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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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and that masks are entirely ineffective in preventing the transmission of COVID-19?

Well he's got some scientific backing there - one meta-analysis found no effect for masks in any setting: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full

The report has low confidence and gives the standard 'more research needed' yet one can imagine that all the external pressure the writers would face is on the pro-mask side.

Most drug research has been corrupted by bad incentives and cannot be trusted?

Between the replication crisis and Scott's many stories of perverse incentives in drug research and production, is this unreasonable? What about the opiate crisis?

Big Pharma gives twice as much as the next biggest industry to congress in lobbying efforts?

Well, that might be true depending on how you define Big Pharma and industry: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders

If you decide that the Chamber of Commerce and Retailers aren't an industry and throw in a few of the other medicine-related lobbyists, you could make that figure work. Going purely by sectors ranked, 'Health' is highest, even above finance/real estate/insurance.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/ranked-sectors

Kennedy might have an ideology that leads to many incorrect conclusions but there are also true elements in it, or things that are sort of true.