Mark Steyn has been one of the most consistently brave and brilliant political analysts of our generation. He has always firmly stood his ground, challenging the ‘official’ narrative on issues like climate change, illegal immigration and cultural Marxism, in the face of constant attacks from the establishment. He does it all with great wit and sarcasm.
Steyn was one of the only ‘mainstream’ media personalities to speak critically about the Covid vaccines and to interview the vaccine-injured and bereaved when he was a presenter on GB News in 2022. This clearly riled the establishment, who demanded that Ofcom, the British regulator of TV and radio, intervene. Hence, in December 2022, Ofcom ruled that two of Steyn’s programmes were in breach of Ofcom regulations.
One of the Ofcom rulings focused on a programme in which Steyn claimed that UKHSA (U.K. Health Security Agency) data showed triple-vaccinated people were at much greater risk of contracting, being hospitalised and dying from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people. Ofcom ruled that Steyn misled the public on these claims, stating:
Mark Steyn said in the programme that UKHSA data on those people that had, and those that had not, received a third COVID-19 vaccination dose could be compared because the two groups included approximately the same numbers of people. However, his interpretation that there was “only one conclusion” from this comparison – that the third vaccination caused increased levels of infection, hospitalisation and death – was misleading because it did not take account of key factors such as the significant differences in age or health of the people in these two groups. The programme also failed to reflect that the UKHSA reports made clear that the raw data should not be used to draw conclusions about vaccine efficacy, due to the biases inherent in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
The other ruling focused on a programme in which his guest Naomi Wolf made claims about vaccine adverse reactions. Ofcom ruled that these claims were inaccurate and that Steyn failed in his duty as the presenter to challenge Wolf on them.
Ofcom, who act as judge and jury, did not allow Steyn to provide any defence against the rulings, and so he decided to mount a judicial review against them in the High Court. The case was heard in the Royal Courts of Justice, London by Justice Farbey on June 11th, 2022. On July 30th, 2024, Justice Farbey ruled in favour of Ofcom. Her full judgement can be found here.
A couple of weeks before the case went to Court on June 11th, 2024, I was asked to provide a report about the statistical issues relating to the claims about the UKHSA data. My findings challenge Justice Farbey’s final decision about this, namely her conclusion:
Ofcom was not “obviously wrong” to insist that broadcasters avoid the risk that vaccinated individuals be caused alarm.
Hence, it is important now to bring the facts into the public domain that show that Ofcom was indeed “obviously wrong”. Sadly, it seems Justice Farbey did not have these full facts at her disposal.
In summary, my report (which includes relevant links to the data and evidence) found that:
- Ofcom’s ruling that “Mark misled the viewer” is based on the narrow examination of the available UKHSA data and only that to which Steyn specifically referred. Ofcom took no account of all relevant data available at that time, which categorically supports (and strengthens) the contention suggested by Steyn that the vaccinated were more likely to be hospitalised than the unvaccinated. Analysis of all the data shows Steyn’s assessment not just to be correct but to underestimate the negative hospital outcomes for the vaccinated categories when compared to the unvaccinated.
- Ironically, the only editorial criticism Ofcom could have validly made was that Steyn did not provide an analysis in support of his contention using all relevant data available – and that, if he failed in anything, it was to insufficiently alert the audience to the risks from booster vaccination. Not only were the boosters ineffective, but the Covid case rates in the ‘ever vaccinated’ were higher than those in the ‘never vaccinated’ in almost all age groups and at least three times higher in the boosted than the never vaccinated.
- With respect to Covid mortality data, Steyn’s comparison between the UKHSA boosted and unboosted vaccine categories was indeed oversimplified, but this was understandable given the obfuscated way in which the UKHSA presented the data. Even had he broken it down by age to avoid ‘age confounding’ (as the Ofcom counsel correctly claimed he should have done), it would not have changed the overall conclusion to be drawn from the data that, for a reason known only to Ofcom, they failed to consider.
