emails and tweets. I can only imagine what he went through: After my appearance on the Joe Rogan show in 2014 to challenge him on his history of promoting conspiracy theories and other bullshit (like this), I got hundreds and hundreds of hate emails and tweets. Most of them called me a “cunt”, apparently the Roganites’ most intellectual attempt at expressing scholarly disagreement. And I didn’t have the Elongelicals piling on top the way poor Hotez has.