The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a review of alleged ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19 that physicians were responsible for, either on social media and in other news sources.
In the paper, the corresponding author, Dr. Sarah L. Goff, MD PhD, defined misinformation. She surveyed social media platforms and news sources for anything written by other physicians that fits her selected examples of both. She then proposes that physicians guilty of writing what she judges to be misinformation should be “regulated and disciplined”.
Dr. Goff and her co-authors define misinformation as “false, inaccurate or misleading information according to the best evidence available at the time” and disinformation as “having an intentionally malicious purpose”.
Dr. Goff states: “We conservatively classified inaccurate information as misinformation rather than disinformation because the intent of the propagator cannot be objectively assessed.”
Dr. Goff identified four major themes of alleged misinformation. These included: (1) vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective; (2) masks and/or social distancing did not decrease risk for contracting COVID-19; (3) other medications for prevention or treatment were effective despite not having completed clinical trials or having been FDA approved, and (4) other misinformation.
Dr. Goff includes a brief discussion of vaccine safety and effectiveness and mask effectiveness, but does not attempt to undertake a full review of the published evidence in these areas. Instead, she seems to assume that her readers will agree that any suggestion that vaccines or masks were ineffective or unsafe are self-evidently false.
Dr. Goff states that the American Medical Association has called for disciplinary action for physicians propagating COVID-19 misinformation. She laments the fact that “few physicians appear to have faced disciplinary action” for alleged sins against Covid orthodoxy.
I am not an expert in analysis of published medical research. I don’t work in a School of Public Health like Dr. Goff. I have worked as a licensed physician in England for over 40 years as a family doctor and an occupational physician and I have over 40 years’ experience reading the medical peer review literature. I retired from full time medical practice in 2017. I have a reasonable understanding of English, maths, logic and critical thinking. I don’t pretend to have read all the published research on masks or vaccinations. However, I continue to read leading medical journals on a regular basis.
I understand the concept of truth and how hard it is to establish an absolute truth in science. I understand the enlightenment principles that any ideas can be discussed, that nobody has a veto on ideas and that it is important to doubt and test all of our ideas continually. There is no indication from her writing that Dr. Goff understands how important it is to doubt, question and test the effectiveness and safety of interventions such as vaccines and masks.
From my reading of the peer review literature, for illustration purposes, I identified the following four publications as examples of publications which should raise concerns and questions about COVID-19 vaccines and masks.
In 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a report entitled ‘Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza’. The WHO concluded: “There are a number of high-quality randomised controlled trials demonstrating that personal measures (e.g. hand hygiene and face masks) have at best a small effect on transmission.”
In February 2023 a Cochrane review into the effectiveness of masks concluded: “Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/Covid-like illness.”
A study from the Department of Infectious Diseases in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 2022 found that “the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine only offered modest effectiveness”.
A study from the University of Queensland in September 2022 concluded: “Never in vaccine history have 57 leading scientists and policy experts released a report questioning the safety and efficacy of a vaccine. They not only questioned the safety of the current COVID-19 injections but were calling for an immediate end to all vaccination. Many doctors and scientists around the world have voiced similar misgivings and warned of consequences due to long-term side effects.”
These four publications are examples which give us a legitimate reason to question the use of masks and the Covid vaccines and to look further for evidence. Are we not allowed to raise questions about these issues without being threatened with disciplinary procedures? Not to ask any questions would be lacking in curiosity in the extreme, especially for practising physicians concerned about the safety of their patients and the integrity of their advice. These publications do not prove anything conclusively, but they should not be ignored. Expressing doubt and asking questions about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and masks is not false, inaccurate or misleading, to use the definition adopted by Dr. Goff. If questions arise in my mind, why don’t similar questions arise in the minds of Dr. Goff and her co-authors? How did Dr. Goff reach such a degree of certainty about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines against COVID-19 that she can classify any statement to the contrary as misinformation worthy of disciplining a colleague? Why does she conclude that a colleague who disagrees with her does not have the right to be heard? Why would she seek to silence those who disagree with her?
Inaccurate information which is not deliberately intended to deceive is simply inaccurate. In science and medicine there are many inaccurate statements made in good faith by researchers who are presenting their data or their theories as accurately and honestly as possible. It is important that all theories and all research data can be published, even when the data or the theory are wrong. Disciplinary action for any statement which turns out to be inaccurate or false would surely suppress a large proportion of all scientific and medical discourse. Is this what Dr. Goff wants?
