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If anal sex injuries really are on the rise, it’s not a question of anatomy, but of education

Kat Ford
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If anal sex injuries really are on the rise, it’s not a question of anatomy, but of education

Inspiration for an article for The Skeptic can come from the most unlikely places – this one came to me after a conversation with a friend, when she stated with concern that she had read that the rates of young women attending hospital with anal injuries due to anal sex is on the rise, that young women are even developing faecal incontinence, and that it’s all because of pornography.

I was suspicious of the whole claim, but knowing literally nothing about hospital admission rates by age, gender, illness or injury I had nothing to push back with. My initial response was to argue that, if it is indeed true that more people are being injured due to anal sex, it is more likely due to a lack of education around the topic, and that when sex education focuses solely on cisgender, heterosexual, penis in vagina sex for the purpose of procreation it leaves a huge information gap.

The conversation meandered on, but that idea, that there was an increase in women being injured by anal sex, piqued my interest, so I decided to dig around and see where my friend may have gotten this information, and how much of it was true.

The first things I found were news and magazine articles with titles such as “Young women who have anal sex are being ‘put at risk’ because NHS is failing to warn them of the dangers, doctors claim – as a quarter of straight couples have tried it” from The Daily Mail, or The Guardian’s “Rise in popularity of anal sex has led to health problems for women”. Both of these articles make the claim that there has been an increase in women becoming interested in anal sex and, to my eyes, suggest that anal is inherently a health risk to women.

Glamour magazine seemed to take a more sex-positive approach, asking why women are engaging in unsafe sex, stating that bad technique and a lack of education can lead to physical injury. Glamour even includes some advice from Dr Evan Goldstein, anal surgeon, founder of Bespoke Surgical, and seller of lube and anal toys. The inclusion of advice on how to safely engage in anal is great, but, with my skeptical hat firmly on, a man who sells anal toys and lube might also have a biased opinion on the topic of whether anal sex is safe. Further research is needed.      

A bit more googling and link clicking finally took me to what seemed to be the original article, published in the BMJ and written by general and colorectal surgeon Tabitha Gana and consultant surgeon Lesley Hunt. In it, Gana and Hunt argue that by shying away from discussing anal sex, doctors are letting down a whole generation of women and leaving them vulnerable to harm.

The overall message of the paper is reasonable: those working in the medical field, especially those working in colorectal medicine, probably should ask about anal sex and give advice on how to safely enjoy anal sex, if it may be relevant to the complaints the patient is presenting with. But some of the claims in the original article are unsupported, and the emphasis on the danger of anal sex for women specifically also seemed odd.

Evidence for the claim that anal sex is more dangerous for women is mixed at best. Colonoscopies tend to be more difficult on people assigned female at birth as the sigmoid colon tends to be, on average, longer in women but packed into a smaller abdominal cavity so has more twists and turns. That said, the sigmoid colon starts at the top of the rectum, and the rectum itself is 18-20cm long (approximately 7 inches), so in all likelihood, the average penis is unlikely to bother anyone’s sigmoid colon.

The article also suggests that one reason anal sex might be more dangerous for women is that women have lower anal canal pressure. Interestingly, low pressure in the anal canal is actually cited as a risk factor for constipation, which isn’t quite the polar opposite of faecal incontinence but arguably, quite a different problem altogether. If I wanted to be pedantic, long term constipation can in extreme cases lead to faecal incontinence due to internal damage, and constipation and faecal incontinence can coexist in the same patient, but we’re at real risk of going off on a tangent that would ruin the narrative flow of this article.

The original paper also claimed that rates of faecal incontinence is higher among women who have anal sex and references Markland et al. Markland et al does state that, yes, faecal incontinence is more common in women who have anal sex compared to women who do not report having had anal sex. However, what Gana and Hunt fail to mention is that the paper also reports the same for men. In fact, when looking at the data in that article, there is a greater increase in the reports of faecal incontinence among men who report having had anal sex than there is among women who report having had anal sex. So it appears to me that there is no good anatomical reason that anal sex should present more of an injury risk for people assigned female at birth than it would for those assigned male at birth.

There is another issue with the original BMJ article. It is stated as fact that young women are turning up at hospital with injuries caused by anal sex at an increased rate – but no evidence for this claim is offered. The BMJ is written by two doctors who are well placed to be experts on such things, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but, without presenting any evidence it is difficult to say whether the increase in rates of young women harmed by anal sex is verifiably true, or just a hunch on the part of the authors.

Some of the points raised in the article just seem plain irrelevant to the overall argument. For example the statement that “anal intercourse is considered a risky sexual behaviour because of its association with alcohol, drug use and multiple sexual partners” doesn’t help us evaluate whether anal, in and of itself, poses a health risk – it merely positions the act as adjacent to other behaviours society tends to frown upon. To me, this seems actively unhelpful when arguing that physicians don’t ask about anal sex enough because of the taboos and stigma around it.

The real issue when it comes to women and sexual pleasure is rooted in sexism, in living in a culture where male pleasure is valued over female comfort and safety. This is not a question of anatomy. It is important to raise awareness of how people, regardless of gender, can safely enjoy and explore their bodies and their sexuality, but this can’t be done while also promoting misinformation.

We need to be focusing on education around consent, and really emphasising the message that anything other than an enthusiastic ‘yes’, ought to be understood as a ‘no’. There is no inherent problem with more people becoming interested in trying, or even regularly engaging in anal sex – as long as it is done consensually, safely, respectfully, with plenty of clear and honest communication… and a lot more lube than you think you’re going to need. 

The online circus around Nicola Bulley’s death shows what harm armchair detectives can do

Karin McClure
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The online circus around Nicola Bulley’s death shows what harm armchair detectives can do

If you’re in the UK I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard about the missing person case of Nicola Bulley, a 45 year old woman who seemingly vanished while walking her dog along the river Wyre in Lancashire on the 27th of January 2023. The story was hard to miss. News outlets had it running as one of their main stories for weeks. As the circumstances around her disappearance were considered unusual, it was understandably an intriguing story. She seemed to have vanished out of thin air.

The police quickly released their hypothesis that Nicola may have fallen into the river, and that they didn’t believe any foul play was involved. Unfortunately for the police – and more importantly Nicola’s family – the armchair detectives of TikTok and beyond decided that wasn’t a good enough explanation, and so valiantly took it upon themselves to investigate further… much further. Actually, way too far.

My social media feeds were quickly inundated with posts about the disappearance, and how people just weren’t buying the police’s theory. People don’t just end up in rivers. There had to be more to it, right? According to the armchair detectives, yes, there had to be much more to it.

