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@nyuniversity: an MCC tenured professor spent an entire class period telling students that wearing masks doesn’t prevent the spread of COVID-19, and that hydroxychloroquine trials were made to fail so more people would be given the vaccine and have their DNA changed. thread 1/
He followed up that class by sending us links to http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020/06/how-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative.html and https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/index.html#EfficacyHCQ as sources to back up his in-class arguments against masks and vaccines. I have forwarded the emails to the NYU bias hotline. 2/
The latter website links many far-right and conspiracy websites, such as The Charlie Kirk Show, Zero Hedge, Technocracy News, Medicine (Un)Censored, GreatGameIndia, WorldNetDaily, The Highwire w Del Bigtree, Global Research, Watts Up With That?, One News Now, and more. 3/
His own conspiracy website, News From Underground ( https://markcrispinmiller.com/ ), has articles such as “Growing research indicates many COVID-19 cases might not be infectious at all" and "On the parallels between 9/11 and the COVID-19 crisis." 4/
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It is not acceptable for NYU representatives to dismissively state that this professor is "entitled to his views," as per https://observer.com/2017/07/mark-crispin-miller-nyu-professor-conspiracy-theories/, when he is spouting dangerous rhetoric that serves to cultivate fear and confusion during a pandemic. 7/
I hope @nyuniversity, @nyusteinhardt, and @mccNYU agree that this professor should not be trusted with educating and advising students, and I hope they take immediate steps to relieve him of these duties. 8/
Update: The prof emailed us about a BMJ study that allegedly shows “the ineffectiveness (and health risks) of cloth masks,” but failed to link it. The only one I could find concluded that cloth masks aren’t as good as medical masks, which is undisputed. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/5/4/e006577.full.pdf 9/
He then refers to this video of Denis G. Rancourt, PhD and Dr. David Kyle Johnson as “instructive (though not exactly a debate).” I did not spend the time to watch even a minute of this, sorry. 10/
He concludes by linking two more videos of Johnson explaining his “summary of medical research” on the One America News Network, which is notorious for being even more conservatively biased than Fox News. Pt 1: Pt 2: 11/
I don't like publicly disclosing emails, but I'm really frustrated with this situation. I’m being told by an authority figure that I must acknowledge “both sides” of the “mask effectiveness debate” or I’m essentially allowing myself to be manipulated by the mainstream media. 12/
Funny thing is: I’m pretty distrustful of MSM because of their penchant for purposefully misleading people for clicks/views, dismissal of "boring" but important stories, lack of diverse perspectives, and the giant media conglomerates that control so much of US news. 13/
I look for a variety of (esp. primary) sources before coming to a conclusion about any narrative, and it seems to me that the effectiveness of masks is corroborated by many news + academic sources; whereas, mask ineffectiveness is only touted on fringe right-wing outlets. 14/
tbh even if somehow masks were later found to be ineffective, I would rather wear a mask and it not have done anything to help, than not wear a mask and risk hurting other people. I hope everyone feels this way, too, because like it or not, we're in this together. 15/
tldr; this professor is continuing to use his position of power to accredit disreputable “news” outlets and propagate an unhealthy amount of skepticism around medical professionals. Again, these actions are harmful and NYU should put a stop to it. 16/
