Another day, another round of totally batshit crazy nonsense promoted by Substack as top reads in the “Science” category! (This should not be surprising by now, after all, it is a day that ends in “Y”). Briefly:

Post #1: This is a long, meandering post where the author describes upcoming serialization of a “non-fiction” novel about UFOs and consciousness after death

Post #2: This post opens up with a quote by good ole doc Vinay suggesting maybe we shouldn’t have any FDA at all, because that would lower medical device prices. They make this argument based on a handful of devices the FDA approved on potentially shaky grounds

Post #3: A rambling conspiracy theory about mouse virus research that at one point states:

“Pandemics do not exist in nature. Epidemics, if they do occur are local and self-extinguishing, because that’s how nature works. The evil psychopaths cannot really make pandemics happen. They can only scare you into believing these are possible in order to gain control over you and establish their cherished dream - a global totalitarian biosecurity state.”

Post #4: A truly bizarre post of poor-quality microscope images and videos of random debris contaminating their own urine samples. Browsing this publication shows many of their other posts making similar dubious claims about the impact of vaccines and other supplements on blood viscosity, as well as promoting the pseudoscience belief in Morgellon’s Disease, a suspected psychiatric condition where people suffering from skin rashes believe unknown fibers are growing throughout their body (considered by most similar to delusional parasitism).

It is galling to see this kind of BS actively promoted daily when I know a ton of talented physician writers producing interesting and informative health and science content struggle to break through a few hundred subscribers.

Several of these posts are from quite small accounts without a best-seller badge, so it would be great if Hamish McKenzie Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi explained how their promotion algorithms work and/or why they choose to highlight specific pieces and publications. I can almost understand when one of the top accounts by # of free and paid subscribers is automatically promoted, but it seems incomprehensible to promote conspiracy theories and pseudoscience that people by and large aren’t even reading!!!

However, given the recent Substack Nazi fracas kicked off by Jonathan M. Katz, my suspicion is Substack management will continue to ignore this issue as well…