Armchair detectives are nothing new of course, and with the increase of social media use, true crime popularity and camera phones, it’s becoming easier and easier to become way too involved in real crime cases. One of the most well-known incidents (up until the Bulley disappearance) of internet sleuths interfering and getting it very, very wrong was what happened after the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. On this occasion, the amateur investigator HQ was Reddit.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, a manhunt began – both officially by the FBI, and unofficially online. A subreddit named r/FindBostonBomber was quickly set up, and it was soon inundated with photos and video clips from users who thought they had spotted potential suspects. One individual named was Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old student. A witch hunt began for Tripathi. However, he was innocent. In fact, he had been reported missing by his family one month prior to the bombing, and on the 23rd of April 2013 his body was found in the Seekonk River – four days after the actual perpetrators of the attack were found and an arrest made.

After the arrest, posts about Tripathi disappeared, but the damage was already done. Sunil’s family had been hounded by the public and the press. Sunil’s death was ultimately ruled as a suicide.

Reddit received heavy scrutiny after the real culprits were found, and warnings were made about this kind of thing happening again, however it proved far from the last such incident. I fear there’s no real stopping it.

True crime and the DIY detective

To try and understand why armchair detectives have become so prevalent and such a nuisance to official investigations, you just have to look back over the past ten years or so. True crime has become a leading form of entertainment, mostly thanks to the huge popularity of true crime documentaries and podcasts. You could argue that Sarah Keonig’s podcast Serial and Netflix’s Making a Murder documentary series from 2015 were a starting point for a lot of people getting into the genre, and it’s easy to see why. The stories in these shows and podcasts are evocative, they’re tense and exciting. They weave a narrative that keeps you hooked and often leave you to speculate as to the truth – even if that means skewing some details to fit the narrative. They also often have a recurring theme of inadequate and dodgy police work, creating an idea that if you want the real story, you need to seek it out yourself, because the police and their version of events can’t be trusted.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some truth to that – I’m certainly not saying the police do a stellar job, and that there isn’t ample evidence of police failings. In fact, the police haven’t been doing themselves any favours to gain public trust (and they certainly didn’t help themselves during the search for Nicola Bulley) but there is a real danger in seeing police incompetence and assuming that you, an untrained member of the public can do a better job… and then to set out to do that job. Especially when it leads to real harm and the spreading of dangerous misinformation.

There’s a conflation of incompetence and conspiracy when it comes to official investigations in the minds of the armchair detectives. Equally, there is simply a misunderstanding of how criminal investigations are actually carried out, which leads them to believing that the public are entitled to more information, that the withholding of that information by police is a clear sign that there is more going on and it is therefore their duty to get to the truth. The ‘real’ truth.

The University of Idaho killings

On the 13th of November 2022 in Idaho, USA, four students were found murdered in their student home. News of the murders quickly spread online. It had all the hallmarks of a juicy murder case: four young victims, two surviving roommates who apparently saw and heard nothing, no initial appearance of any theft, and no signs of forced entry. The longer it went without an arrest being made, the more intriguing the case became – especially for the armchair detectives who, of course, took it upon themselves to solve the case.

TikTok was full of theories. The strangest of which involved someone creating a virtual walkthrough of the house, taking information from a property website with a floorplan, speculating the route of the murderer. Others I saw analysing the body language of the victims’ families and friends at a memorial service. Alarmingly, all the posts related to this case had hundreds, sometimes thousands of views, and their comment sections were full of people thanking the posters for their work and encouraging more.

The majority of the conclusions I saw being made with almost all of this ‘evidence’ was that we, the public, weren’t being told everything, and that this was a problem. People were adamant that the public had a right to know what the police had found and what they knew, and in doing so they blamed the police for making the public do their own investigation. It was bizarre.

On the 30th of December 2022, police blindsided the TikTok sleuths by making an arrest and charging someone with the murders. The man they arrested wasn’t any of their ‘prime suspects’. He was someone completely unrelated to any of the victims. TikTok was confused. There was a strange outrage at the police for… catching the murderer? Y’know, doing their job.

In a slightly redacted probable cause affidavit released by the police, they outlined their summary of the evidence that led to the arrest. It detailed how one of the roommates had in fact seen the accused when he was in the home, and gave a detailed description of the man. This detail had TikTok in an uproar. They just couldn’t understand why the roommate in question hadn’t said anything to the press, or anywhere online.

What the TikTok sleuths failed to realise – or just refused to acknowledge – is that while they were conducting their intrusive and unnecessary investigation, the police were doing their own. The police, unlike TikTok had been inside the house, and weren’t just looking at a haphazard virtual tour of the home. They had collected evidence and deemed which evidence was relevant, interviewed witnesses, and built a case around their suspect.

The people online claiming conspiracy and a ‘cover-up’ in these cases have a complete misunderstanding of how criminal investigations are carried out. If the police released all the evidence they had gathered to the public, it would heavily jeopardise their case. There’s a reason why the police warn social media against speculation and comment during investigations and subsequent trials – it can influence potential jury members, and lead to arguments for an unfair trial. In other words, it could result in guilty parties dodging the justice that the TikTok sleuths crave.

The search for Nicola Bulley

Returning to the Bulley missing person case, on the 19th of February 2023, 3 weeks after she was reported missing, a body was found and retrieved from the river Wyre, just a couple of miles from where Nicola was last seen; on the 20th of February, the police announced that the body was identified as her. The family of Nicola released a statement after the tragic news, heavily criticising the behaviour of the media and the ‘so called experts’ who had interfered and turned what should have been a delicate missing person’s case into a circus.

TikTok was inundated with new theories. Some of which I can only imagine came from a complete misunderstanding of how rivers work. There were claims that the body had to have been planted there, because how could it have been found only now, after three weeks, so close by? Again, conspiracy was rampant – despite the family begging for all the speculation to stop. If you were to type ‘Nicola Bulley’ into the TikTok search bar, the recommended results were ghoulish. ‘Nicola Bulley body recovery’, ‘Nicola Bulley river map’, and ‘Nicola Bulley psychic’.

One of the scariest kind of posts I saw on TikTok after the body was discovered involved fabricated news reports about arrests being made, and the conclusions of the coroner’s report. They used fake news channels scrolling banners, creepy AI voices and hashtags like #coronerreport and #nicolabulleymurder. Anyone who took a moment to check the information in these posts would quickly see that they are fake, but the comment sections were full of people believing them without question.

The world may never know what exactly happened to Nicola, and quite frankly, it’s none of our business. With no foul play or suspicious circumstances, and there being no threat to the public, the case should have continued out of the press and away from social media speculation. The Bulley family, much like the family of Sunil Tripathi and those of the four students in Idaho, have suffered greatly and continue to do so. Not just from the tragic loss of their loved ones, but from the ghoulish and relentless speculation that has followed.

