I actually know one family doctor who is really, really smart. He took care of my family, and he has always been on point with his advice.
Three years from now (edit:) ago, he started spewing bullshit about vaccines. It was really disappointing.
My point is, some people (including thia doctor) are very susceptible to social media brainwashing. I’m not justifying them, but I can see how they became doctors long, long, long ago when we were not constantly online.
If there’s one thing working in insurance taught me it’s that you just never know. You can be talking to the smartest person in the world with five degrees etc and they just got into an accident watching Bluey while driving lol. People are gonna people and intelligence does NOT equal common sense/rational thought.
I agree. I work with a bunch of literal rocket scientists - amazingly smart people. In discussing work stuff, every one of them will insist on data to make decisions. But a few of them will start taking about politics and go off on some diatribe about vaccines, climate change, deep state, or whatever - things completely unsupported by facts or data. I just don’t understand how people can compartmentalize their whole way of thinking like that.
And then there’s religion… it always seemed similarly odd to me that otherwise rational people can believe in the adult version of Santa. These are often the same people.
Yeah, agreed, though I suppose it’s a lot harder to get away from something that your whole family, maybe even your whole community, has been saying is true since your entire life, especially something that includes “there’s no proof, it’s a matter of faith.” I cut people a little slack for that.
Yup. My best friend growing up was absolutely brilliant, one of the smartest and most well-rounded people I’ve ever met. And yet, when she was new to driving, and her dad handed her the gas pump to fill up the tank, she started spraying it on the windshield. Somehow, despite surely seeing other people perform this task hundreds of times throughout her life, she got it into her head that the pump is where the “soapy water” comes from. You know, those little reserves of water with the squeegee/sponge combo to clean your windshield? That soapy water. She was convinced that the soapy water lived in the gas pump and started dousing her windshield with gas. The fact that it came out with small bubbles further confirmed to her that it was, indeed, soapy water. Her completely flabbergasted dad losing his mind screaming WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUDOING!!! is what finally clued her in that she might be acting in error. It’s like sometimes when you’re that smart maybe you just don’t have any spare brain cells to understand every day things.
Had the COVID shot, had side effects (flu symptoms), “researched” online. Next time we saw her, she had opinions on Hunter Biden and thinks Russia is justified in invading Ukraine. Don’t really want to talk with them any more. You end up tiptoeing around things so as not to activate the Fox news programming.
She’s not even American. This shit is more infectious than any virus. You don’t even have to leave home to catch it.
I’ve noticed a few people on here use “x years from now” incorrectly to refer to the past. I wonder if it’s an ESL thing and maybe their native language uses that construct to refer to the future.
I’ve read that intelligent people can be more susceptible to rabbit holes because they trust themselves to see through the bullshit. They don’t realise the bullshit is carefully crafted to slip past their filters.
“I know I spent a decade or more of my life in post-grad, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, attended hundreds of hours of lectures, but this blog with a .blogspot.com domain just convinced me that vaccines can ionize your body”
Woo boy, a couple years ago I got a vasectomy. I didn’t know the doctor, I’m not at an age that one typically sees a urologist. This otherwise seemingly intelligent and congenial medical professional starts making small talk about how much bullshit the COVID vaccine is WITH MY NUTS IN HIS HANDS. I just nodded and grunted noncommittally until I could rush out of that office. Bright side is his work has held up at least!
Being smart in one subject doesn’t mean anything else. I have meet some interesting characters in engineering. One I worked with only drank fluoride removed water and every day wolfed down a king size candy bar. Which according to him was okay since it is sugar and sugar is natural. His teeth were as you expect. Also had like 8 patents.
Yes unfortunately intelligence does not seem to be a protective factor against media illiteracy. That is also not something that is focused on in medical education too much, and definitely wasn’t being emphasized by small schools in the 80s (which is when this Ohio person went to school).
All vaccines or just the new mRNA ones? I feel like it would be easy to mistrust them at first because of the rapidity they came to market (if iring previous mRNA research), and maybe the media played on that.
If it’s all vaccines that’s just absolutely retarded for a doctor to fall victim to. Who wants polio back? He should have had extensive training on the older vaccines.
she is the author of four books opposing vaccination
Tenpenny promotes anti-vaccination videos sold by Ty and Charlene Bollinger and receives a commission whenever her referrals result in a sale, a practice known as affiliate marketing.
