...before anyone complains (and they do) that is an Instagram link, given that's my largest active platform and where I chiefly post these days. Anything I post on a meta platform attracts the kind of guys whose scientific education ended around the same time as their grammar studies 🤨

Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate. The perfect opportunity to remember the 1997 Macy's parade, when Barney the dinosaur committed public seppuku and the Cat in the Hat put someone into a Coma.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Ma...

Fish go walking, fish get shoez

Hard-right love "Ireland being overrun" narrative on immigration. But as @fotoole13.bsky.social notes, actual numbers small: here's log-plot of raw inward migration [2024-2025] in terms of Croke Park. As @csoireland.bsky.social explain, net immigration falling too.. t.co/lxq09kU7XU

..also, RJK Jr is *so much* worse than many of us realise, and is the most perversely unsuited person imaginable to hold such office. We must resist the temptation to accept any of this as normal, when it is frankly obscene

"Make America Healthy Again" will make not only America but the entire world sicker. RJK Jr and the MAGA movement are modern Lysenkoists, and the consequences of their anti-science agenda will be severe, as I write in @emboreports.org www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

So @jamesheathers.bsky.social & I answer the burning question: does Cake cause Herpes? No, but one can torture the data to give that impression, and that's a problem. Promiscuous dichotomisation in biomedical science hugely increases spurious findings, best avoided link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Kim Kardashian is wrong (shocker!) - moon landings certainly happened. As I showed before, Apollo had >400k staff who'd need be complicit. Chances of them keeping it secret? Virtually zero. Probability of a celebrity saying something daft, alas, approaches unity🤪 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

To most Irish people, Mary McGee was the woman whose supreme court battle legalised contraception. To me, she was my aunt with a cheeky sense of humour & great laugh. Took this of her & my dad just a few weeks ago - RIP May, you'll be missed www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025...

After that AI slop from Mick Wallace (not sharing, it's grim), hope President Connelly rejects the asinine nonsense from her former compatriots, Wallace & Daly. As I wrote in @bylinetimes.bsky.social their useful idiocy & propaganda vectoring is something she'll hopefully not enable..

One response it is just a human interest story, but this doesn't negate responsibility of @theguardian.com to check things. As I wrote in The Irrational Ape, Andrew Wakefield's mendacious linking of autism to MMR vaccine only got traction in UK media due to such irresponsible credulity!

The piece has these red-flags without any scepticism. For instance, unhappy with NHS, author sought 2nd opinion from a doctor whose work is presented in glowing terms. Doesn't mention potential vested interest that same doctor charges £399 for online consultations on (fringe) CLD

And while medical opinion does not support existence of CLD, 1000s of alternative healers & self-described "Lyme literate physicians" prescribe (at high cost) dubious treatments & tests for it: hell, I wrote about this in @theguardian.com 9 years ago! www.theguardian.com/science/blog...

Asked lots about this piece on Chronic Lyme disease, and disappointed in the @guardian (a publication I both subscribe and contribute to) for running it. Short thread explaining the multitude of problems with it, and why I consider it irresponsible to run as is..🧵

Given the values espoused by Farage are chiefly racism and mendacity, I suppose it takes a particular kind of bravery to write a piece in a national newspaper this asinine...

Donald Trump talking garbage on public health. Incidentally, notorious fraudster Andrew Wakefield also proposed breaking up the MMR into separate vaccines because he had patents on an alternative but like Trump he was feeding into "vaccine overload" myth..

..I've written so often about the mendacity of Andrew Wakefield, but essentially he was able to make people think (falsely) there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism BECAUSE of this, as I wrote in the Irrational Ape here...

..does this mean that difficult topics should not be discussed? On the contrary, everything absolutely should be up for discussion. But discussion is operative word, rooted in evidence. We need to stop assuming provocateurs act in good faith (text below 🔻) 2/2

Provocateurs always insist they just want to debate things, because debate gives dubious positions a platform & even veneer of respectability. The reality is that debate too often rewards the most mendacious & leaves us all more divided (too long for tweet, text below🔻) (1/2)

#RFKjr hearing affirms him as the most perversely ill-suited person imaginable to head HHS, all pseudoscience & antivaccine quackery. The one thing he was ALMOST right on proved he remains too stupid to realise you can't fix systemic inequality with crystals & enemas..

This is Trump's new surgeon general. Is it possible he thought the post was "serial grifter" ?

Whitehouse insisting #lableak is origin of COVID-19, despite zero evidence for this assertion & plenty against it. Aside from the sinophobic swipes, they've also insinuated people like Tony Fauci are complicit: When governments endorse conspiracy theory, democracy suffers

...plus if this quote is accurate, being stuck in a capsule with these people would make one want to commit an act of astronautical sabotage..

"Katy Perry in Space!" - such performative nonsense. They skirted the Kárman line, where gravity is a whopping 3% lower than on earth. Hollow PR for yet another billionaire with rocketery phallic compensation issues. A hugely polluting waste with zero value to anyone but Jeff Bezos..

Despite what the NYT seem to think, there's no evidence we were mislead about origins of COVID, & #lableak narratives remain unevidenced, underwhelming conjecture - but the abuse of scientists is very real, as I write in @irishtimes.com today: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Why people people fall for conspiracy theories, and how do we get people out of them? Spoke to @johnyangtv.bsky.social on @pbs.org about this, and why discussion is always better than debate when it comes to getting people out of rabbit holes.. www.youtube.com/watch?v=esaV...

Either Trump's Whitehouse dont understand how statistics work or Americans are illegally crossing en masse into Mexico & Canada now.. 🙃

For once, RFK Jr entirely correct. Shame he's spent years pushing, funding, & profiteering from antivaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories that have led to this deadly renaissance of a disease declared eliminated in the USA over two decades ago..

RFK Jr senate questioning showcases his breath-taking mendacity. Half-cocked conspiracy theorist, major pusher of antivaccine propaganda who profits massively off it, & perversely unsuited to oversee health policy. Voting for him is unconscionable if you cares about public well-being..

High profile papers claiming to have found harms in COVID mRNA and HPV vaccines clinical trials are likely erroneous - in new paper, I look at how if you start with a conclusion, you can torture false confessions with dodgy statistical choices.. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...