True crime is just that: it is crime, and it is true. It’s real people and real pain and suffering. The armchair detectives seem to forget this, or they just choose to ignore it. If they took a moment to put themselves into the shoes of the families involved, and tried to imagine how they would feel if they were the target of such wild speculation and abuse on top of losing their loved ones, maybe they would think twice. But unfortunately, one thing that is sincerely lacking in the behaviour of these ‘sleuths’ is empathy. They also lack critical thinking and reason, jumping to wild conclusions that defy logic and desperately trying to ‘expose’ their own ideas of the truth, without thinking or caring about how damaging those ideas are.

The science of The Last of Us: should we fear a fungal zombie pandemic?

Natália Pasternak
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The science of The Last of Us: should we fear a fungal zombie pandemic?

In the premiere of “The Last of Us,” a TV series based on the computer game of the same name, a fungus causes a pandemic that turns people into zombies and changes their behavior. The show instilled the following question into popular imagination: could such a pandemic actually happen in real life? Let’s face it, the prospect of a new pandemic, in which a microorganism devours the brain of its victims, sounds quite frightening – especially after having just emerged from a pandemic, during which the political discourse of denialism turned a significant portion of the Brazilian population into yellow-and-green-clad zombies.

The series begins with a talk show from the 1960s, in which a scientist claims that viruses and bacteria are not so menacing for the future of humanity, and that what we should really be afraid of are fungi. According to this scientist, because of global warming, some of the fungi capable of controlling the behavior of insects could “easily” adapt to a temperature closer to that of the human body and infect us. We would then be doomed, since there is no way to develop drugs or vaccines against fungi.

Is there any fact behind the fiction? Well, there are fungi that infect and disrupt the behaviour of insects. One of these, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, inspired the creator of “Last of Us” (the computer game). Popularly known as cordyceps, this fungus produces spores — reproductive cells — that infect ants and develop in haemolymph, the blood of insects. After a few days, the ants begin to exhibit behavioural changes.

A study published by the team led by Professor David Hughes, who acted as a consultant for the game and other zombie films, explains this process well: the infected ants move away from the nest, start having muscle spasms, and climb on leaves or branches at about 25 cm from the ground. Then they clench their jaws into these leaves and remain there while the fungus devours them from the inside, and forms filaments that will produce more spores. These ants, “possessed” by the fungus and hanging over a path where healthy insects pass, will then increase the probability of new spores falling on top of other ants.

This highly specialised and successful strategy is the result of thousands of years of parasite-insect co-evolution — successful for the fungus, mind you, because hanging with your jaw locked into a leaf while another creature controls your muscles doesn’t strike me as a success story for the ant. Here, natural selection has given the fungus a greater chance of reproduction. For example, the fact that infected ants leave the anthill to hang in a nearby location is essential. If they had shown symptoms of the disease while still inside the anthills, they would have probably been eliminated by the colony. In addition, the ideal environment for fungus growth is cooler and more humid than the inside of an anthill. Finally, by keeping its victim hanging from a leaf, the fungus ensures that its spores will fall on other passing ants, thus infecting a greater number of new hosts. If the ant had died on the ground, the chances of the spores spreading would have been significantly lower.

It’s still not entirely clear how the fungus manages to take control over the host’s body; however, contrary to how the story plays out in the TV show, the parasite does not invade the brain. According to recent studies, a more likely explanation involves some substance interfering with muscle contractions. Professor Hughes’ team detected an increased production of toxins, and greater activation of genes related to the production of ergot alkaloids, compounds produced by fungi that can change behavior, and cause seizures and hallucinations. Fungi produce psilocybin and LSD precursors, compounds that are potent psychedelics.

Historical cases of ergotism – or “St. Anthony’s Fire,” a disease caused by eating rye contaminated by fungi – are well documented in the literature, and produce symptoms of epilepsy, convulsions, hallucinations, and gangrene. Ergot alkaloids are structurally similar to neurotransmitters, such as serotonin. They also cause reduced blood flow, and sometimes tissue necrosis, particularly in the extremities. In addition, they can stimulate the central nervous system, triggering a range of changes in one’s mental state, ranging from hallucinations to depression.

Several ergotism “epidemics” are described in the literature. The most recent ones occurred in 1928, in England, and in 1951, in France, both caused by rye bread contaminated with the Claviceps purpurea fungus. The observed effects were a state of delirium, suicidal thoughts, intense pain and burning sensations, gangrene, and loss of limbs.

Zombie-creating fungi that attack cicadas of the Massospora cicadina species deploy a hallucinogenic compound that makes the insects fly wildly, releasing spores in every direction. And that’s only after the fungus has literally eaten the insect’s genitals and butt! The male cicadas usually sing to attract females. Once infected, and even after losing their genitals, they continue to make music, and, if they manage to attract a female, they transmit the fungus to her. The male’s behavior also changes: he flaps his wings in a way that imitates females, thus attracting other unsuspecting males who also end up becoming infected. The fungus is so successful that it manages to spread its spores not only through the flight of the cicadas, but also through their sexual activity.

So much for insects, but what about us?

Would the emergence of a zombie-creating fungus capable of infecting humans be possible, perhaps as a result of climate change, as suggested by the scientist’s character in the TV series?

It’s unlikely. These parasites are highly specialised, they infect one and only one host species. Fungi that infect certain ants are not the same as those that infect caterpillars or cicadas, or even other ant species. Bear in mind that a parasite needs thousands or even millions of years of co-evolution before it can dominate its host. Furthermore, the warming of the planet seems to be quite detrimental to the parasite.

The cordyceps that infects ants is not the only fungus of its kind. There are hundreds of species of cordyceps that infect different insects, and more than 30 that cause behavioural changes. A well-known type, which became popular for very different reasons, is Ophiocordyceps sinensis, also known as the “Viagra of the Himalayas.” This fungus parasitises caterpillars, and is used in traditional Chinese medicine not only as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for sexual impotence, but also to allegedly cure cancer and diabetes. In addition, it’s sold as an energy booster in natural supplement stores, where it may cost as much as $125 a gram. Although it has created a multimillion dollar market, its effectiveness for anything other than parasitising caterpillars has never been confirmed by science. Nevertheless, high demand and global warming have placed the fungus on the endangered species list. The parasite thrives in low temperatures, and its numbers have plummeted owing to climate change and overexploitation.

The TV series was right in attributing the origin of the pandemic to grain contaminated by the fungus, but it changed the mode of transmission of the spores — achieved through dispersion in nature — into one effected by the bites and aggressive behavior of human zombies. Insects infected by fungi do not show aggressive behavior, and the only thing resembling a bite is the ant jaw clutching the leaf to attach itself. The spores are dispersed through the air and fall to the ground. In this respect, the microorganism causing the infection in the TV series more closely resembles the rabies virus than a zombie-creating fungus. The creators of the series justify that they made the change to prevent the actors from having to wear masks all the time (in the computer game, the spores are dispersed through the air, as expected).