It could be argued that the examples of misinformation used by Dr. Goff are themselves misinformation. To suggest that anyone who states that the Covid vaccines were unsafe and/or ineffective is guilty of misinformation is to ignore significant evidence which raises questions about the vaccines. To suggest that anyone who states that masks did not decrease risk for contracting COVID-19 is guilty of misinformation is also to ignore evidence to support this view. It could be argued that Dr. Goff is using false, inaccurate or misleading examples of misinformation in her study in order to suppress dissenting views.
Dr. Goff appears to have very little humility. She does not appear to be in any doubt that she and her co-authors are infallible in relation to masks and vaccines. She seems to think she is the ultimate arbiter of truth, and that she is immune from being regulated or disciplined for her views in the way she promotes for others. I would not propose disciplining or applying regulatory sanctions to Dr. Goff or her colleagues if her publication includes false, inaccurate or misleading statements. Instead, I would propose respectful dialogue with her to debate her proposal, offering arguments to the contrary with a view to educating her and myself.
In England, medical doctors are obliged to respect colleagues’ skills and contributions, and to treat colleagues fairly. We must create a working environment in which it is safe to ask questions and raise concerns. I believe in these principles. Failure to adhere to these standards can lead to disciplinary action against medical doctors. I understand that similar professional obligations apply to medical doctors in the United States. Dr. Goff does not appear to respect the skills and contributions of colleagues who disagree with her. She seems to be promoting a working environment in which it is not safe for those who disagree with whatever the orthodoxy within the medical profession is at any one time to ask questions and raise concerns. Does she not realise that this may make it unsafe for her to raise concerns and ask questions in due course?
Dr. Goff acknowledges in her final sentence that “a coordinated response by federal and state governments and the profession that takes free speech carefully into account is needed”. This tiny nod towards free speech is somewhat undermined by her attempts to censor her colleagues’ right to disagree with her. Free speech is nothing if it is not accorded to those with whom we disagree.
Frederick Douglass, the American social reformer said: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” If Dr. Goff persuades those in power to regulate or discipline those who disagree with her, then their right to free speech is violated and our right to hear them is violated. Does Dr. Goff not have a glimmer of doubt about her omniscience? Does she not think there is even a faint possibility that physicians who disagree with her might have something useful to say?
Why do some physicians think that the best response when another physician disagrees with them is to censor their colleague? How could any physicians achieve such unshakeable certainty in their own omniscience? When did they forget the fundamental principles of the enlightenment, that all ideas can be discussed and that nobody has a veto on any ideas? How did the principles of treating colleagues with respect and upholding the free speech of those with whom we disagree become so degraded?
Dr. Goff and her co-authors should be careful what they wish for. They seek to discipline colleagues for daring to disagree with their orthodoxy. If they succeed, the cancel police may be coming for them next.
Dr. Nigel Wilson MRCGP FFOM is a retired consultant occupational physician.
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Allison Pearson is bang on the money.
The Government’s Bullsh!t and Bullying Unit has gone into overdrive to try and scare the bejesus out of the gullible and increasingly Net-Zero-sceptic public about the “climate crisis” which only exists in flawed and easily manipulated computer models.
The comments below-the-line are wonderful to read.
Good article & good comment , it’s school holiday time so it’s more train & plane strikes which are now coupled with these “Scorchio” weather forescasts ! Temporary measures from the Weffers until the CBDC,s etc kick in
As well as flawed and easily manipulated minds.
Brain dead, anti-science, anti-reality, model-based cults of Rona and Klimat.
This is the coldest July in the UK in the past 10 years? Yet it is proof of ‘warming’ and ‘changing’ from the trace chemical plant food which makes oxygen….5% of which is from human ’emissions’. Remember last July – the hottest evah! So what happened with this July, surely the temps should be 50C this month.
The Dumb Ages. Authoritarianism. NWO. Transhumanism. $cientism.
Follow the cash to get to the model’s fake code.
The daftest comment I read (via WUWT) was somebody’s admission that 1936 was 5 degrees warmer across US states, but that it doesn’t count because that was due to the dust bowl, but this is due to climate change.
So “record temperatures” are the slam dunk evidence of climate change, but we can only tell they’re records because we already know they’re due to climate change.
Hot weather is proof of climate change.
Cold weather is also proof of climate change because “extreme” temperatures are a hallmark of climate change.
