A few notes on Paul Thacker, and a few new ones on Orac

Along with Eric Lipton he is a pseudoscientist on GMOs. (This is not to endorse them, but it's to oppose pseudoscience.)

In parallel with the anti-GMO stance, also apparently willing to believe the worst, or print the worse, whether fully true or not, on glyphosate. More on that article here.

And a 5G conspiracy theorist.

Anti-GMO and anti-5G nuttery led me to my first skepticism of the Green Party.

The reason I have compiled this? He is also apparently a "Deep Stater."

At the same time? Some of my links above are from The American Council on Science and Health, itself not perfect.

On the third hand? Thacker harassing and doxxing a 12-year-old is despicable.

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Now, the latest brouhaha on one issue?

If not an outright antivaxxer, at least a fellow traveler. More here, which also touches on the anti-GMO issue.

Update: Via Orac, at his Substack, Thacker walks, quacks and acts like more than a fellow traveler. Of items of interest? To the degree that I've followed the details of CDC pronouncements on COVID, "it's news to me" that:

the CDC stated that prior infection was no different than being vaccinated.

Since his cite is a link to his own Twitter account and he's blocked me, it's time for teh Google. And, per Orac's comments, it's time to block him back.

Here's an update of an update from Orac on April 18.

The "walks, quacks and acts" is further shone by his full Substack feed. A recent post is an interview about masks with Jay Bhattacharya. There's more stupidity there like "citation sorcery," a pseudoscientific phrase that's a classical informal logic fallacy of appeal to emotion.

On the third hand, Orac, he IS right about online harassment cutting both ways, as Zeynep Tufekci has written about with the likes of Alina Chan. In her case, on Twitter, I've witnessed that myself.

To be more thorough, I searched Orac's site. He'd written ONCE about Chen, more than 18 months ago, a largely rhetorical, and tribalist, since Orac does that well, piece about "Is the lab leak conspiracy theory dead?" And, even with a no-follow, I'm not linking. First of all, it's not a conspiracy theory, dude.

Related? He's only written twice focused on Tufekci.

Speaking of her? Tufekci called out COVID-related tribalism relative early in the pandemic's origins and related issues progress. She did so before Orac committed tribalism not once but twice on this.)

The bottom line is that, just as much as Thacker appears to be a multiple-issue pseudoscientist, Orac has long presented himself as a multiple-issue tribalist. That also is damaging beyond wars of words. Re COVID itself, people with a certain microphone in the world of science, and a political tilt, calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory can undercut national biosecurity discussions. Not standing firm against medical overtesting dings our economy. IMO, people like this are Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit to each other.)