82 Comments

David Gorski is one of most appalling assholes in the universe. Anyone who has been "reading around" since early 2020 cannot doubt that. If I ever met him in person I would slap him. To my mind Geert Vanden Bosche described him perfectly as an "illiterate little weasel."

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I remember sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s, my brothers were OBSESSED with all these different shits they could take(among other things) and name (The Upper Decker, The Dirty Sanchez, etc, etc). It was totally repulsive and they thought it was HILARIOUS. I think they even had a book of all the different designer shits.....anyway, "The Gorski" fits right in. I mean, if nothing else, he's got a versatile name - he can be a RTE challenge or the name of a designer shit. Too bad he's not ever going to take you up on your challenge Mathew, I'd pay to watch that live debate and then probably watch the recording again.

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Maybe Gorski IS a "designer shit." ;)

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Gorska, look up word in Polish. 😆

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Dual use rundown of 'Gorski':

A RTE Challenge = #1

The Gorski = #2

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During the previous decade as well, he specialized in ad hominen (as well as ad feminem) attacks, based on nothing more than an arsenal of insults and a dearth of medical knowledge.

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"... get a sense of whether entire fields project a false picture of certain levels of quantitative expertise by members of their field."

Yikes! Are you inferring that published papers - say, in medical fields - use arcane statistical algorithms applied to cherry-picked data to give p = .04113547, hence claiming victory?

I'm glad I'm an electrical engineer. Most days.

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It's not a simple battle, but there are enough people pushing from enough directions these days that we really do have a chance to burst open the absurdity that is the state of inferential statistics.

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I love it. I finally had to subscribe after reading your tome on FTX. I don't have time to keep up with all my substacks! Likewise, I don't have the time or energy to pick apart flawed statistical models, so I'll appreciate whatever you find.

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Yep, the FTX article pushed me over the edge to subscribe too. I'm a chemical engineer, BTW. I like to pretend I'm an EE tho. 😝

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I'm into entropy - Shannon, that is!

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That's a great article. Thanks for sharing it.

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Wow. You devolved rather quickly when I refused your bullying over upstanding citizen Bill Cosby.

Thanks for the charity.

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????

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“The Gorski Memorial Challenge”

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Let's revisit the naming in around twelve weeks.

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Ye come not to praise a Gorski but to bury him..

Considering how badly people were played by listening to him, he should be facing in public the people hurt by following his advice. Stones optional.

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Is Gorski wrong by mistake or purposefully? Does he know he's wrong? Oncologists are well programmed and very sure of themselves. This is because they charge outrageous amounts in a field with a record of continual failure.

They're not known for their honesty, which would have them informing patients their treatment is worse than nothing, and recommending Dr. Thomas Seyfried, Dr. Zsófia Clemens, or Dr. Colleen Huber who are far less expensive and far more effective.

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Oncologists are living the high life during this "pandemic." They can only dream about poisoning billions of people with useless IV drugs. They only get to work on/kill the sick, imagine what they could do if they could work on/kill the healthy - oh wait we don't have to imagine, we're living it.

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Gorski blocked me on Twitter after I pulled him apart on his. Predictions. Then he loyal followers began on me. One particular immunologist-can’t recall his name, bit with me. I had as much fun with him as I did with Gorski. I am hoping the twitter amnesty is real, as I will look for our old conversation. It was hilarious, he hates being called a tit surgeon

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An excellent commentary, humbling I might add. Thank you.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their understanding; we find our audiences and they find us.

The 'Science-Based Medicine Blog' (SBM) I once visited many years ago. I have given it away since. I noted there was a significant reasoned push back, but the descent into unpleasantness appeared evident. It may be worth noting that SBM is not Evidence Based Practice, whose tenets embrace fully informed consent and patient preferences. The differences are to an extent intimated in the distinction made between patient centred and patient centric care.

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Alternative/integrative/holistic/functional medicine is full of quackery, there is no doubt about that. SBM has been valuable in debunking all of that. But they lost me when they viciously attacked critic of transgenderism Abigail Shrier.