You can’t win.
The public is being hypnotised once again this time into experiencing, you know, weather, and believing it’s man made climate change.
Yes, Stewart.
Climate has always changed. And cold is also part of climate.
But, as almost everyone on here knows well, Climate is, in effect, weather over a period of at least 30 years. Zero point zero to do with 60 seconds near Coningsby runway using dodgy temperature probes rather than traditional thermometers.
Most also realise that, even in India, eight times more people die from cold than from heat.
And how many people have read in the MSM about the Dzud events in Central Asia over the last 30 years or more?
They’ve been at this corruption a long time, that’s for sure. Here’s the DM back in 2013 exposing a major cover-up. Hide the truth, quick!!
”Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.
A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.
Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.
The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.
But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.
Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.
Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.
Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat – and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2425775/Climate-scientists-told-cover-fact-Earths-temperature-risen-15-years.html
26 years of by far the highest immigration in our history, with the vast majority of those immigrants coming from countries with lower, often very much lower emissions per capita, tell us that the governments in place since Satan’s Little Helper Blair got elected don’t believe that there is a man-made climate problem.
And the rich, powerful and influential can’t even be arsed to pretend that they’re changing their own behaviour.
We said climate lockdowns next, didn’t we. Not with quite the same immediacy as the BS COVID lockdowns, though. This one will be a very slow burner (if you pardon the pun).
The one silver lining of the plandemic was that now, when they try to do the climate lockdowns, we can always point to the absolute utter failure of the covid lockdowns to do anything even remotely good at all, and in fact did far more harm than good. Like The Who (the band, NOT to be confused with the WHO!) famously sang, “we won’t get fooled again!”
I remember going to the South of France as a teenager. It was a long hot summer and there were forest fires all over the place. I walked to a little ridge just outside our village and watched a fire spread from hill to hill burning houses as it went. It was probably the most dramatic thing I have ever seen. These things happen on the Med from time to time. Events that have happened before are not proof of climate change.
Agreed, I have been going to Greece for over 40 years, I do not remember a summer where forest fires haven’t raged during the summer months.
Caused by human activity! Not spontaneous combustion
You’re having a totally wrong perspective on this. On their own, wildfires are completely uninteresting and have happened every years since god-only-knows-when. But now, they’re happening because man-made climate change causes wildfires to occur which, in turn, demonstrates that man-made climate change is real, as per the usual, ciruclar logic of these people:
1) We assume that A must be true and hence, must cause B.
2) We go looking for B and find it somewhere.
3) B => A. Rejoice!
They’re really always doing this in the same way, just as they’re also always using guilt by association smears and appeals to ignorance.
Same here. I was some distance from the fires, but remember lying on the beach watching planes scoop up water from the Mediterranean.
One of the BBC weather presenters went a bit rogue the other day and showed the record temperatures across the Mediterranean and when they occurred. The record for Greece was measured in 1977. I expect he has been called in for re-education.
With all this extreme heat, life expectancy must be really low in Greece. But what’s this? Betthany Hughes visiting Ikaria, which has the highest proportion of 90 year olds in Europe, low cancer rates and low rates of heart disease.
“Beelzebub Satan Lucifer Cerberus Hades” heatwaves are good for life expectancy then?
I saw those same yellow planes. It’s obvious that when countries maintain fleets of firefighting aircraft they must be expecting heat waves, droughts and fires. I hope that people can see all through the relentless hype and propaganda.
‘A report by the BIT in collaboration with Sky TV called ‘The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles’ says that “behavioural change on climate can be driven by TV…‘
How about decarbonising by not watching TV then?!
Indeed, as more and more people ditch the Licence Fee and cancel their Sky subscriptions, the legacy media will continue to scream into an echo chamber. I’ve been heartened recently by a number of people I know that bought into Remain/Covid and Net Zero BS who are tuning out altogether. For many, it’s a force of habit to pay the Licence Fee to watch live tv. Once they realise if they change that habit they are out of one arm of the control mechanism that the BBC and Sky have, it’s very liberating.
This touches on something curious. As people’s energy bills “necessarily skyrocket” (Barack Obama), the first thing to be cut from their budgets will be luxury / entertainment items – the chief amongst these being media subscriptions like Sky TV and mainstream publications.
This yet again raises the question of whether corporate complicity is down to brainwashing and idiocy in the upper echelons and management layers, or something more insidious and globally directed.
