French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

Re:French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award Fo... by helen___keller on Friday November 20, 2020 @08:56AM (#25160453)

My mother-in-law is an architect by training but she was convinced (by youtube) that she ought to have some HCQ so she had family members ship us some. She's even suggested out of the blue that she should start taking it as a preventative for no particular except that she read amazon workers have been contracting covid and we get a lot of amazon packages.

When we told her that's not a good idea she felt compelled to defend HCQ against the mainstream media slander, as if that were the problem here.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award Fo... by gameswithgo on Friday November 20, 2020 @09:21AM (#25160639)

The cries if mainstream media are so weird, because what even is mainstream any more? I wish such a thing still existed really. Yet one gets accused of being naively trusting of this extinct thing any time one is rational.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award Fo... by glitcher on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:13AM (#25161180)

I don't think mainstream media is anywhere near extinct, but instead it's evolving and growing. I would argue that all the people who jumped on the HCQ bandwagon without sufficient evidence were also victims of mainstream media!

The real epidemic is the deficit of critical thinking among those who primarily look for media content to fit what they want to hear, and then close themselves off to any other input, evidence, or scrutiny.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award Fo... by s1artibartfast on Friday November 20, 2020 @01:13PM (#25163149)

I think the MSM weighing in and taking a position was exactly the problem. The question of HCQ efficacy would have been solved much faster without it being politicized..

The actual story of HCQ is pretty boring. It was a plausible treatment with a mixed bag of weak evidence for and against efficacy. It is not particularly dangerous.

Trump oversold and lied about the benefits. The MSM lied about the data against and the risks.

In such an environment, it's not surprising people take sides and dig in.

[ Parent | on HN ]