In this interesting article (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/joe-rogan-admits-there-was-no-proof-behind-his-story-about-an-angry-parent-forcing-her-daughter-s-school-to-install-a-litter-box), Joe Rogan admits to peddling BS.
Particularly interesting to me, though, is that *Michael Shermer*, skeptical activist, went on the show of Joe Rogan, professional falsehood distributor.
I've thought there was something rotten in the skeptical movement for a while now. There's the harassment and eugenics, yes, but also Skeptical Inquirer had a glowing review of one of Debra Soh's deeply transphobic books. Sigh. #politics #skepticism
@lenaoflune @shadowpages It looks like the transphobic mindset has infiltrated parts of the skeptical community.
@CarmenShea @shadowpages Yeah. It's greatly disappointing. :( The research is not on their side, and yet they're latching onto it. The SI review I mentioned prompted a letter to the editor pointing out the problems with Soh's book. Next month was a letter to the editor in reply praising Soh's "courage."
A scientist who claims they're being suppressed is probably a crank. I thought skeptics knew that.
That said, Michael Shermer's been... questionable for a while now.
@lenaoflune @CarmenShea there’s a proliferation of truly junk science being published in the last few years (it’s really accelerated since the Littman ROGD paper), where things are carefully torqued to appear credible if one doesn’t know how to read the statistics properly.
@shadowpages @CarmenShea Yep. Thankfully a lot of the big journals still aren't publishing these, though, and there's some really good research coming out too on the gender affirming care.
I really hate to say anything negative about open access journals, particularly because I really don't like Elsevier, but conversely, open access journals (and arXiv) seem to be a way some of these junky, cranky papers end up getting media coverage.
At least PLOS *tries* to correct itself, sometimes...