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Could you trust anyone presenting themselves as HealthRanger ?

Imagine being such a dumbass you think the CDC has never made a mistake before, or that a mistake could invalidate the whole agency. How about we apply those standards to the cranks, they make one accident and your not allowed to cite them anymore. But no, they say one truth and it validates them.

None of them do their own research. They just go to different sources to hear about what research those people claimed to do. “I did my own research” usually means “I saw a video the algorithm served to me of someone else saying they read a thing that I didn’t read.”

The “do your own research” people were cutting classes and partying when research skills were being taught. Evaluating sources is beyond them. People who know how to do basic research trust the consensus of experts because there is no way to replicate that knowledge in ten minutes using Google.

Haha yes!

Also generally when people say research they mean Google.

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Tho even when they try to do their own objective research-- See this book: The Propagandists' Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy by Francesca Bolla Tripodi

“Do your own research” and it’s just consuming content by people monetizing attention and gullibility

And for so many of them, "free thinking" is nothing more than rejecting the basic consensus. Earth round? "No, it's flat." Vaccines work? "No, they kill." It's the penguin running for the mountain. He doesn't know what he's doing; he's too busy rejecting everything to possibly understand

“Do your own research until you find the conclusion that agrees with mine. Then never do any more”

Really means: Do your own research using the dogmatically approved of resources I mean, you don’t need experts to tell you Trump is appointed by God. You just need a dogma

right—the conspiracies fall apart because of the avarice of the pharma industry, not in spite of it. if Eli Lily had the cure for cancer they wouldn’t suppress it, they’d sell it at extortionate rates. we know this bc they did exactly that with the cure for obesity

yeah. Fauci fucks up with masks (admittedly a bad fuck up) and somehow that discredits all science, but the cranks pay no penalty for being provably 180 degrees wrong about hydroxychlorquine, ivermectin, every vaccine, etc etc bsky.app/profile/idon...

You know what we call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine.

Is it the case that ppl who came of age or went through early adulthood in an urban environment should be inoculated against this pablum, as cranks with signs of this sort used to be pretty common?

I mean it's all grift, they always have something for you to buy that will Actually Work

It feels like an angle we should be able to use *against* the right, tbh. There is literally a conspiracy of rich, powerful people using lies, scapegoats and propaganda to control the rubes, after all.

It works very well on both sides of the horseshoe too, it's just that the targets are different (with a little overlap).

"They don't want you to know" is catnip for everyone's sense of gnosis.

🎯

"Do your own research" = "believe random shit you see on Instagram"

I guess one could say that the OP "did his own research" though.

The Trump admin thinks that a supermajority of Americans are untrustworthy, that's just great though and we're supposed to love this opinion they have of us Americans.

“Scouring the internet until you find a disgraced academic who has turned to grifting and treating them as the most reliable authority” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

if you're actually smart you can, if you care enough, learn the science yourself! if you're just an irritable low-trust dipshit, alas,

I bristle at “do your own research.” which means “find something that agrees with my opinion.” Research is not collecting links. It requires subject knowledge, methodological literacy, source evaluation, and a willingness to be wrong. Otherwise, it is just confirmation bias with citations.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqI...

"and I'm done thinking critically about this"

Reminds me of an IT friend of mine. Hardly has any money. Lives in a cramped condo. Has bad credit. Thinks he is a super-genius but when you mentioned this or that financial fuck-up he had made he will rage...

whether it’s creationism or climate change or “race science” or vaccines, it’s always this

Insecurity at the heart of hyper-individualism

We live in a society ruled by the Zombie King and his minions, and we need to figure out how to defeat them. It won't be by appealing to their morality or logic, because those characteristics are not part of who they are.

The “doing my own research” thing has a whiff of those dudes who think they could win a game against WNBA players. As if researchers don’t train for years and get hired and paid to do research?

"don't uncritically listen to them; uncritically listen to _me_"

As I recall a post on the old place on the do your own research someone posted "so what are you doing? Double blind studies in your living room" and I will never forget it.

Joint PhDs in virology and epidemiology from YouTube University.

And that is fine because very few people can, and it takes years/decades of skill and training. The antivaxers however ignore actual data, and go for internet memes or rumble videos.

Absolutely.

everyone smart with a chronic medical condition is probably doing some reading on it. It doesn't mean they doubt vaccines. Especially if it's a condition that is less studied because it's in a more neglected group (ie doesn't primarily affect cis white males).

That's researching your own health. Rather than disputing public medical facts based on your own research. I also have OCD tbh, which makes researching my own health a minefield. I can convince myself of fake illnesses if I let things run away.

The first question people should get asked when they recommend this is, "Were you ever good at research?"

Doing your own research means typing the answer you want into the search bar (or now maybe an AI) and copying down the justifications to believe it

My niece told me the vaccine "hadn't been tested enough". I asked her 1) how had it been tested already, and 2) how, in her opinion, SHOULD it be tested? She unfriended me.

Evergreen

"This AI-generated video proves that viruses are fake"

And that got 127.6k views, which tells you something about just how screwed up Elon has the algorithm on X.

Ask the dummies to explain summaries of This Week in Virology, for example: TWiV explains research showing that Per os infectivity factors are essential for bracovirus infection and wasp parasitism, and that periodic shifts in viral load increase risk of Hendra virus spillover from Pteropus bats.

The Health Ranger used to be on Infowars all the time. Alex Jones loved him. We should all do Mr. Ranger the favor of thoroughly ignoring his nonsense.

“It’s not my job to convince myself you’re right”

This guy made his money on spam emails and became one of the first wellness guru weirdos. A bunch of influential people showed who they really were when they reposted his decree that GMO scientists should be hunted and executed like Nazis.

Counterpoint to the quoted post: I'm alive after catching Covid and a lot of other people are not.

My anecdotal observations of random MAGA indicate they are not the healthiest people to begin with. I guess they have not done the research on healthy diets and lifestyles.

They mean “buy my magic beans”.

Finally I get to use this meme.

Plus, you get the thrill of knowing more than those morons who went to school for 10 extra years.