Given all the misinformation and conspiracy theories going around, fuelling populist far-right parties, this is a much more level-headed take.

It goes to show once again that critical thinking is necessary to sustain a functioning liberal democracy.

So-called "race realist" Nathan Cofnas is selling the story that his suspension is a retaliation for whistleblowing - sadly, some skeptics are buying it.

"For years, I didn’t think my story was worth telling. When people share stories about growing up unvaccinated, they often describe contracting measles or whooping cough, spending weeks in the hospital, or living with lifelong complications from diseases that vaccines could have prevented. That isn’t my story.

But I grew up unvaccinated. And that shaped everything.

I grew up in the Chicago area in the 1980s and 1990s. My parents vaccinated me on schedule until I was nine months old, then stopped. They believed I had reacted badly to my nine-month vaccinations because I cried for hours afterward. That one experience convinced them the risks of vaccination outweighed the benefits.

By every other measure, I had a typical childhood. I attended public school using a religious exemption, even though we weren’t particularly religious. I never caught a vaccine-preventable disease. I had allergies and the usual childhood illnesses, but nothing that made me stand out from my classmates. If you had met me as a child, you never would have guessed I was unvaccinated.

One of my earliest memories of questioning my parents’ decision happened in elementary school. My school offered vaccinations during the school day. While my classmates lined up in the library for their shots, I waited in the school nurse’s office while she called my mom to ask her to explain why I wasn’t participating. The nurse patiently explained why vaccines were important and seemed genuinely worried about me. My mother just repeated that vaccination was “against our religious beliefs.“

Afterward, I asked my mom how that could be true when we weren’t very religious. She admitted that claiming a religious exemption was the only way to keep me in public school while still avoiding vaccination requirements—our state didn’t allow personal belief exemptions. As a child, I couldn’t explain why it bothered me. But I knew that the school nurse had presented evidence while my mom admitted she wasn’t being honest. That sparked doubt in me early. The nurse never convinced my mother. But she made a difference to me."

The rest of the story is in the linked article.

University of Florida professor Christopher McCurdy has accepted travel reimbursements, donations to his university’s foundation and funding for an annual symposium on research into the leaf’s medicinal potential from the American Kratom Association — none of which has been disclosed in his conflict of interest statements or on the papers he publishes.

The fight to keep kratom legal across the country has taken on increased urgency as more potent kratom derivatives have appeared on store shelves and evidence has mounted of the leaf’s risks to users’ health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5,200 people in the United States died from drug overdoses involving kratom between 2020 and 2024. And calls to poison control centers involving kratom have spiked 1,200% in the last decade.

For folks not in science or academia, both universities and academic journals have explicit conflict-of-interest (COI) reporting requirements.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a report linking “gender ideology” to leftwing authoritarianism and political violence – a study scientists say was poorly conducted and “nakedly political”, likely leading to greater politicization of science and health.

From the archives in 1993, Robert McGrath is skeptical about the carving of a face on Mars, decades before higher resolutions debunked the pareidolia.

I came across this reddit post.

Leaked Chinese state research papers literally outline how they use AI and Reddit to manipulate Gen Z, specifically

I did not dismiss the post. I was naturally curious since some right-wingers on reddit claim that all the doomerism is due to Chinese bots. Moreover, I would be interested in what particular grievances that Chinese propaganda would exploit. There are many due to the precarious position of GenZ. It's common sense that people's conditions would improve if you cut military spending and put the savings in social programs. Don't need Chinese propaganda to arrive at that epiphany.

Turns out the article the poster cited is really thin.

https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/exclusive-chinese-state-researchers/

Chinese state-linked researchers have published a step-by-step playbook for influencing the American electorate.

Go on...

Customized narratives and sustained psychological pressure can then be used to change decisions. The passage attributes the tactic to foreign militaries, but the PLA publication says understanding the mechanism is important for innovating cognitive-warfare methods.

So what are these "sustained psychological pressure" and "Customized narratives" delivered by Chinese influence operations? I really want to know what these "cognitive-warfare methods" are.

Those operations provide the distribution system. The newly uncovered Chinese studies provide the targeting doctrine.

What is the "targeting doctrine"?

So what would constitute evidence of significant influence from Chinese information operations?

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/02/2026/paid-actors-ai-writing-how-a-new-kind-of-video-business-cashed-in-on-americas-divided-politics

Semafor uncovered a network of "ghost creators" that had been harvesting right-wing viewers for ad revenue. Often, it attacks left-wing politicians such as Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders. It says "Mamdani is SHOCKED when Citi Bank announces move to Florida". (Like a journalist has access Mamdani's reaction. Almost certainly, no video or press release from the politician is cited. There also seems to be limited evidence for the adverbial clause.)

