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Comment by ScarletEmerald | Hacker News Reader

Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information that breathing CO is healthy, drinking mineral spirits is fine, and handling mercury with bare skin is safe and fun?

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I don’t know. Since this sort of thing isn’t happening and the general atmosphere of everything is unlike your hypothetical. I’m not sure it much matters.

The united states has several states passing laws so doctors can proscribe ivermectin for covid, we genuinely live in a world where homeopathy is a the option Steve Jobs took instead of cancer therapy.

I have no understanding of why you would say this is not happening when product brands like GOOP make tons of money from outright hocus pocus health bs.

I think Ivermectin was part of the CDC’s COVID prevention or when you have light levels of Covid lists back in 2020 and early 2021. I remember seeing it from progressive people sharing stuff before it became the term and meme it became today. That makes it a really interesting point too, but it makes all sides look bad.

OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society.

Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting.

I thi

OTOH, you’re right Steve Jobs and what he did...yikes. That sort of thinking is harmful for society.

Yes GOOP is disgusting. So disgusting.

None of this is close to laws being passed for serious misinformation sort of stuff like your original post said. GOOP is bullshit and like so much others. It just happens to be peddled by some famous people. Since the ivermectin thing is more complicated, it doesn’t work.

America having its massive problem with opoids and how much it got prescribed shows how difficult the situation is. Or how anti steroids America and the world is. It seems too nuanced and difficult to decipher. Or to say one way is correct.

Overall in spirit and likely general vibes. I believe we are overall closer to the same thinking than not.

Yeah, actually. Let me tell you about something that will illustrate. Once upon a time, Amazon had a flood of fake reviews. They would rate to 5 and be in terrible Engrish and the different styles were pretty easy to detect. I could use that as a signal that the product was bad and that the field of these products is likely risky.

Eventually, Amazon started getting rid of all these reviews. There are still fake reviews but they're more subtle than that. So now I have lost my signal that said "tread carefully for products in this class" and I have lost some signal that said "this product has fakers involved or in its competitors".

So now, yes, I trust Amazon less.

I am not making up a hypothetical universe. I am sure others have shared this experience.

Well, I started trusting the sources of medical information less since they quickly moved from “masks don’t help common people” to “everyone should wear a mask” in a heartbeat even though we had a dozen of epidemics and a couple pandemics before so surely that sounds like something that should a settled issue (saying we don’t know and it heavily depends on the infection would also count as a good answer).

Well let's flip this around. How many articles of misinformation advocating breathing CO would you have to read before you personally tried it?

If the answer is that you never would, then you are not advocating for something that protects you, just those that you see as inferior to you

>Would you trust a source of medical information less if it declined to present or link to information

Unfortunately, there's a wide ecosystem of conspiracy minded sites that link to each other. They even have papers supporting them, eg. studies in favor of homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9310601/

My favorite Randi joke about homeopathy...

"An homeopath died from overdose. He forgot to take his medicaments..."

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