Hope for a cure?

Another doomsday prediction made by the epidemiologist in the series is that we would certainly lose a war against fungi, because it would be “impossible” to develop a cure. It is true that our cells are much more similar to those of a fungus than to bacterial cells, which makes it difficult to develop a drug capable of killing the fungus while preserving human cells. There are few antifungals on the market. However, given the right incentives — such as a global health emergency — it would certainly not be impossible to find a cure or invent a medicine, and, ironically, the solution might perhaps come from another fungus.

Researchers working with the zombie-creating fungus of ants have recently discovered two species of different fungus that infect the zombie-creating fungus itself. The mechanism is still not well understood, but the researchers report that cordyceps is consumed by these parasitic fungi, and that, in some cases, the new fungus “castrates” the cordyceps, rendering it unable to reproduce, and then devours it. Fungi and bacteria compete for space and nutrients, and it’s not uncommon for them to produce compounds that kill their competitors. That’s how we discovered most antibiotics produced by bacteria.

A non-fictional threat

While the zombie pandemic may only be fictional, global warming can indeed render the world more susceptible to emerging diseases, not diseases caused by highly specialised fungi, but rather — and much more likely — by viruses transmitted by mosquitoes that can become endemic in regions that were previously very cold, or simply by facilitating the encounter between species that can exchange microorganisms.

The regions of the world where mosquitoes can exist comfortably are expanding, thereby increasing the opportunities for disease-carrying insects (e.g. dengue, zika, yellow fever, chikungunya, and malaria) to become endemic in places where they were not endemic before. Warming also reduces the habitat of species accustomed to milder climates, and these then tend to migrate to more favorable areas. The encounter of several species that had previously been separated geographically can favor the spread of viruses and bacteria—and fungi for that matter—from one species to another, thus increasing the number of potential hosts.

Confined animal breeding facilitates the transmission of diseases, and contact with humans makes it easier for microorganisms to “jump” from animals to humans, and adapt. This is what happened with the bird flu and the swine flu. Illegal wild animal markets also put us in contact with species acting as reservoirs of microorganisms, which we would otherwise hardly cross paths with in nature.

The apocalypse, whether or not it is caused by an uncontrollable and much more aggressive pandemic than that of COVID-19, is much more likely to result from this set of irresponsible human actions than from a fungus that turns ants into zombies.

This article was translated from the original Portuguese by Ricardo Borges Costa.

This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating skeptical writers who are women

Alice Howarth
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This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating skeptical writers who are women

International Women’s Day has a long and varied history. There have been times when celebrating and supporting women on a single globally-identified day has been an important tradition, helping to inspire great change, even when it has involved great risk to the women who are defiantly involved. Similarly, there are times, perhaps like today, when the impact of a single day seems comparatively minimal, where we get to witness the spectacle of corporations jumping on the bandwagon to share their hollow words about how they think women are just great.

Over the last few weeks (and, indeed, in the years before now) I’ve flitted back and forth on how I, personally, feel about International Women’s Day. Considering how it’s occasionally become (at least on Twitter) synonymous with a man on Twitter talking about International Men’s Day (however well-intentioned and charitably successful that activity was). Or how corporations who don’t have gender pay parity still sing about their contributions to the day. How women are often asked to do extra, unpaid work in order to support International Women’s Day on the behalf of their employers or other companies.  

At The Skeptic we don’t have any employees. We don’t even pay ourselves, as Editor or Deputy Editor. Everything that is published on our website is delivered for free, by unpaid volunteers. All the hours we spend reading and editing and delivering articles each week is done in our spare time, because we care about compassionate skepticism. And all the time our many authors dedicate to writing interesting, intelligent, thoughtful, well-researched and compassionate articles is given to us for free.  

We admire and respect every single author who chooses to donate their time to us. Especially those whose time is more limited – because they are marginalised and spending time doing unpaid advocacy work for their communities (or ‘just’ working twice as hard to get half the recognition in their day-job), because they are disabled and have less energy to dedicate to the extra-curricular activities like writing for our magazine, because they are parents and need to juggle childcare with work, and the other myriad reasons that impact a person’s ability to contribute.  

We don’t want to make some hollow gesture to International Women’s Day. But we would like to take the opportunity to highlight some of our wonderful authors who contribute to this space. So today we will feature three articles from women (plus this one!). We hope you enjoy them. Go share the authors some love on Twitter. 

And if you’re interested in becoming one of our unpaid, but hugely appreciated, voluntary contributors – read our Write for Us page to see how you can pitch an article. We’d love to hear from you. 

Did a lab leak cause COVID-19? Despite the latest headlines, it’s still not very likely

Trevor Sloughter
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Did a lab leak cause COVID-19? Despite the latest headlines, it’s still not very likely

A glance at the headlines over the past week would imply major revelations in the study of the origins of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In short, the Wall Street Journal reported on 26 February that the US Department of Energy has adjusted its assessment on the likelihood of a ‘lab leak’, changing its assessment of this hypothetical origin to “low confidence”, from its earlier position in 2021 that it couldn’t make a determination either way. This assessment is part of a multi-agency investigation that resulted in a now-declassified report from late 2021 and a still-classified updated report from this year.

If that paragraph sounds cautious, and if all the hedging and equivocation made it difficult to read, that’s because almost nothing has changed in the science, nor has much changed in the positions of the US intelligence community. Four of the involved agencies still lean toward a natural origin, two remain uncommitted. No new evidence has been shown to the public, and little in the press indicates what the evidence could be that would merit the headlines.

President Biden ordered eight intelligence agencies to investigate Covid’s origins shortly after he assumed office. Their approach, as can be read in the 2021 report, is one of intelligence and security. In the intervening years, independent scientists in public health, molecular biology, genetics, and other life sciences have done their own investigations, which lean far more toward a natural origin.

There are several reasons. Two interconnected studies (Worobey et al., 2022 and Pekar et al., 2022) looked at the history of the earliest cases, how they spread, and what lineages of the virus they represented. The first paper goes into the details, and as Dr Angela Rasmussen (co-author of the Worobey paper) simplifies on Twitter, having two lineages of Covid appear in the market in the earliest days of the pandemic is hard to square with a lab-leak hypothesis. From a zoonotic origin, this makes sense: the virus was already prevalent in wild animals, inevitably in multiple lineages, and thus animals carrying those lineages could transmit to people. Were a lab leak the source, two workers would have to be exposed to two different strains, leave the lab, and travel to the same market within days of each other. Impossible? No. But is it probable, given the alternative?