If you look at her website, the front page is mostly selling her books and various snake oil treatments, like “heavy metal detox” substances. looks further And what appears to be faith healing stuff.
Getting a medical degree doesn’t mean that you can’t be a scam artist.
In a June 2021 report on the Disinformation Dozen, titled “Pandemic Profiteers,” the CCDH estimated that Tenpenny earned up to $353,925 from a single webinar titled “How Covid-19 Injections Can Make You Sick … Even Kill You.”
This income is on top of sales from Tenpenny’s pre-recorded training courses, her line of supplements, as well as her fees for appearing in multiple vaccine-injury cases. And each webinar produces more customers.
“My job is to teach the 400 of you in the class … so each one of you go out and teach 1,000,” she told her $623-a-head “Mastering Vaccine Info Boot Camp” in March, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Honestly, one thing that I’ve found to be surprisingly consistent across a lot of the apparently-bonkers-on-the-surface conspiracy crowd is that someone is selling “alternative wellness” products at the bottom of it.
I remember discovering that Alex Jones was off selling a bunch of “alternative wellness” stuff too and saying “oooohhhh, okay, that makes more sense”.
I think that the business model looks something like this. You take some issue that someone doesn’t like. I don’t know, being told to wear a mask. You say “this is unnecessary”. Okay, fine, that’s something of a values call, weighting risks against benefits. Then you promote related stuff that they agree with. So, okay, say someone goes to church, and they pray for someone to get better, and that’s a normal part of the culture, right? But in the case of Sherri Tenpenny, it looks like she’s off encouraging people to perform prayers that include a lot of the other kinda wonky products she’s promoting. She’s trying to leverage the cultural norm of praying for someone to get better to associating the stuff she’s promoting with getting better.
So you put out stuff that people agree with to draw them in. Do a wide range of things targeting sometimes-totally-different groups. Some people don’t like 5G – that’s not new with 5G, as there have always been people worried about the health effects of cell phones and radios. Some people don’t trust vaccines. Some people don’t like being told what to do and don’t like being made to wear masks. Some people are pissed off with overseas competition for the field they work in, so opposition to global trade goes over well. Some people are concerned about the effects that industrial chemicals might be having on their bodies. Some people have the idea that there are some sort of ties between life or biological processes and magnets (though that tended to be more of a left-wing than a right-wing thing in the US in the past, but I suppose the same mechanisms work on people either way). I mean, run down the list, doesn’t need to have much to do with each other. You’re just trying to pick up people who don’t agree with the mainstream on one point or another, so that you look appealing to them on that point. You’re saying something that the mainstream isn’t that they like.
You keep constantly promoting communication channels you run. In Sherri Tenpenny’s case, she’s promoting a ton of podcasts and newsletters and mailing lists. The near-term aim is to get an audience subscribed to those channels, so that you can have as many shots as possible as putting a sales pitch for your products in front of them. The long-term aim is to ultimately use those channels to shift as many as possible onto regularly buying whatever snake oil you’re peddling.
And that explains why you have some weird agglomerations of different views. I mean, she’s talking about chemicals, 5G, anti-vaccines, magnetism, faith healing…it seems incredibly unlikely for someone to have honestly picked up all of those highly-abnormal views and also have honestly come to the conclusion that they are an expert on them. But, if your goal is to just try to do a broad shotgun marketing blast towards anyone who might be upset with the mainstream in any sense and hook them in, you’re just looking to convert anyone you can get to following and listening to you.
The final goal is to use those communication channels you’ve established with them to get them sending you money for whatever product you’re trying to sell. “Alternative wellness” products are hard for the end user to evaluate the efficacy of, and you can mark them up to whatever, so snake oil makes for a good fit.
It’s not that people like Sherri Tenpenny are idiots and believe what they’re saying. It’s that they’re trying to perform a scam, and the collection of conspiracy or at least outside-the-mainstream ideas are “hooks” to try to draw people into the channel used to sell the scam.
I had only one visit with my last doctor before finding a new PCP.
After that visit, I got a call from him saying that I needed to buy $270 in supplements each month from him, the vast majority of which listed their active ingredient as a “Proprietary Blend”.
Apparently in the US, they required osteopaths to start studying real medicine as well at some point, but it looks like in a lot of countries, osteopathy continues to be pure bunk.