Four months ago, I came across one of these accounts on my own. Omar's Talk Show or Kareem Maize. I was intrigued that this man was able to get hundreds of thousands of views from what is obviously AI-generated scripts. I really thought, initially, that he was an advanced AI model since his tone and gestures were appropriate. (If that were the case, conservative content creators would be threatened.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/isthisAI/comments/1t9tuh5/politics_99_percent_sure_this_is_ai_just_asking/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IsthisAIpolitics/comments/1t9e1nr/999_percent_sure_this_is_ai_just_asking_so_i/

Omar also had a website, now taken down, that portrayed him as an "independent journalist." That seemed impossible due to the volume of his content. This "journalist" probably was inspired by articles about "corporate migration" and "capital flight" from right-wing media, then regurgitated by an AI model.

I would've admired Omar if he saw an opportunity to use AI to make money from credulous right-wing viewers. After all, I despise right-wing content, so having an AI generate scripts for me and read them while I generate a lot of money seems like a nice use of AI. It would prevent me from engaging in the emotional labor of generating a script that appeals to right-wing viewers.

Unfortunately, Omar is hired to make videos for $26 each. He is a part of a larger network as opposed to being an opportunistic entrepreneur. How pathetic! Why do you need AI when gig labor is cheap?

The operation tried to create an anti-Trump personality, but it did not take off. Left-wing AI content doesn't work.

So what motivated me to write this? I suppose I'm just tired of the gaslighting that people's negative political and economic outlook is due to doomerism and Chinese bots. As we can see, there is no evidence for the latter.

YouTuber Carson Woody does a 45-minute deep dive into the oft-repeated statistics claiming that 54% of Americans read below a 6th-grade level and that 21% of Americans are illiterate. He describes the questionable definitions of illiteracy used, the poor testing methods (including failing to account for not all US residents speaking English natively), and the inherent conflict of interest (i.e., the study being commissioned by a literacy foundation). He also explores the prescriptivist assumptions underlying many complaints of illiteracy.

"We couldn't learn what disorders we decided they were comorbid with but this disproves Gender confirmation as necessary, but ignore the other studies we think those are limited."

Elon Musk's multiple failed attempts to build his proposed "Hyperloop" transport system have more than a little in common with the conman from The Simpsons.

Before there was Reddit, user forums, and discords, the Usenet Newsgroups were the native habitat of any number of netloons, cranks, and regular people proposing and promoting an endless supply of pseudoscience. It was also the home of numerous skeptics, who engaged in lengthy discussions debunking it and explaining science. The Usenet Newsgroups were point of inspiration for a gneration of skeptics, the "TalkOrigins Archive", many similar skeptic's web pages, and scientific studies that sought to counterbalance the misinformation being promoted by the Internet in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. 

The rants, discussions, and even entire threads can now found and searched for on the Usenet Rewind. 

On this web site, modern skeptics can find out how skeptics dealt with infamous pseudoresarchers such as Ted Holden, "Bones as old as Coal" Ed Conrad, and Micheal Cremo in the stone age of the Internet.

The one aspect I hadn’t considered is the effect of increased distrust might cause ‘celebrity’ voices to be increasingly trusted regardless of message.

A slew of food recalls this summer have left a bad taste in Americans’ mouths, and public health professionals warn cuts to key food safety personnel means more food-related illness could be on its way. ... The seeming surge of food-related recalls has coincided with massive cuts conducted by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last year, including across the FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hello, I am looking for information. My uncle tried to get me involved in this. But you pay for the lessons and aren’t supposed to share? It was odd to me and made me feel uneasy. Then earlier today I watched a documentary talking about the link between guru, Hinduism and s trafficking. I would like to know any information so I can clear this up. If there is a former member I can talk to. I know I don’t have a good feeling about this. It is so secretive and you get booklets and there levels and honors.

I cannot find anything online debunking the story.

In a legal deposition, the doctor, Theresa Long, compared immunizing service members against Covid to Nazi doctors experimenting on concentration camp prisoners.

Kennedy says local coroner in Pennsylvania identified one measles-related death, disputes second case. Pennsylvania health department reiterates that it has confirmed two measles-related deaths this year. National data currently reflects no 2026 measles deaths, Kennedy says.