This is just one line of evidence that tilts the scales toward a natural origin in the minds of so many biologists. While the lab-leak hypothesis can feel sensible given the proximity of a lab working on dangerous viruses to the early cases, it struggles to explain the clustering patterns, the spread from the market epicentre, and the two lineages all together. And good hypotheses must account for all the strands of data simultaneously, not piecewise.

The new, still-classified report may have information the public isn’t privy to, but there’s reason to be sceptical. The 2021 report states

Although the IC [intelligence community] has no indications that WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] research involved SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus, these analysts note that it is plausible that researchers may have unwittingly exposed themselves to the virus without sequencing it during experiments or sampling activities, possibly resulting in asymptomatic or mild infection.

This line is under the sub-heading “The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis”. To be absolutely clear, thorough investigation of a lab-leak possibility is not only warranted, but essential. It is, in fact, this kind of diligence that makes labs studying dangerous pathogens as secure as they are.

And there have been concerns for some time about the safety and security of the lab in question, as stated by the US State Department. Additionally, journalists and US Senate staffers have used to the opacity of the current government of China as reason to automatically distrust, even disregard, data that was used in studies such as Worobey et al. A joint investigation by ProPublica and Vanity Fair questions how much we can really know about the WIV without full transparency, prompting Michael Worobey to reply on Twitter taking a strong stance in defence of the reliability of the data his team used, arguing that the preponderance of available case data enabled their “unambiguous” conclusion of a zoonotic origin.

One does have to wonder how an intelligence agency can go from “no indications that WIV research involved SARS-CoV-2” to “low confidence” in a lab-leak origin of the pandemic, even with suspicion and concern about what we might not know, without a credible rebuttal to alternate analyses of epidemiological data. Identifying the possibility, and proposing a mechanism, is not in and of itself evidence, especially when evidence exists for a natural origin.

Another important note is that the US intelligence community does agree on quite a lot about Covid’s origins, as detailed in the report and summarised in Slate: they agree Covid was not a bioweapon, and that it was not tampered with through genetic engineering (eliminating the fear-mongering about ‘gain-of-function’, which is often misunderstood). This does not preclude a lab-leak origin, but it is helpful in shutting down fringe conspiracy theorists.

The lab-leak hypothesis deserves rigorous scrutiny, but the current headlines implying new revelations from the highest authorities do not constitute rigour. When it comes to the origins of Covid, the evidence for a natural origin may still rest on uncertainties and likelihoods, but the evidence for a lab leak remains little more than “not impossible”. This could yet change with new information, but the press would do well to hold their horses.

Tree planting schemes look fantastic on paper, but they won’t save us from climate change

Sarah Hearne
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Tree planting schemes look fantastic on paper, but they won’t save us from climate change

Councils across the UK are pledging to plant trees in an effort to combat climate change and improve biodiversity. From Lanarkshire to Cornwall, and everywhere in between, trees have become a simple and obvious way for councils to show that they take the climate crisis seriously. They are backed by the government which, in 2020, pledged £3.9 million in funding for the planting of 30,000 hectares of trees per year by 2025.

It’s an impressive-sounding aim, though slightly less impressive when you consider that 150,000 hectares is a bit more than the land currently taken up by golf courses in the UK and, if successful, it will increase our woodlands by less than 5%, despite the UK being one of the least forested countries in Europe. Not to mention, the government is struggling to meet its targets, which it has recently cut following lobbying from the National Farmers Union. But is it even a good aim? Is planting trees a good use of our land and our money in the effort to mitigate climate change?

The first question to ask is do trees sequester carbon? 

The simple answer is ‘yes’. 

The more complex answer is, ‘yes but…’. 

Separating the Forest from the Trees

All life on earth is carbon-based (carbon forms stable bonds with many other elements, making it uniquely able to form complex molecules such as DNA) and trees, being big and long-lived, are ideal for trapping lots of carbon. The IPCC estimated that around 47% of trees are carbon so it seems straightforward – plant more trees, trap more carbon, right?

Let’s go back to school biology and that infamous equation for photosynthesis. Trees, like all plants, take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into food for themselves, and oxygen – which animals, including us, use to breathe. But this only happens during daylight. At night they rely on those glucose stores, converting them back into carbon dioxide and water to release the energy they contain to power their cells. Fortunately for us, not all their glucose is used in this way, some is converted into cellulose to form the permanent structures of the tree – its roots, trunk and branches. 

So while carbon is being captured by the tree, it is also emitting carbon, and we need to look at the net carbon capture over the life of the tree. Unsurprisingly, on an individual level, the bigger the tree, the more carbon it captures permanently in its structure. In fact, young trees are pretty poor at capturing carbon, as much of their focus is on foliage production – which is lost every year in deciduous species, and over cycles of up to 45 years in the case of pines, returning the carbon back to the environment. 

Theory Vs Practice

Obviously, to get to big trees you must first start with small trees, so the tree planting schemes make sense, as long as every tree you plant grows up. But not all do. Some die. Quite a lot in some cases. Gloucester City Council planted 12,500 whips (small trees aged 2-3 years old and less than 1m tall) at the beginning of 2022, but by the end of the summer only 700 were still alive, the rest having been killed by the heatwave. A similar situation occurred in Kings Lynn with around 75% mortality reported. And that’s just for the councils that track the outcomes of their schemes; at least 80 have no monitoring. This isn’t a failing of individual councils, but a systemic failure of the government’s scheme, which was launched so quickly that Defra, who manage it, didn’t have time to put monitoring systems in place, according to a report by the National Audit Office. 

Every whip that dies is more carbon in the atmosphere that we have to remove. Those whips had to be cultivated, dug up, transported in vehicles and planted, with every step generating carbon. Digging the soil releases carbon to such an extent that research has found that leaving agricultural land fallow is a better carbon investment than growing corn for ethanol. And we haven’t even considered all the volunteers travelling, often by car, to planting sites. Their carbon will need offsetting too. In fact, when you add it all up, it can take years for a tree to become a carbon sink rather than a carbon source, and the more whips that die the longer it will take for schemes to pay for themselves carbon-wise. 

Additionally, while many tree planting proponents repeat the refrain ‘the right tree for the right place’, the practicality is that trees get planted where people can get access. Unfortunately, the best places for planting trees are often in the hands of private landowners, and the National Audit Office found that uncertainty about future government subsidies for converting agricultural land into woodland puts many off. And even when private landowners do plant trees, they often do so based on commercial considerations rather than ecological or environmental ones, leading to situations like those seen in Scotland where peat bogs – fantastic sinks for carbon – are dug up and planted with trees, releasing massive amounts of carbon in the process. 

Bailing out the Titanic with a Sieve

But let’s assume for a minute that all the problems I’ve mentioned are solved, and that every whip planted survives to maturity and becomes a carbon sink. Will they get us to net zero? 