The former could be seen as likely now the senior executives of major corporations have managed to vote themselves piratical salary increases over the last three decades, arguably isolating themselves in such a tight economic bubble from the rest of society that they now inhabit their own reality, utterly out of touch with that of ordinary people.
The latter is evidenced by the sort of corporate media sponsorship from governments and philanthropist organisations we saw during the pandemic, as well as the hectoring, supercilious, often openly contemptuous tone of the media (Hollywood and the ad industries in particular) towards the public. Alongside this, the apparent lack of concern about the consequences of allowing media content to be censored and centrally dictated by unelected but establishment-approved officials.
In this case, it is perhaps a sign that these organisations no longer see their financial future in selling services to the public, but instead in their revenue being derived sideways through subsidies, either directly from public funds collected by government, or indirectly via the same laundered through other organisations.
Either way, there doesn’t seem to be much room for middle ground between the two possibilities.
I saw on the 6 o’clock news yesterday that the BBC’s chief climate hysteria reporter was reporting from, I think, Spain. Now how did he get there? I don’t think he really gets this “reduce carbon emissions” thing.
So glad to see the sceptics countering this weather propaganda. The whole madness and wondering why I don’t get what everyone else is saying and doing is so reminiscent of covid. Thank you DS for your sanity.
Good grief, it’s a wonder the engines on the plane didn’t melt! The heat has now gone beyond luminous red..to black!! We’re all doomed!
They’re on high alert to jet off to whichever part of the world is experiencing hot weather to report it as climate change.
It’s a big world so it’s not hard to find somewhere where the weather is hot.
Or in winter, they’ll go to somewhere it’s not as cold anymore and hang a lantern on that!
Old Trafford weather forecast:
Today rainy 68F
Thursday cloudy 66F
Friday rainy 63F
Saturday rainy 63F
Sunday rainy 68F
Pluviation ca change…..
‘In conclusion, on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.’
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9
“We are not aware of any reliable science that supports the National Climate Assessment’s or others’ theory that fossil fuels and CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming,” said the paper’s authors, “We have written extensively on this issue for decades.”
https://co2coalition.org/publications/challenging-net-zero-with-science/
The tyranny of virtue.
There is no virtue in fear. I agree with Alison, we have been here before, 3 plus years of it in fact, the overgrown school bully’s are at it again. Well they didn’t fool me the first time, I see you.
Tyrants who want us to expect and accept less from life, such that they can have it all for themselves.
Here’s more poor people boiling in their own sweat
!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/18/phoenix-arizona-temperature-record-heat-weather
Can’t wait for heatwave Satan! Bring it on!
“Weather maps these days ,in shocking luminous red and now black, resemble more like an over cooked pizza than reality”
Neil Oliver
Dark red and black. A few years ago, the same temperatures or higher, but all green with a sprinkling of yellow smiling suns.
Reality check
Co 2 is equal across the atmosphere of this planet, even eco zealots admit that! So, why isnt everywhere boiling?
COVID-style reporting: Keep jetting around the globe to places where stuff which fits into the narrative happens to happen. Remain silent about everything else. For a while, India used to by COVID catastrophe central. Then, even attempts to pretend to implement COVID measures were abandoned there and nothing particularly noteworthy happened. Hence, the COVID ship sailed to other distant shores and never came back.
Well, they do need to move the narrative away from Ukraine’s imminent victory.
Ukraine? Where’s that?
as per the official narrative, good old democratic and peaceful Ukraine blew up the Nordstream pipeline, releasing enormous amounts of green house gases into the atmosphere. will we hear the outrage and condemnation from the BBC and the likes, I wonder?
Don’t forget, 6pm tonight, on your front doorstep please to clap the Met Office.
Mandated and observed by your Chinese made doorbell camera.
Your ESG score will be downgraded for non compliance.
And wear a mask
!
When the only solution to the global ‘climate crisis’ is the surrendering of individual liberty in exchange for centralised (global) authority, you know you’re on the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
There are a large quantity of academic papers from the ‘social sciences’ quarter of the climate blob slavering at the prospect. Their more sanitised output appears in the public WEF literature. They’re genuinely disturbing in their tone.
now that we can successfully control inflation, energy prices, immigration, virus spread, etc., etc., bring on the climate!
To be fair, Alison Person was half decent during the Corronie rubbish. She was of course constrained by the compromised BMGF funded DT but she did attempt to push some perspective into the controlled, sinister, propaganda so kudos to her for this piece.