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I would be reluctant to conflate SBM with critical thinking and analysis. Likewise, pretending or claiming science is bereft of fundamental limitations or that science and technology are the answer to the future, as suggested by individuals like Yuval Noah Harari and his Davos Cult associates seems mistaken. Science is clearly the wrong tool with which to evaluate the beauty of a sunset or of a musical piece. It cannot evaluate ethics or morality. It also appears to fall well short in disease, health and well being.

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Mad Magazine Spy vs Spy? Quacks debunking quacks is not helpful. I don't wish to have to judge a liars' contest.

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Alternative/integrative/holistic/functional medicine may have some quackery, but I'd not say it's "full" of it, but the opposite, it's full of pretty effective and health-y medicine, unlike most allopathic fraudulent nonsense... And yes, there are plenty of "good doctors" on both sides of the coin, but allopathic, or "Western" medicine is a brainwashing machine that is based not on health, but on profits.

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Gorski's reply to Didier Raoult is disgraceful.

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In so many ways at once, yes.

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Here is something completely anecdotal, very soon after HCQ I felt my fever break and all the more harsher (flu like) symptoms go away. Didn’t feel that with IVM.

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I agree absolutely about the idea of challenging credentialism and verifying who we can trust. I don't understand at all how you can have lived through the last 3 years and still just blindly accept that a PhD after someone's name means they have any idea what they are talking about. I left early from a hard science PhD program (and you won't find me adding a M.S. to my title like a lot of really sad officials) and let me tell you, at least half of the people in my program were blithering idiots

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The thing about math/stats is that BS gets you nowhere when in the company of someone who knows.

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"It's definitely not your first rodeo talking about how it's not your first rodeo. I respect that."

😆

Fucking 🔥

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Brilliant, eh? 😅

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Mat--im very happy youre on our side. Youre a savage. Keep up the good work and god bless.

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Thank you for writing this. SBM.org can't be further away from the tenets they purport to champion "Exploring issues & controversies in science & medicine". I am not surprised that Dr. Gorski is an oncologist.

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You're saying there is some reason to imagine that he enjoys burning people for a living?

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It does seem to be a specialty that inflicts a lot of suffering.

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And the hubris.

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And poisoning everything around them.

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Proxy trust is all I have when wading through complex issues. Since this pandemic erupted, is has been increasing difficult to trust ”authority” based on their track record. It is obvious to me that our institutions have been captured.

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Surprised he hasn't blocked you. He's pretty thin-skinned.

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Mathew, do you have any plans to address statistics behind pcr testing (like the popular SHIELD testing in Illinois schools)? It was presented to parents as a golden standard with virtually no chance of false positives. I can provide some background on this if you are interested.

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I've written a few articles on PCR testing/statistics.

I'd be quite interested in the claim that 100% specificity can be achieved. The notion sounds absurd. My wife designs PCR assays at times and has never mentioned anything like some sort of super-sorting tech on the horizon. Please link.

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It is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220519062550/https://www.northbrook28.net/Page/530

(have to use wayback machine since the original is no longer there).

Here is the text: The SHIELD test is a CLIA approved PCR test. Its accuracy is the gold standard of COVID-19 tests. An individual who tests positive doesn't need to seek out a second confirmatory test. It accurately detects asymptomatic cases and cases with low viral loads.

Similar language is in the PDF here: https://www.northbrook28.net/cms/lib/IL50000633/Centricity/Domain/69/SHIELD%20TWO-PAGE%20INFO.pdf

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Can you please provide a link to specifics on this protocol? I found only advertising hype, but nothing about number of doubling cycles used, running blanks in parallel, etc. Hiding that stuff behind proprietary promotion helps nothing. (Why should I take their word for it?) Wicked Pedophilia has only articles about comics and a police drama television series. :(

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Sorry I don't know the parameters. The test brochure lists FPR of 1% and FNR of 3%. With disease prevalence at 1%, about 50% of positive results will be false. Protect Parents Rights of Illinois has posted a FOIA'ed emails between a SHIELD director and a director of a testing lab showing that shield officials were aware of that number.

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Thanks. That's a start, but still leaves much concealed. (It's all derivative information, though one with intimate PCR familiarity could probably elucidate much.)

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I suppose UofI people ran the test on some sample of people and then waited to see how many got sick, to arrive at that FPR. I was quite unhappy with IDPH and district claims since mathematically they made no sense. We also had random doctors peddling that claim on facebook parents' forums.

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