The simple answer is no.

The more complicated answer is still no. 

According to the Office for National Statistics, UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 were just over 478 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. If we assume that the amount of CO2 taken up by woods and forests is around 0.5 kg per square metre per year, then we would need 956,000 square kilometres of land planted to absorb all this carbon. The UK is around 244,820 square kilometres so we’d need to reforest just under four times the landmass of the UK to reach carbon zero through trees alone.

A tree trunk

It’s easy to forget that trees are living organisms, and when they die they decompose, and their carbon is released back into the environment. The only way we can stop this from happening is to prevent that decomposition. This can happen if the trees are buried in anoxic environments, but that burial can also release soil carbon we then have to factor into our carbon budgets. We can also preserve trees by turning them into wood products, but again these are only carbon sinks while they are being used. As soon as they stop being used and are left to decay they become carbon sources again. The carbon cycle is relentless and cannot be stopped, only paused. 

The conclusion we have to reach is that we’re still emitting carbon on a massive scale, carbon capture is at best a minor tool in our arsenal and at worst a dangerous distraction. 

Trees are More than Just Carbon Sinks

Part of the problem with the government’s plan is that it wants trees to be a panacea. They are to offset carbon emissions while also increasing biodiversity, providing timber products and ‘amenities’, helping manage water quality and flood risk, and providing shade in urban environments. That’s a lot to ask! 

One of the best ways to allow trees to do all this while still being carbon sinks is to stop the current informal policy of plant and leave. If we are going to plant trees then aftercare is needed, and if we can’t provide that then we shouldn’t plant them. 

A low cost and simple alternative is to allow woods and forests to naturally expand. This will still need the agreement of landowners, but requires much less initial outlay. Fencing to keep out grazers is often the most that’s needed to allow nature to take its course, as has happened in Monks Wood. In the 1960s a research station on the edge of ancient woodland in Cambridgeshire decided to leave a four hectare field alone and see what happened. What researchers saw was a classic example of ecological succession, with pioneer species such as brambles and hawthorns providing a secure habitat to allow trees including ash, field maple and oak to grow without risk of being grazed by deer. Sixty years later the field is fully incorporated into the ancient wood and will help ensure its continuation for centuries more.  

The benefits of natural expansion are many. There is little to no cost and as the trees establish themselves there’s no carbon cost to their arrival at the site, plus they are already adapted to the local environmental conditions. It also reduces the risk of introducing pest species along with them. From a biodiversity perspective, increasing the size of an existing wood is far more beneficial than creating a new wood. Two separate 100 hectare woods are less biodiverse than one 200 hectare wood. There are many reasons for this but the most obvious is that 100 hectares can’t sustain as many species as 200 hectares, particularly for larger species that require larger territories to survive. Edge effects – microclimate changes that occur on the boundaries between two habitats that make them less hospitable to species living in those habitats – are also exacerbated in habitat fragments and lead to the dominance of generalist species.

Solutions and Conclusions

Trees are amazing – they can live hundreds, even thousands of years, and can sustain entire ecosystems within their branches. Oaks can support over 2,000 species. When we reduce them to carbon sinks, we miss much of their value. 

As you may have already guessed, my preferred solution is natural regeneration. I’m not alone in this – in 2020 Rewilding Britain produced a report that argued natural regeneration should be the default method for restoring Britain’s woods. In urban and suburban environments, more carefully planned and managed planting is required. I would love to see tree planting as a requirement for new housing developments due to their well-known cooling effect in summers. As heat waves – such as the ones we saw last summer – are set to continue, we need to adapt and one low-cost way to reduce temperatures in built-up areas is to plant trees.

However, my cynicism is such that I suspect this won’t happen. The great thing about mass tree planting is that it’s simple and obvious. It’s a great photo-op for councillors and MPs to show off their Green credentials and illustrate that they take climate change seriously. They are being seen to Do Something. What happens after the cameras leave is far less important. 

This has to change. 

The Tao of Magical Thinking: pseudoscience in Jeremy Lent’s ‘The Web of Meaning’

Ted Lefroy
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The Tao of Magical Thinking: pseudoscience in Jeremy Lent’s ‘The Web of Meaning’
The cover of The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent. There is a tree on the cover with a starlit night sky in the background.

“The Web of Meaning: integrating science and traditional wisdom to find our place in the universe”, by Jeremy Lent, ventures into the speculative territory between science and religion in search of the origins of consciousness and humanity’s fall from grace. Along the way Lent, described on the cover by  Guardian columnist George Monbiot as “…one of the greatest thinkers of our age”, assembles a fascinating collection of ideas that scientists have proposed to explain the big mysteries in neuroscience, cognitive psychology and biology, drawing parallels with the Tao Te Ching. The mistake Lent makes, however, is to present speculative ideas from the frontiers of multiple disciplines as established knowledge, rather than the untested or untestable hypotheses they are.

For example Lent claims that epigenetics ‘…simply refers to a form of inheritance that is not genetic’ (p.132). It doesn’t. Epigenetics refers to environmental influence on the way genes are copied, some of which is heritable. That a geneticist has suggested epigenetics be extended to include cultural inheritance does not change biology. Similarly Lent claims that Lamarckism – evolution through the heritability of characteristics acquired during a lifetime – has been ‘validated by science’ (p.154). It hasn’t, as geneticist Massimo Pigliucci explains.

This book ultimately begs the question: is it possible, necessary or meaningful to integrate science and traditional wisdom? Palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould attempted to resolve this by classifying science and religion as ‘non-overlapping magisteria’; two separate realms of human experience with no common ground. While Science documents the factual character of the natural world and theories that explain these facts, religion operates in the realm of purpose, meaning, and value, subjects which science might illuminate but can never resolve.

The problem is that science and religion inevitably do overlap whenever they make competing claims about the same phenomenon, such as the diversity and origin of life.

Until the second half of the 19th century, most scientists believed that the staggering diversity of life on Earth was the work of God. So Charles Darwin thought, at the age of twenty two when he left Plymouth on the Beagle in 1831. His theory of natural selection, shaped by what he saw on that voyage and what he read in Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, proposed instead that the huge diversity of living things was driven by life’s constant need to adapt to a changing Earth.

After ‘On the Origin of Species’ was published, God could still be invoked to explain how life began, but was no longer necessary to explain its diversity.

Lent comes unstuck again when he claims that vitalism has been scientifically validated (p. 154). It hasn’t and it can’t be. Vitalism is belief in a life force beyond the physical world, and science can never validate the existence of a concept beyond the reach of our senses. While science can never validate vitalism, it could disprove it if there is ever a physical explanation for the emergence of life from matter.