Osteopathy (from Ancient Greek ὀστέον (ostéon) ‘bone’, and πάθος (páthos) ‘pain, suffering’) is a type of pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine that emphasizes physical manipulation of the body’s muscle tissue and bones.[1][2] In most countries, practitioners of osteopathy are not medically trained and are referred to as osteopaths.[3][4][5]
Osteopathic manipulation is the core set of techniques in osteopathy.[6] Parts of osteopathy, such as craniosacral therapy, have no therapeutic value and have been labeled as pseudoscience and quackery.[7][8] The techniques are based on an ideology created by Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) which posits the existence of a “myofascial continuity”—a tissue layer that “links every part of the body with every other part”. Osteopaths attempt to diagnose and treat what was originally called “the osteopathic lesion”, but which is now named “somatic dysfunction”,[6] by manipulating a person’s bones and muscles. Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT) techniques are most commonly used to treat back pain and other musculoskeletal issues.[6][non-primary source needed][9]
Osteopathic manipulation is still included in the curricula of osteopathic physicians or Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) training in the US. The Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree, however, became a medical degree and is no longer a degree of non-medical osteopathy.
You should do the same. Osteopathy and osteopathic medicine are distinct disciplines. The former is quackery. DOs are the latter and are real physicians.
I am interested in this, can you point me in the direction of some information around it? It was my understanding that D.O.s are licensed and have admitting privileges, work in hospitals, etc. Which naturopaths, homeopathic practitioners and chiropractors cannot do.
She was not a doctor of real medicine. She was a “doctor of osteopathic medicine” which is a pseudo science bullshit degree. Even if they are not nutjobs, at best they are a massage therapist not someone who studied human biology and medicine.
How did she become a Doctor? Is the one of those times where just pretended one day, got away with it and just carried on?
I actually know one family doctor who is really, really smart. He took care of my family, and he has always been on point with his advice.
Three years
from now(edit:) ago, he started spewing bullshit about vaccines. It was really disappointing.My point is, some people (including thia doctor) are very susceptible to social media brainwashing. I’m not justifying them, but I can see how they became doctors long, long, long ago when we were not constantly online.
If there’s one thing working in insurance taught me it’s that you just never know. You can be talking to the smartest person in the world with five degrees etc and they just got into an accident watching Bluey while driving lol. People are gonna people and intelligence does NOT equal common sense/rational thought.
I agree. I work with a bunch of literal rocket scientists - amazingly smart people. In discussing work stuff, every one of them will insist on data to make decisions. But a few of them will start taking about politics and go off on some diatribe about vaccines, climate change, deep state, or whatever - things completely unsupported by facts or data. I just don’t understand how people can compartmentalize their whole way of thinking like that.
And then there’s religion… it always seemed similarly odd to me that otherwise rational people can believe in the adult version of Santa. These are often the same people.
Yeah, agreed, though I suppose it’s a lot harder to get away from something that your whole family, maybe even your whole community, has been saying is true since your entire life, especially something that includes “there’s no proof, it’s a matter of faith.” I cut people a little slack for that.
c/suspiciouslyspecific
Yup. My best friend growing up was absolutely brilliant, one of the smartest and most well-rounded people I’ve ever met. And yet, when she was new to driving, and her dad handed her the gas pump to fill up the tank, she started spraying it on the windshield. Somehow, despite surely seeing other people perform this task hundreds of times throughout her life, she got it into her head that the pump is where the “soapy water” comes from. You know, those little reserves of water with the squeegee/sponge combo to clean your windshield? That soapy water. She was convinced that the soapy water lived in the gas pump and started dousing her windshield with gas. The fact that it came out with small bubbles further confirmed to her that it was, indeed, soapy water. Her completely flabbergasted dad losing his mind screaming WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUDOING!!! is what finally clued her in that she might be acting in error. It’s like sometimes when you’re that smart maybe you just don’t have any spare brain cells to understand every day things.
Yeah, know a teacher. Smart person.
Had the COVID shot, had side effects (flu symptoms), “researched” online. Next time we saw her, she had opinions on Hunter Biden and thinks Russia is justified in invading Ukraine. Don’t really want to talk with them any more. You end up tiptoeing around things so as not to activate the Fox news programming.
She’s not even American. This shit is more infectious than any virus. You don’t even have to leave home to catch it.
