I think I’m trapped at home today — I tried walking to work, and didn’t get beyond my driveway, because we had a thaw and a refreeze and it’s slick as snot out there. Then we’re supposed to get more snow this morning, with temperatures plummeting down to -15°C with 50mph wind gusts, so I’m cowering at home today. The spiders will go hungry for a day (they are opportunistic feeders, they can handle it).
If you’re similarly stuck at home, here’s an hour long video that I thought was very good. It rips into a couple of self-styled “science” based influencers who are anything but.
The most shocking bit was seeing Joe Rogan getting furious at any push-back on his anti-vax views, and basically shutting down the conversation by claiming that the polio epidemic was co-incident with they years of heaviest DDT use. He also made the standard skeptical claim that vaccines were a late response to an already fading plague, which is sort of true. There are multiple approaches to a serious disease: behavioral shifts, like self-quarantine, and improved hygiene can reduce the incidence and severity of infections, but it takes efficacious medical responses to deliver the coup de grace. And Joe Rogan doesn’t understand science at all if he falls for the correlation equals causation canard. DDT does not cause polio.
The video also jumps on Bill Maher. He’s got this canned response to any claims, saying that we don’t know 100% of everything, more like 20% or 10%, so his weird fads might be true. It’s nonsense. Of course there is much left to learn, but we can say with 100% confidence that you shouldn’t eat cyanide, or that the earth is spherical, or that vaccines don’t cause autism, because smart, skeptical people have studied that stuff and have objective data to back up their arguments. We don’t even quantify knowledge as a percentage fraction of everything, so that’s a bogus metric anyway. I’m willing to go along with a claim that we only know 0.00001% of everything, but that the bits we know, we know pretty damn well, so please, Bill Maher, don’t jump off the roof of a New York skyscraper to test your ‘theory’ of gravity.
Another good topic was about what having a PhD means. It’s not a free pass to make everything you say valuable, important, and true. It just says you passed an apprenticeship. You presumably got some training in critical thinking which the Joe Rogans of the world lack, but you have to demonstrate your skills throughout your life. There are also some really bad theses out there — there is some pressure to get students out the door so you can get a new crop started, and some bad PIs who will let garbage pass as long as they get a publication out of it.
(By the way, I think my PhD thesis holds up. Not only did multiple researchers build on it afterwards, but it wasn’t even just mine — it was the product of a collaboration with several absolutely brilliant mentors and colleagues, which is how every thesis ought to be.)
If you’re going to report temperatures in Centigrade, shouldn’t you report wind in kph?
Maybe Joe Rogan is a cause of autism. After all diagnosis of autism has gone up heavily since he first appeared on NewsRadio in 1995, and by his own reasoning correlation is causation.
Oh yeah, heard that one before in a discussion with an anti-vaxer. I pointed out that Polio was already known in ancient Egypt, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have DDT.
Answer was that they hadn’t actually claimed Polio was caused by DDT, only that it increased the number of cases. Of course then we would still see the occasional case among vaccinated people if the vaccines were only a hoax or the vaccines were useful after all because even with smaller case numbers it’s a horrible disease.
The last polio pandemic was also co-incident with the rise of radio and black and white TV.
Joe Rogan doesn’t even know what the Germ Theory of Disease is. This was discovered and developed in the mid and late 1800s.
It is also taught in grade school and most third graders can understand and explain it.
As a grade schooler in the era of black and white TV, I had first hand experience with the Germ Theory of Disease.
Polio was common and feared, many adults around us limped in various idiosyncratic ways, and one of my classmates died from polio in the third grade.
I also had chicken pox, measles, Rubella, and a pneumonia that almost killed me.
Vaccines are a victim of their own success.
We don’t see a lot of maimed and dead children these days from infectious diseases.
Children are still dying in the US from preventable infectious diseaes.
So far in North America with the current measles outbreaks, it is three children and one adult dead.
There are always small outbreaks of pertussis whooping cough around. Especially now in the winter. In the last year, 7 infants have died in the US from whooping cough.
“A PHD isn’t ‘… a free pass to make everything you say valuable, important, and true.’”
Seems to be working for Avi Loeb
“Bill Maher, don’t jump off the roof of a New York skyscraper to test your ‘theory’ of gravity.”
Actually I don’t mind if he does provided he doesn’t land on anyone.
I was trying reverse psychology.
How can you stand watching those videos? I think it would be far better to just drink yourself silly and yell at pigeons or clouds.
Whilst here in Adelaide Sth Oz it was plus 41 degrees (105.80 Fahrenheit) today. With Summer only just started here even if the Ashes (Cricket) are rapidly being decided right here & tomorrow or maybe next day or so.
@8: In that case, should we also not tell him to stick things into a power outlet to test the theory of electricity?
I have to say though that theses should also be permitted to be solitary work, in order to accomodate scientists to whom this is more in their nature.
By the way. My father was a polio survivor so I know what life was like for those who weren’t sentenced to a life in an iron lung or hurry up and die quickly from the disease. RFKjr and his ilk make me especially stabby.
Pretty sure that oral vaccine derived polio shows that viruses cause polio. I doubt DDT plays much of a role in that phenomenon.
Bill Maher has two prevalent tones of voice. One is the snotty, condescending tone where he automatically thinks he’s always the smartest person in the room because…he smokes a bunch of pot and drinks liquor in front of his guests, while lounging in his chair with apparent sarcopenia legs.
His other voice is the squeakiness of second puberty. That one might trigger dogs in his audience’s living rooms.
Each day new madness – thanks PZ…!
Saw today also that a paper from 25 years ago proving glyphosphate was harmless (“safe enough to drink” was the slogan) had been fabricated by Monsanto researchers and has now been withdrawn. How many cancers have been caused in the mean time..?
Interesting, nomdeplume. Overstated, but close enough.
https://www.sciencealert.com/retracted-the-monsanto-backed-paper-that-told-us-roundup-was-safe
↓
The now-retracted article, which reported there was no evidence that Roundup caused cancer, endocrine disruption, or was toxic to humans, is one of the most-cited papers in scientific research relating to glyphosate.
[…]
“The retraction is based on several critical issues that are considered to undermine the academic integrity of this article and its conclusions,” writes the journal’s co-editor-in-chief, Martin van den Berg, in a retraction notice published in November 2025. In trying to contact Williams, the paper’s sole surviving author, van den Berg received no response.
“This article has been widely regarded as a hallmark paper in the discourse surrounding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and Roundup,” van den Berg writes.
“However, the lack of clarity regarding which parts of the article were authored by Monsanto employees creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn.”
Among those ‘critical issues’ is the fact that assessments of the chemical’s contributions to cancer and genetic toxicity were based solely on unpublished studies by Monsanto, and omitted many other long-term studies that were complete at the time the review was written.
The lack of authorial independence “raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors in this article”, van den Berg states in the retraction notice. He goes on the list the lack of disclosure about Monsanto employees’ involvement, and the financial compensation that authors may have received from the company.