In August 2023, the world chess federation FIDE seemed to have suddenly imposed a temporary ban on trans women’s participation in women’s tournaments. The uproar seemed overblown to me and based on careless reading of the regulation, but after a minor change in that regulation, I’m not sure what the intention was either. An attempt to sort some things out.
Category: Fact-checking
Chatting about conspiracy theories with an AI chatbot
Can a specially trained chatbot help dissuade people from believing in conspiracy theories? This intriguing question is explored in research published in Science, titled Durably Reducing Conspiracy Beliefs through Dialogues with AI. In the study, participants were asked to rate their belief in conspiracy theories on a scale of 0 to 100 before engaging in […]
Plagiarism in that terrible BMJ Public Health article by Mostert et al
Much has already been written in blogs, newspapers and on X about the article “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates from January 2020 to December 2022” that appeared in BMJ Public Health on 3 June. One aspect has been somewhat underexposed, namely that what is supposed to pass for ‘original research’ is for quite a bit rather silly plagiarism.
Mussolini’s UFO – Cabinet RS/33
In 1933, a UFO allegedly crashed in Italy which was covered up by the secret organisation RS/33. At the end of the war, the debris would have been seized by the Americans. Documents from the 1930s would be evidence, but their authenticity is questionable.
As for the possibility of open-heart surgery under hypnosis, we did what Mattias Desmet failed to do: call the expert
It is impossible to use hypnosedation during a sternotomy because it precludes spontaneous breathing. Performing an open-heart operation under hypnosis alone is therefore also impossible.
Mattias Desmet’s excuse for his slip of the tongue in the Alex Jones interview proven to be false
Some confusion about the date of an interview Desmet gave led to accusations of deliberate manipulation on my part. Upon ascertaining the actual recording date, however, it appears that Mattias Desmet gave a false excuse for his statements in his interview with Alex Jones that led to uproar in the media.
Very impressive: medium accurately predicts competitor’s predictions!
Dutch medium Robbert van den Broeke appears to borrow some of his predictions for 2023 from an English colleague.
Prof Mattias Desmet claims to have witnessed open-heart surgery performed under hypnosis without any anaesthesia
Prof Mattias Desmet claims to have seen with his own eyes open-heart surgery in Belgian university hospitals, performed under hypnosis without any anaesthesia. For once we have to agree with Alex Jones: “Unbelievable!”
Bayes Lines Tool is just another flawed attempt by the consortium to discredit PCR tests
The ‘consortium’ that’s attacking the Corman-Drosten PCR-test has published an mathematically flawed article on which they base the claim that number of false positives is huge in PCR tests for the coronavirus.
Some considerations on the retraction paper for the Corman-Drosten PCR test
A number of self-proclaimed PCR experts are attempting to have the first scientific article describing a PCR test for the coronavirus withdrawn. A look at their arguments and at their background.