Rupert Murdoch, the kingpin of a ton of this nonsense learned journalism in Australia before immigrating and making America a worse place.
Three years from now would mean three years into the future.
Three years ago would be three years into the past.
And yes it’s sad how even intelligent people fall down very deep rabbit holes.
I’ve noticed a few people on here use “x years from now” incorrectly to refer to the past. I wonder if it’s an ESL thing and maybe their native language uses that construct to refer to the future.
You’re discounting the possibility that the person is a time traveler.
Lol sorry, I was tired when I typed that. “x years from now” to refer to the past is weird if not wrong.
I’ve read that intelligent people can be more susceptible to rabbit holes because they trust themselves to see through the bullshit. They don’t realise the bullshit is carefully crafted to slip past their filters.
Thanks! I was tired and typed that in haste. Corrected.
“I know I spent a decade or more of my life in post-grad, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, attended hundreds of hours of lectures, but this blog with a .blogspot.com domain just convinced me that vaccines can ionize your body”
Woo boy, a couple years ago I got a vasectomy. I didn’t know the doctor, I’m not at an age that one typically sees a urologist. This otherwise seemingly intelligent and congenial medical professional starts making small talk about how much bullshit the COVID vaccine is WITH MY NUTS IN HIS HANDS. I just nodded and grunted noncommittally until I could rush out of that office. Bright side is his work has held up at least!
He knew what he was doing!!
Being smart in one subject doesn’t mean anything else. I have meet some interesting characters in engineering. One I worked with only drank fluoride removed water and every day wolfed down a king size candy bar. Which according to him was okay since it is sugar and sugar is natural. His teeth were as you expect. Also had like 8 patents.
Yes unfortunately intelligence does not seem to be a protective factor against media illiteracy. That is also not something that is focused on in medical education too much, and definitely wasn’t being emphasized by small schools in the 80s (which is when this Ohio person went to school).
All vaccines or just the new mRNA ones? I feel like it would be easy to mistrust them at first because of the rapidity they came to market (if iring previous mRNA research), and maybe the media played on that.
If it’s all vaccines that’s just absolutely retarded for a doctor to fall victim to. Who wants polio back? He should have had extensive training on the older vaccines.
It sounds like she may be a scam artist rather than an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherri_Tenpenny
If you look at her website, the front page is mostly selling her books and various snake oil treatments, like “heavy metal detox” substances. looks further And what appears to be faith healing stuff.
Getting a medical degree doesn’t mean that you can’t be a scam artist.
In a June 2021 report on the Disinformation Dozen, titled “Pandemic Profiteers,” the CCDH estimated that Tenpenny earned up to $353,925 from a single webinar titled “How Covid-19 Injections Can Make You Sick … Even Kill You.”
This income is on top of sales from Tenpenny’s pre-recorded training courses, her line of supplements, as well as her fees for appearing in multiple vaccine-injury cases. And each webinar produces more customers.
“My job is to teach the 400 of you in the class … so each one of you go out and teach 1,000,” she told her $623-a-head “Mastering Vaccine Info Boot Camp” in March, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sherri-tenpenny-how-anti-vaxxer-fuels-pandemic-makes-money-2021-8
Yeah, that too.
Honestly, one thing that I’ve found to be surprisingly consistent across a lot of the apparently-bonkers-on-the-surface conspiracy crowd is that someone is selling “alternative wellness” products at the bottom of it.
I remember discovering that Alex Jones was off selling a bunch of “alternative wellness” stuff too and saying “oooohhhh, okay, that makes more sense”.
I think that the business model looks something like this. You take some issue that someone doesn’t like. I don’t know, being told to wear a mask. You say “this is unnecessary”. Okay, fine, that’s something of a values call, weighting risks against benefits. Then you promote related stuff that they agree with. So, okay, say someone goes to church, and they pray for someone to get better, and that’s a normal part of the culture, right? But in the case of Sherri Tenpenny, it looks like she’s off encouraging people to perform prayers that include a lot of the other kinda wonky products she’s promoting. She’s trying to leverage the cultural norm of praying for someone to get better to associating the stuff she’s promoting with getting better.