- Missing from Ofcom’s analysis was anything about all-cause mortality (i.e., death from any cause) as opposed to just Covid mortality. Only by comparing the all-cause mortality rates of the vaccinated and unvaccinated can we get a true assessment of the efficacy of the vaccines. If the vaccines are saving more lives from Covid than they are causing from adverse reactions to the vaccines, then the all-cause mortality rate in the vaccinated would be lower than in the unvaccinated. Hence, all-cause mortality is the most important and objective statistic; it completely avoids the many concerns about what constitutes a ‘Covid death’. It turns out that, in most age groups, the all-cause mortality rate was higher in the boosted than the unboosted. And, once we take account of systemic biases in the data, all-cause mortality was higher in the ever vaccinated than the never vaccinated in every age group.
- Hence, once the systemic biases in the relevant UKHSA (and also the Office for National Statistics) datasets are accounted for, they show a consistent lack of efficacy for the vaccines. Ofcom, in its ruling against Steyn, has encouraged the suppression of this critical information while the public has continued to be offered booster vaccines, exposing them to risk and thereby subjecting them to harm.
- If Steyn missed addressing the effect of age confounding, Ofcom’s omission was much more serious and fundamental. It is guilty of using this narrow point to ‘disprove’ a thesis which in every other respect stands up. They are, in fact, guilty of the blowfish fallacy. This is the technique of laser-focusing on an inconsequential methodological aspect of scientific research, blowing it out of proportion to distract from the bigger picture. If you persuade people to focus hard enough on specific details, they can miss the gorilla walking through the room.
On its website Ofcom states:
OFCOM’s principal duty is: (i) to further the interests of citizens, and (ii) to further consumer interests in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition.
Ofcom is supposed to be independent and dispassionate. It is neither their role to endorse Government policy nor to prevent criticism of it. In contrast to their ruling against Steyn, Ofcom did nothing about the multiple instances of ‘TV doctors’ making false claims about vaccine efficacy. For example, in one especially infamous programme segment screened on ITV, Dr. Sara Kayat claimed that the (subsequently withdrawn) AstraZeneca vaccine was “100% effective against hospitalisation and death”, with no interrogation from the presenters about risk, at great potential harm to the public. Ofcom did nothing despite hundreds of complaints to them about this segment.
Until he retired last year, Norman Fenton was Professor in Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London. Subscribe to his blog.
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Chris fighting the good fight. Well done. Keep it up.
CORRECTION:
INCORRECT.
CORRECT.
Words are important and should be used wisely.
I wonder what it would cost to privately fund a fleet of class one or two sites and start record keeping now.
The repeated adjustment of historic data is also worrying. It appears to be trying to match the recorded data to the hockey stick.
The NOAA in Amerca are doing something similar but it goes unreported. https://wattsupwiththat.com/u-s-surface-temperature/
Tony Heller is the master of identifying and calling out junk (adjusted) data, and the organisations doing it.
Ask any friend or family member, “Is it getting warmer”? I am pretty sure they will all say YES. Then ask them “Have you looked at any data? They will likely say “NO”. So how do they think they know it is getting warmer? The answer is that they don’t know at all. —Officialdom state that the global average temperature (whatever that is supposed to mean) has gone up by one degree centigrade since about 1860. No one can detect that in their lifetime. A 40-year-old person cannot detect a fraction of a degree rise in temperature over their life.
—–So no one knows it is getting warmer, they only think they do. There is only one reason they think it is warmer and that is because they are told that on their TV news nearly everyday. But even if it is slightly warmer over a period of time, that does not mean that humans caused that warming. They certainly could not have caused the similar warming that occurred in the 1920’s and 30’s as we were not emitting much in the way of CO2 from Industry, cars and aeroplanes back then.
—–So the global warming narrative goes something like this. From a dogs breakfast of a global temperature record that has been fiddled about with more than a prostitute’s knickers, government funded data adjusters have concluded that the temperature of the planet is warming and despite no human signal in the data they are determined that this alleged warming is all caused by humans. Then our governments have no choice but to “act now”.—–But bear in mind that the same solutions to the global warming scare are the very same solutions to the cooling scare back in the seventies. —-More government control over every aspect of our lives. ——This is all politics masquerading as science.