A hundred and sixty years ago, Thomas Huxley suggested that using vitalism to explain the origin of life is like saying the properties of water are due to its aquiosity. Inventing a new concept is not an explanation. As the chemical and physical nature of more and more vital phenomena have been demonstrated, vitalism has fallen out of favour and has not appeared in biology text books since the 1930s. The boundaries between science and religion are renegotiated whenever a physical explanation emerges for a phenomena that previously relied on a religious one.

Earlier attempts to draw parallels between science and Taoism have not fared well. In 1975 Austrian physicist Fritjof Capra published ‘The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism’. The book sold over a million copies, was translated into 23 languages and helped to kick start the New Age non-fiction genre, but its timing was unfortunate.

At a meeting at Stanford University the month before ‘The Tao of Physics’ was completed, evidence emerged that overthrew the bootstrap theory – the basis of Capra’s book – in favour of the standard-model quantum field theory, following discoveries by Burton Richter and Samuel Ting, who were awarded the Nobel Prize the following year.

It was the standard model, based on the notion that the universe is composed of material particles and nothing more, that predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, which was first observed in 2012. In the view of physicist Peter Woit “The bootstrap philosophy, despite its complete failure as a physical theory, lives on as part of an embarrassing New Age cult, with its followers refusing to acknowledge what has happened.” (p.144)

For those inclined towards vitalism, this book offers the illusion of 500 pages of closely argued evidence supported by over 800 citations. But if you remain curious about life and the evolution of consciousness, Daniel Dennett’s ‘From Bacteria to Bach and Back’ is a useful antidote.

Traditional wisdom, religion and spirituality don’t need support from science. They are different ways of interpreting the world, existing on their own terms to be experienced on their own terms. Its where they overlap that things can get messy. 

“The Web of Meaning: integrating science and traditional wisdom to find our place in the universe”, by Jeremy Lent, was published in 2022 by Profile Books (ISBN 978 1 78816 565 5).

The 10-step guide to sense-checking conspiracy theory claims (take note, Toby Young)

Brian Eggo
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The 10-step guide to sense-checking conspiracy theory claims (take note, Toby Young)

It’s not easy not knowing much. The more aware of how much you don’t know the more difficult things become as well. This renders decision making difficult, especially when it comes to matters of health. Life can be scary, and there are many pitfalls out there to prevent you from clinging on to it.

I’m not a medical doctor, or any kind of doctor for that matter. I’m not an epidemiologist (and had to rely on spellcheck when typing the term), or a statistician. I do have a degree, but it’s in Engineering, which occasionally looks good on paper, but rarely provides me with ammunition when health interventions are to be considered.

To pile misery on the shortcomings above, there’s an endless barrage of conflicting information spraying in all our directions from a multitude of algorithm-driven sources, and of course from humans of varying levels of intelligence and expertise, and equally varying motives.

So, in the midst of all of this, how do you make a judgment call when something particularly shocking and emotive comes in your direction?

It’s generally a lower-risk bet to follow the crowd and trust the experts: If your toilet is blocked then 99.9% of plumbers will recommend you get the plunger out, and perhaps adjust the amount of fibre in your diet. You might however come across a maverick plumber who loudly proclaims that blocked toilets are due to government-sponsored monitoring devices and your first priority should be getting a faraday cage around your pipework (which he can provide for a very reasonable fee). He’s also got a YouTube video you should watch which explains that a small amount of effluent on your bathroom floor will help train your immune system in case you ever need to make a Shawshank Redemption style prison escape.

It’s not a slam-dunk though: Experts sometimes make mistakes, Governments sometimes lie, and conspiracies do happen. As such, there’s a balance to be found on when to take a look at claims that counter the mainstream narrative, and thankfully there are some common-sense steps to follow for those who are painfully aware of their lack of expertise.

Allow me to elaborate using a specific example: In what is becoming a depressingly common occurrence, I got into an argument online recently. In this case it was with someone who was trying to sell me a bogus cure for my wife’s cancer (more on that in a future article). Our back and forth took us, almost inevitably these days, towards the topic of Covid vaccinations. He said vaccination was a probable cause for my wife’s cancer, and went on to cite multiple sources of ‘evidence’ for the dangers of vaccination. The most striking of these was the allegedly sudden deaths of 32 Canadian Doctors since the rollout of the vaccination – as laid out in this article in the (somewhat frustratingly named) ‘Daily Sceptic’. The article is primarily there to give a platform to an alarming letter sent by Dr William Makis to the Canadian Medical Association demanding an investigation into those deaths, with the assertion that vaccines are somehow to blame.

So, with my lack of expertise hovering ominously above my head, a structured, common-sense approach is always merited. Here’s how I broke things down on this article – an approach which should serve you reasonably well in similar situations.

1: Evaluate the reliability of the source

The Daily Sceptic is a vehicle of Toby Young, a renowned fomenter of climate change denial who appears to be applying similar levels of rigour to the subject of our most recent global pandemic. Initially starting its life as the Lockdown Sceptics newsletter, it expanded to a full website, and has since come under criticism multiple times for inaccurate information about COVID-19, and the vaccination program. A notable example was their factually inaccurate attempt to blame a rise in teen deaths on the vaccine.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the article is inherently untrue, but your skeptical senses should be tingling at least.

2: Check for other sources

At this point it is wise to see if there are other sources covering the same story. Sadly, this is often futile as many news sources use the same copy. If you get lucky though you might find a more detailed article which allows you to go deeper into the rabbit hole. Also, if you get a similar narrative on both sides of any political or ideological divide then it may point more towards an accurate piece of reporting, although it could just be consistently lazy journalism.

In the case of the 32 Doctors article there’s not much else out there, other than obscure sites parroting the same or similar claims. It certainly hasn’t been picked up by any more prominent news sources. Of course, conspiracy theorists would blame this on the ‘mainstream media’ being under the control of shadowy forces who are suppressing the ‘real news’. Those accusations viewed rationally should not hold water though, particularly if you consider some of the very prominent news sources who have been shown to spread Covid misinformation (examples from Fox News and GB News spring to mind).

The lack of traction for this story, even from outlets sympathetic to its narrative, should be seen as suspicious at least.

3: Look for ground zero

The 32 Doctors article is primarily based on the claims of (alive) Doctor William Makis, who currently seems to be splitting his spare time between conspiratorial vaccine misinformation and conspiratorial accusations against his former employer for what appears to be a form of constructive dismissal. He may well have an axe to grind with the ‘mainstream’ medical system, but he’s certainly not alone when it comes to blaming any tragic situation on vaccination – look no further the recent collapse of (American) Football player Damar Hamlin being trumpeted by predatory anti-vaxxers for evidence.