So you put out stuff that people agree with to draw them in. Do a wide range of things targeting sometimes-totally-different groups. Some people don’t like 5G – that’s not new with 5G, as there have always been people worried about the health effects of cell phones and radios. Some people don’t trust vaccines. Some people don’t like being told what to do and don’t like being made to wear masks. Some people are pissed off with overseas competition for the field they work in, so opposition to global trade goes over well. Some people are concerned about the effects that industrial chemicals might be having on their bodies. Some people have the idea that there are some sort of ties between life or biological processes and magnets (though that tended to be more of a left-wing than a right-wing thing in the US in the past, but I suppose the same mechanisms work on people either way). I mean, run down the list, doesn’t need to have much to do with each other. You’re just trying to pick up people who don’t agree with the mainstream on one point or another, so that you look appealing to them on that point. You’re saying something that the mainstream isn’t that they like.
You keep constantly promoting communication channels you run. In Sherri Tenpenny’s case, she’s promoting a ton of podcasts and newsletters and mailing lists. The near-term aim is to get an audience subscribed to those channels, so that you can have as many shots as possible as putting a sales pitch for your products in front of them. The long-term aim is to ultimately use those channels to shift as many as possible onto regularly buying whatever snake oil you’re peddling.
And that explains why you have some weird agglomerations of different views. I mean, she’s talking about chemicals, 5G, anti-vaccines, magnetism, faith healing…it seems incredibly unlikely for someone to have honestly picked up all of those highly-abnormal views and also have honestly come to the conclusion that they are an expert on them. But, if your goal is to just try to do a broad shotgun marketing blast towards anyone who might be upset with the mainstream in any sense and hook them in, you’re just looking to convert anyone you can get to following and listening to you.
The final goal is to use those communication channels you’ve established with them to get them sending you money for whatever product you’re trying to sell. “Alternative wellness” products are hard for the end user to evaluate the efficacy of, and you can mark them up to whatever, so snake oil makes for a good fit.
It’s not that people like Sherri Tenpenny are idiots and believe what they’re saying. It’s that they’re trying to perform a scam, and the collection of conspiracy or at least outside-the-mainstream ideas are “hooks” to try to draw people into the channel used to sell the scam.
It’s a long ass con.
Seriously! How does someone with a medical degree think magnetism manifests in the human body?
What do they call the person who graduated at the bottom of their class in med school?
“Doctor.”
I had only one visit with my last doctor before finding a new PCP.
After that visit, I got a call from him saying that I needed to buy $270 in supplements each month from him, the vast majority of which listed their active ingredient as a “Proprietary Blend”.
she probably was the kind of cooker to use those magnetic bracelets before covid too
She’s an osteopath. Calling her a doctor is like calling myself a “Pasta Architect” because I made a lasagne.
I think you’re confusing osteopathic with homeopathic or chiropractic. DOs are board certified physicians.
Apparently in the US, they required osteopaths to start studying real medicine as well at some point, but it looks like in a lot of countries, osteopathy continues to be pure bunk.
It’s not. You’re confusing it with chiropractors.
No, I’m not. Chiropractic is also snake oil, sure, but that doesn’t make osteopathy real medicine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathy
Read that last paragraph. Osteopathic medicine is a distinct, real discipline and not quackery.
Osteopathy is pseudoscientific quackery.
The US has a degree that includes real medicine. That does not legitimize osteopathy.
The first paragraph says it’s pseudoscience… maybe not the best article to settle a debate, lol.
Please read up on osteopathy before saying its any different than chiropractors or homeopathics. Its the same pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo.
You should do the same. Osteopathy and osteopathic medicine are distinct disciplines. The former is quackery. DOs are the latter and are real physicians.
I am interested in this, can you point me in the direction of some information around it? It was my understanding that D.O.s are licensed and have admitting privileges, work in hospitals, etc. Which naturopaths, homeopathic practitioners and chiropractors cannot do.
She did her undergrad at PragerU and her residency at Trump University Collij uh Medisin.
What do you call someone who graduates last in medical school? Exactly.
Hello, Exactly. I’m dad.
Hi dad ,I’m hungry.
Hi Hungry, you’re grounded.
She was not a doctor of real medicine. She was a “doctor of osteopathic medicine” which is a pseudo science bullshit degree. Even if they are not nutjobs, at best they are a massage therapist not someone who studied human biology and medicine.
False. Osteopathic medicine is a real medical degree. Osteopathy is distinct and is not.