I am old enough to remember the Summer of 1959, now that was a Summer and a half, we have rarely had a summer that good, Global Warming?????????? bah humbug.
CO2 is not to blame in any way (now or in the 20/30’s), the whole “Carbon” theory is just meaningless drivel.
They can’t prove the link in a small rise of temperature over decades to increases in CO2 because the link does not exist, except in the opposite direction.
Increases in temperature over decades, slightly warm the worlds oceans which as they warm release increasing amounts of CO2 in solution. Cold water can hold more CO2 in solution than warmer water.
If the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere were 4% (as some uninformed zealots believe) and not the actual 0.042% things might be very different.
The IPCC itself have recently said that they see no human signal in the data. We can all argue about the “science” all day long but as you and I know this has nothing to do with science and never did.
The reason the Met Office won’t do anything about this issue, is if they do their whole support for dangerous heating will collapse. They need highly erroneous readings to maintain the narrative.
Yesterday (Monday 12th August) was apparently the warmest day of the year (yes it was warm, no doubting that), and the high was apparently measured somewhere in Cambridge, no idea where, or what the class of the device was, or the veracity of the actual siting!
Take away the context and the detail and that claim will be simply accepted by almost everyone, and their narrative survives intact, because only a Conspiracy theorist would challenge the MET right?
The MET spends increasing amounts on ever more powerful supercomputers so they can report how wrong they are to increasing numbers of decimal points.
Botanic gardens where the Met Orifice rushed to check the equipment – while totally ignoring the environment – a few years back to claim a new UK record which was then surpassed by 3 Typhoon fighters on the runway at RAF Coningsby. Most likely a 4 or 5 site with varying surroundings and noticeably warmer than another site nearby.
Thanks for the update, call me cynical (because I am), but I don’t expect this site to be a pristine Class 1 (or 2) site.
In fact I seem to recall in a previous Chris Morrison article the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge were mentioned!
Could be in a glasshouse!!
I read somewhere that the Botanical gardens station is read in the *morning*, so how they could quote “hottest” later on the same day is a mystery. Would need to check that ‘observation time’ though.
Warmest day of the year. In mid august? How unusual!
Well quite.
But it was probably the hottest August 12th at 16:24 since records began.
Actually it isn’t that unusual. The UK climate is extremely variable so you can tell the public anything you want and they are likely to believe it, which they mostly do. In 1995 we had blue skies here in Central Scotland all the way from April to September with not a cloud in sight. (This is easily checked). If that was to have happened this year the government, the Just Stop Oil imbeciles, the BBC and all the other climate activists would have a field day. The lunatics would be blocking us getting on planes and blocking every major City and Town by laying down in the street and gluing themselves to banks and businesses. Climate Change has become a pseudo scientific cult all because of the propaganda being spread by government and its bought and paid for media.
I was in central london yesterday – it was a bit warm at 32ish, but as you say – it’s august and summer – it’s supposed to be warm…
When will they be put in gaol for “misinformation”?
I wish I had the link to hand but at some point in the last few months someone posted a link to an essay on weather measuring which made the point that if the set of measuring stations has evolved over time so you are using MORE of them, comparisons with the past are not overly valid as you are not comparing like with like. All you can say is that we now MAY have a more accurate picture of the weather (or not as the case may be…). I think it might have been Marcus Aurelius Knew but I am not certain.
“I wish I had the link to hand”
I know DS has limited funds etc but it would be invaluable to me and I suspect other readers, to have some sort of searchable database of articles and comments.
Nothing fancy but better than the basic search function we have at the moment. So many gems get buried within a week or two and become impossible to find again.
There is a search function but no way I could see to filter it.
Mabel Cow late of these parts and now on Lockdown Sceptics subreddit was mirroring the site for a while and archiving it, but that’s long gone.
“The compliant media are uninterested” until they are implicated as the prime culprits of peddling mis/disinformation. Perhaps mass complaints to the police should be raised?