The Fat Controllers of this world were always going to run with climate fear after the Corronie scam. It’s been deep rooted with compromised institutions, media, authorities throughout the west and a I fear there is no escape other than the complete enslavement of western populations who will walk themselves into their own prisons all on the basis of a lie.
Small side story, on a recent boat trip the chap came around families for payment. Out of about 30 payments, 2 were cash, 2 were card and 26 were done with a phone tap. CBDC and a cashless society is a globalists wet dream and we already have on foot in a cage without bars, imprisoned by our own minds, media, convenience, climate, health, safety and to ‘Save Lives’…
Wot a scam..
We were warned – remember a year ago when Project Veritas recorded a CNN guy saying “So our next thing is going to be for climate change awareness”?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/undercover-project-veritas-video-resurfaces-suggesting-cnn-is-going-to-focus-on-climate-now-covid-is-over/ar-AAZQB0L
In Clown World it is looking harder and harder to find something that *isn’t* racist. Yes, climate change is racist;
”This summer’s extreme weather has shown how climate change can affect anyone across the world. But we can’t ignore the fact that those who have been on the frontline of climate-related disasters for a while now have been people of colour.
Statistically speaking, people of colour are far more likely to experience the catastrophic effects of climate breakdown: flooding, heat waves, drought, wildfires, and rising sea levels. This has been the case for some time and will only get worse as the crisis intensifies.”
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/watch-is-climate-change-racist/
I remember the boiling hades cauldron of hell and beelzebub 1976..or,..summer as we called it back then! It was fantastic!
But that’s more than 30 years ago so it doesn’t count!
I remember a summer in the early 1990s where it didn’t rain in Cornwall for 19 weeks in a row. Should this happen today, judging from last years 5 weeks of sunshine, we’ll all end up being banned from using water for anything and will only be allowed to drink it at government-licensed recycling facilities in exactly equal quantities to a urine deposit made prior to getting acces to drinking water (net zero water usage). This will obviously cause people to die of thirst and the MSM will then refer to them as victims of climate change. And there will be surprisingly refreshed-looking activists pushing for net -50% water usage, ie, halving the water rations one gets in return for pee and – of course – equally surprisingly refreshed looking university professors demanding absolute zero water usage for the benefit of future generations. Etc.
Mediterranean heatwave an annual event
Hot weather’s no excuse for Communism
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Print this leaflet
I am hoping that a critical mass has already been far too red-pilled from the plandemic to fall for any sort of climate lockdowns and related follies this time, God willing.
Nobody is taking a blind bit of notice. Talk to the hand BBC. Who still haven’t apologised to Nigel Farage for their false allegations. The day Dumbird visits China is the day I’ll sit up.
I’m in Barcelona & the earth is NOT burning ! It’s just summer like it has been for the past dozen years that I’ve been coming ( except the lockdown & restrictions year 2020 & 2021 as I’m not vaccinated) . It has always been mid thirties C . It’s Just Summer & that’s why we come . Nothing is on fire Greta/BBC !
Save the planet, turn off your TV!
Here is a link to a scientific article published yesterday:
Willis Eschenbach and the Law of Conservation of Energy | Principia Scientific Intl. (principia-scientific.com)
It is written by Joseph Postma who has been making the point about the heating potential of the sun for years and there is more information on his website. The lies about this are how the fake science of global warming was created and this article explains how it was done. The warmists claim that the sun cannot heat the earth’s surface to the claimed average temperature of 15C and so the missing heat must come from the atmosphere. The atmosphere is of course incapable of generating heat itself which shows how stupid people are to believe this nonsense. It is also possible to see this by looking at the temperatures on the moon with no atmosphere. They reach about 106C but the moon rotates slower than the earth and had no water and that has to be taken into account. Postma in this article says the sun has a potential to reach a temperature of 80-90C on earth, enough to burn us to a crisp. The atmosphere keeps us cool.
Doomsday climate predictions is good for ratings.
Keeps people scared, anxious and worried and therefore more easily controlled, manipulated and taxed.
The climate change industry is very lucrative, and comes with a lot of power and iunfluence, so expect all their reports will say that anthropogenic climate change is a major problem.
It’s about their job retention.
And keep the money flowing to them.
Actually, first it was the weather. Then along came covid to shove weather over the finishing line.