Category: Computers & Internet
Antivax tech bro Steve Kirsch uses AI to rediscover the Jock Doubleday challenge
Everything old is new again, even when AI is involved, as a very old antivax trope is rediscovered for a new generation.
MD Enshittification
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. As some of you may be aware, I was an Infectious Disease (ID) physician for almost 40 years, retiring 3 years ago. My practice was almost entirely concerned with taking care of patients in several acute care hospitals. So...
LLMs: Fighting Fire with Fire
Using LLM tools to tackle AI-driven science misinformation head-on
How Google listings are used by alternative cancer clinics to lure in desperate patients
I've long been writing about "alternative cancer clinics" (i.e., quack clinics) that sell false hope in the form of very expensive but ineffective treatments to desperate cancer patients. A recent study demonstrates how they use Google to do this.
How conspiracy theories like COVID-19 “lab leak” harm science and public health
Ever since COVID-19 first emerged in 2020, evidence-free claims that it had arisen due to a "lab leak" have proliferated. A recent paper argues that this conspiracy theory has been very harmful to science. I argue that it's more than just lab leak that is harmful.
Why Are Sensible Medicine Doctors Indifferent to the Nonsense Comments of Sensible Medicine Commentators? As Instructed, I Consider the Dualities of Interest and Motivating Biases.
Sensible Medicine doctors often utter the words "do an RCT". So why are their readers so ignorant about RCTs?
Internet Use and Mental Well-Being
Results of the largest study on internet use, well-being, and mental health.
The return of marketing hype for “whole body scans”…now with AI!
Two decades ago, I cut my skeptical teeth countering advertising for whole body scans by companies making extravagant promises for their products. This particular medical fad faded for a while, but now it's back with a vengeance...with AI! Looking at these products, what I see is basically the quackery that is functional medicine on steroids and powered by AI.
ProtocolKills.com: Misinformed refusal on steroids
Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed "misinformed refusal," a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized "informed consent" by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinated. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments with the help of "hospital hostage negotiator" Laura Bartlett, who views COVID-19 treatments in hospitals...
Update on Dr. AI
Studies have found large language model AIs to have impressive medical knowledge, but they are not quite there yet.