So, here we have some mixed signals: A (possibly former) medical professional is attempting to raise a red flag. In general you should take things seriously if someone with relevant expertise is voicing concerns, but there appear to be problematic aspects to his status as a health professional, and his claims are not gaining any traction with his peers. It’s also clear from looking at the article that Makis has been trawling through the social media posts of the deceased and their families to try and prop up his arguments. Some may consider this a valid form of investigative work, particularly if it blows the lid off some massive conspiracy, but it’s considerably more likely that he’s ghoulishly muck-raking to try and prop-up a flimsy argument. Considering the accusations in question are strikingly similar to standard anti-vaxxer rhetoric, your skeptical senses should be going into overdrive by now.

4: Examine motives

It’s quite common amongst the anti-vaxxer community to assign motives to individuals and organisations who are pro-vaccine. Usually the accusations are financial (‘Big pharma’), but occasionally this escalates to population control and eugenics. While it is appropriate to turn the tables when examining this article, it is important to remain objective when doing so.

Clearly the Daily Sceptic has a history of science denial, and Makis has an axe to grind with the medical establishment, but there’s no obvious indication of any direct financial incentives. It’s probably fair to assume ideological motives, but this alone is not grounds for dismissal, so further investigation is merited.

5: Evaluate claims individually

Breaking things down can make things a little more digestible, and help separate fact from fiction (or at least conjecture):

Do we have 32 dead doctors? Probably, yes. At least, there’s no specific reason to disbelieve this. A quick check on a few of the names certainly offers up obituaries, tributes etc.

Were they all vaccinated? Unknown, but likely. We don’t have access to health records of course, but it’s a reasonable assumption for health professionals to follow vaccination guidelines.

Have they all received booster shots? Unknown but likely. Further to the above, we can make a reasonable assumption that as health professionals they would have been on the appropriate schedule.

Were all these doctors ‘previously healthy’? Unknown, and almost certainly untrue. Some of the doctors in question tragically died from cancer, which makes a mockery of this claim. Makis does however make a subsequent claim that those doctors ‘developed sudden onset aggressive cancers’. There’s no possible way for him to know this, and it is speculation at best. In addition, it doesn’t take a medical doctor to know that many cancers that appear to be sudden and aggressive merely seem that way because of a late diagnosis. Either way, without direct access to medical records or close relationship with the deceased there’s almost no likelihood of this being accurate. Of course, no corroborating evidence is provided.

Were all the doctors young? Well, that depends very much on your definition of young. Five of them were 60 or over, half of them were 50 or over, the average age was at least 48 (precise age was not given for some, so this is based on lower estimate). As a man who’s on the cusp of turning 50, I’d be heartened to hear my age bracket being described as ‘young’, but realistically it seems like Makis is stretching credulity here once again.

So, with a mix of truths, half-truths, speculation, and downright inaccuracy, the next logical step is to look at the bigger picture.

6: Contextualise the claims

The central premise of the article is that so many deaths in such a short period of time points towards a single unifying cause. Taking a step back and looking at some relevant numbers helps put a more realistic perspective on the claims though:

The article fails to mention the total number of doctors in Canada. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information there were 93,998 physicians in 2021. If you compare this to the mortality rates by age group data from Statistics Canada then you would expect a death toll amongst the physician population to be significantly higher than 32.

If we were to draw the same type of knee-jerk conclusions as Makis, then we would be proudly proclaiming that the Covid vaccination appears to give you some kind of death-cheating super powers (this is over and above the actual Covid death-cheating powers that we already know you get from it of course). More realistically though, what this almost certainly shows us is that the 32 doctor deaths that Makis has harvested from the internet is an incomplete data set. Chances are that way more than 32 doctors died during that time period. Because, people die. It’s one of the only things we can be certain of.

Another gaping hole in the narrative is that, if we were as ghoulish as Makis, we could quite easily dig out a barrage of Canadian doctor deaths from before the rollout of the Covid vaccine. Advanced search capabilities in Google make such things easy. Without a doubt we could find similar causes of death at similar ages in years gone by. There’s no attempt made to even figure out if the 32 deaths mentioned in the article are in any way anomalous compared to previous (pre-pandemic) years. Chances are they are not.

7: Check for consistency

As covered above, we already know we have an incomplete dataset at the larger scale, but even the information we are provided is somewhat lacking. We have doctors with an age variation of over four decades, differences in gender, ethnicity, underlying health conditions, levels of fitness, diet, and so on. There’s no information about which vaccinations they received and when, and what boosters, so we can probably assume a significant amount of variation there. We don’t even have cause of death for all 32 of the doctors. Nine of them simply have “died unexpectedly” – which leaves a lot of options (let your imagination run wild).

It seems like the only things that these 32 unfortunate souls have in common is that they were doctors, and they’ve sadly passed away. To try and draw some kind of link to a single unifying cause of these tragic deaths just doesn’t seem in any way likely.

8: Look for questionable assertions

Aside from the direct thrust of what you’re analysing, you should look out for leading language, editorialising, and statements made as if they are already agreed facts when that is not the case. The article and letter contained in it have multiple examples of this, including: “the circumstances of the deaths are indeed consistent with vaccine injury”, “CMA has aggressively and unethically promoted the use of experimental COVID‐19 vaccines”, “illegal and unscientific COVID‐19 vaccine mandates”, “doctors who died suddenly and unexpectedly”, and “defective pharmaceutical products”.

The language in Makis’ letter is particularly inflammatory, which should be cause for concern. The writer for the Daily Sceptic frames the letter in a slightly more nuanced manner, which comes across as the ‘just asking questions’ approach. Neither of these approaches should fill you with confidence with regards to the accuracy of the article as a whole.

9: Do the plausibility ‘smell test’

Ok, so I deliberated over whether or not to put this further up in my list. If you’re short on time then this can be a useful time saver, but it could also lead you to wrongly dismissing something without appropriate investigation, or even cause you to be biased in your approach to the investigation.

Applied to this article though, the smell test does not produce a pleasant aroma. Of course, it’s plausible that any medical intervention could have adverse effects, but for a health intervention which has now been administered billions of times we would expect to have robust and consistent data. A tiny sample of health professionals from a specific country with varying ages, health conditions, and causes of death simply doesn’t point towards a potential problem with the health intervention in question.

10: Ask an expert (if you can)

Self-awareness is important. Having a reasonable idea of your intellectual limitations might prevent you from misinterpreting data, or from failing to consider additional factors which may not be immediately obvious. If you don’t know anyone personally then why not reach out to your friendly neighbourhood Skeptic. Even if we can’t comment on something personally, we’ve got good contacts who can.

To conclude, this article is unlikely to sway anyone who hasn’t already fallen into the web of anti-vaxxer beliefs and conspiracy theories, but it’s an excellent little training ground to help you hone your skeptical skills when something a little more refined and nuanced comes in your direction – which it inevitably will.

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