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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 17d

Super cool that the FDA is out there telling doctors the opposite of what the president said as he was vibing through a press conference

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 17d

People will lie to themselves and unconsciously invent post hoc rationalizations for why they think what they do, but most of the time they are doing just that: lying to themselves

Politics is a game of manipulating human belief in order to create action. Dishonest people are better at the game

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 17d

More people need to realize politics has devolved into sorting people into buckets and keeping them there

1. Pick position (e.g. vaccines r scary)
2. Signal "if you're one of us, you must believe [1]"

The reality of the position doesn't matter to these people. It's all just shepherding for power

Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 17d

When I say that being anti-vaccine is a political identity now I mean literally. Look at the divide between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans.

During COVID the Virality Project documented the extent to which political influencers who’d never commented on 💉 before got deep into the topic on all shots.

Many Parents Express Doubt Over Childhood Vaccine Recommendations and Safety, Including Larger Shares of Younger Parents and Republican Parents

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 17d

Please tell me it wasn't @alamodrafthouse.bsky.social that got cold feet

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 19d

Kakistocracy kills.

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 21d

Epidemiology is hard! We can find real associations between things, but they aren’t always cause and effect. There’s often a third, invisible thing controlling them both.

Luckily, we have a way of teasing out the difference: Careful, well-designed scientific research studies.

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 21d

Interesting things pop up when you ask “Why was mom taking Tylenol in the first place?”

Was it because of an infection or chronic illness during pregnancy? Maybe mom has a genetic or psych condition that leads to more Tylenol use? Do moms who use it have more access to doctors/autism diagnosis?

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 21d

If acetaminophen truly increased autism risk, you’d expect to see higher rates in an exposed sibling compared to an unexposed sibling.

But they didn’t see that. It means the previous studies that suggested some link were being fooled by hidden family or genetic factors. It’s not the drug itself.

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 21d

Last year a study of >2.4 million kids born in Sweden looked at Tylenol exposure and autism

At first, it seemed like there was a small association.

But then they compared siblings where one was exposed in utero and the other wasn’t and found no increased risk jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children’s Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability

This nationwide cohort study with sibling control analysis examines the association of acetaminophen use during pregnancy with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability.

jamanetwork.com

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 21d

We can save RFK Jr some time here, because we already know a lot about acetaminophen and autism!

There’s no increased risk of autism from use of this drug. This isn’t based on some small study. It’s thanks to a beautiful study of literally millions of children…
wapo.st/4nkMdCO

Trump administration set to tie Tylenol to autism risk, officials say

The Trump administration plans to tie Tylenol to autism risk while touting another drug, leucovorin, as a potential autism treatment.

wapo.st

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 24d

"You have my S word!"

Factual dorky bully posse assemble

a man with a beard wearing a suit and black turtleneck is on snl

ALT: a man with a beard wearing a suit and black turtleneck is on snl

media.tenor.com

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 28d

Wtf are we supposed to do when our social contract is this infested with sickness?

There was a great movie in the 80s about mutually assured destruction: WarGames. Its lesson? The only winning move is not to play the game

bsky.app/profile/cwar...

Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · Sep 12

Wrote about the week. How the shooter's ID didn't appear to matter to ppl. How the discourse takes place in very same spaces that incubate/perpetuate hate & violence. How shooters now know that their acts will be flattened, analyzed, argued over & amplified. How all of this feels so dark & poisonous

Something Is Very Wrong Online

Our political conversations take place in very same spaces that incubate and perpetuate unthinkable violence.

www.theatlantic.com

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 28d

My woe was over the character limit

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Sep 11

Asimov wrote “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”

The loss of any life to political violence is a profound failure of humanity’s potential. We must resist the gravitational pull toward dehumanization and vengeance no matter how much we disagree with someone

Our future depends on it

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Sep 10

No one in Texas is surprised that the world epicenter of weird little brother energy is leading the charge on attacking academic wrongthink. Look at what they consider normal!

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Sep 5

Lots of people genuinely believe what’s written here. That they were subject to different, unfair rules than the “other side” had to follow, or that they were made to feel “less than” or “evil” for their actions. Some has basis in reality, some is fiction.

Either way, we should try to understand it

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Sep 5

The board is wrong. But politics is a game of perceptions more than it is about reality (which I wish wasn’t true but 🤷‍♂️). And plenty of bad actors have been able to make these perceptions more salient/popular, and retcon reality in order to erode trust in institutions.

None of this is an accident!

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · Sep 4

The Washington Post editorial board is essentially endorsing the backlash against public health, and only Florida took it too far. This is pandemic revisionism at its worst, and completely erases how layers of public health protections did so much to save lives before vaccines were available.

Pandemic-era mandates soured many Americans on the nation’s medical establishment. Many public health experts sacrificed their profession’s credibility by supporting efforts by teachers unions to keep schools closed for far too long. Inconsistent messaging on masks made matters worse. So did saying it was okay to congregate for social justice protests while simultaneously discouraging churches from holding in-person services. Imposing overly stringent coronavirus vaccine mandates, even as the shots’ effectiveness against infections waned, gave antiestablishment figures such as Kennedy easy paths to winning over frustrated Americans.

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Sep 4

When you remember that much of the modern GOP mission revolves around weakening institutions by eroding our trust in them, this seems like a big win for them

Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · Sep 4

Only 26% of Americans say they "somewhat" trust RFK Jr's medical advice. The rest do not.

Those are horrifically bad poll numbers.

thehill.com/policy/healt...

thehill.com

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 28

Had no idea these guys were into BJJ

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · Aug 28

Niels Bohr (left) spent years sparring with Albert Einstein (right), who insisted that the world has more concrete properties than quantum mechanics suggests. Reality proved weirder than Einstein had believed.
www.quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a...

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 22

The quacks and hucksters have invented a remarkable self-reinforcing perpetual persecution machine:

Refuse to engage with their ideas, and it confirms their ideas are being suppressed

But criticize their ideas, and it confirms that the "establishment" is conspiring to protect entrenched beliefs

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 21

The problem here is they are taking a reasonable point of view (you should be able to feel safe in your city and not be surrounded by garbage and dangerous drugs) and then turning around and criminalizing the mere existence of people they refuse to help get off the streets or give medical care to

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Aug 21

JD Vance on homelessness: "I don't know why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets."

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 21

Well it’s well-known that they have no ability to deal with linear time so this tracks

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 14

Anyway, it's obvious why a place dedicated to "the increase and diffusion of knowledge" would scare these people

Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 14

The authoritarians are mad at the Smithsonian for challenging the circa-1940s Disney version of history that they so badly want to be true, but it's clear that the US government REALLY wanted it to be a place for fossils and cool rocks (great idea)

govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pd...

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 14

My favorite part of researching the history of the Smithsonian has been learning that the government collected Smithson's bequest as bags of actual fucking gold

(Since I know you're wondering, that's 840 kg of gold, about half the weight of a base Tesla Model 3)

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Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · Aug 14

The authoritarians are mad at the Smithsonian for challenging the circa-1940s Disney version of history that they so badly want to be true, but it's clear that the US government REALLY wanted it to be a place for fossils and cool rocks (great idea)

govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pd...

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