On Father's Day, Scott Saad responds to Joe Rogan's suggestion that he debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his show, and offers his perspective on the controversial issue of whether or not vaccines should be used to prevent heart disease.
00:00:00.000Hi everybody, this is Scott Saad. I had not planned on doing a Saad Truth clip today because it is Father's Day on a Sunday, but last night, as some of you may have witnessed, Twitter was burning with exchanges as relating to the recent conversation that Joe Rogan had with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:00:30.000regarding, you know, the vaccines, the COVID vaccines and so on. I haven't watched the clip or the chat, so I can't speak to its content. And then apparently Peter Hotez, who's a virus scientist, I think he's a virologist or maybe a vaccinologist. I'm not sure exactly what his official designation is.
00:00:56.480But he's also been on Joe Rogan and he had been stating things like, oh, you know, these neo-fascists engaging in this anti-science and so on. And so Joe got upset and said, hey, I will offer, I think the original offer was $100,000
00:01:14.400of charity of charity of your choosing if you come on my show and debate
00:01:21.380RFK Jr. And then that number was upped by, I think he's a hedge fund guy, Bill Ackerman.
00:01:31.100And I can't confirm this, but I think I heard that last time it was up to $1.5 million. And I tried to weigh in in a small way on a Saturday evening. And what I quickly found out is that both sides of the issue will get very angry at you if you don't fully agree with them.
00:01:49.720I was just calling for some temperance. I was arguing that, you know, it might well be that maybe Peter Hotez is wrong on some things and he maybe he didn't exhibit epistemic humility.
00:01:59.420And that might be true without him being, you know, a demonic big pharma shill and so on. And no, it was either I'm a monster for arguing that, you know, we should show temperance one way or the other.
00:02:18.480And both camps agreed that the other camp is demonic and there is no other possible reality of the world, which exactly speaks to my point.
00:02:28.880And believe me, it's not that I'm, you know, the, oh, let's all get along, kumbaya, love conquers all. It's that when it comes to complex issues, it usually requires sober minds. It requires evidence-based thinking.
00:02:44.200So let's, let me step back here and offer some ways by which we can adjudicate these types of debates.
00:02:50.320And of course, there's nothing wrong with going on a show to debate these issues, especially, you know, as I mentioned on Twitter, a show like Joe Rogan's in terms of its reach is truly a gigantic public platform.
00:03:07.280And given that this issue is one that is of such, you know, clear public policy implications, I think, you know, the public at large would, would benefit greatly from such a discussion.
00:03:21.380Uh, now who should hold the discussion is one thing that we can discuss.
00:03:25.680What is the, what are the issues to be debated is fundamental to holding such a, uh, debate for it to be effective.
00:03:33.420So if you start mixing, for example, moral issues, ethical issues, public policy issues, those might be very, very different than the, a specific, narrow scientific question.
00:03:47.000Uh, did taking the vaccine reduce the likelihood of mortality?
00:04:27.440But now let's talk about the specifics of how would you go about adjudicating such a, uh, issue in science.
00:04:35.080I explained this in chapter seven of the parasitic mind when I talk about how to seek truth.
00:04:41.920And I basically first explained that one of the ways that you try to get a sense of, uh, the state of a particular scientific literature stream is to do a literature review.
00:04:55.000So a literature review says, okay, you know, here is what's been done on the effects of drinking coffee on, uh, asthma symptoms.
00:05:08.020And then you cite a whole bunch of papers.
00:05:10.180Now, what that would do is allow someone reading your paper to get a, a snapshot picture of the totality of relevant studies that have been conducted on that very specific issue.
00:05:23.740Does the consumption of, uh, uh, coffee affect the, the, the severity of symptoms of asthma?
00:05:31.140Notice how it's a very, very tight and narrow question that is being debated.
00:05:40.260Now, over the past, uh, I would say three decades, we've been able to offer a greater sense of, uh, quantifiable rigor to literature reviews by doing what are called meta-analyses.
00:05:59.660So for those of you who don't know what a meta-analysis is, this is where you take a whole bunch of studies that should be included in your meta-analysis.
00:06:08.980Uh, so for example, you're, you're going to look at all studies conducted only on adults who, uh, do not suffer from a, uh, chronic disease, uh, and who, who were participants in a study on the effects of coffee consumption on asthma, uh, symptom severity.
00:06:33.400And therefore, you might find that there are 73 such studies that meet your inclusion criterion.
00:06:41.360And therefore, you bring them into the thing and you then conduct a statistical analysis on the totality of those studies, those 73 studies that were conducted by different, these are different papers that were published.
00:06:57.200And in many cases, you might include papers that have not yet been published.
00:07:01.620You're putting them into one mega soup.
00:07:07.380It's the quantifiable measure that says, so what's the bottom line?
00:07:12.520Now you could have just done a count when you did the literature review.
00:07:15.840You could have said, out of the 15 studies that I found, eight found that coffee consumption reduces, uh, asthma symptoms.
00:07:27.500Three studies found no relationship and the rest of the studies found, uh, a negative relationship.
00:07:33.340But that wouldn't capture the fact that some of the studies might have had a hugely different sample size, right?
00:07:39.720The studies that found that there is a positive correlation between drinking coffee and, uh, asthma severity might have been much larger studies.
00:07:48.860So what a meta-analysis does is it takes all of these factors into account, puts it all into one big statistical soup, and comes out with a bottom line number.
00:07:59.280So net result, there's a moderate effect of, that we can conclude so far from all the literature that drinking coffee reduces asthma symptoms.
00:08:13.900So if, so, and then the, the, the, the method that I was explaining in great detail in chapter seven of the parasitic mind is what I call nomological networks of cumulative evidence.
00:08:24.880This is when you are trying to demonstrate the veracity of a particular phenomenon and you do so, this is much bigger than a literature review.
00:08:35.580It's much bigger than a meta-analysis because it's basically saying, what is all the data that I can find from across cultures, from across time periods, from across species, from across methodologies, from across, uh, dependent measures collected.
00:08:54.880Uh, that would point to that phenomenon being veridical.
00:09:01.900And so I demonstrated it, for example, for the evolutionary preference for the hourglass figure that men hold towards women's body types.
00:09:11.140I described it when it came to the sex specificity of toy preferences.
00:09:14.900I've described it in other contexts in a 2017, uh, paper that I published in one of the major, uh, journals in the field.
00:09:25.920Uh, I describe it in the parasitic mind when I'm trying to answer, is Islam a religion of peace or not?
00:09:32.220And so what you're basically saying is, what would all the data need to be in order for me to convince even my staunchest detractors of the veracity of my position?
00:09:44.040So I think that Peter Hotez should go on a show like Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan's and whether RFK is there or whether another scientist who's on the opposing side of Peter Hotez is there.
00:10:00.860Uh, I think that might work better because then people won't say, oh, it's just a, a lay person versus, um, Hotez.
00:10:10.880And it might, the, the, the structure of the debate might be that they start talking past each other.
00:10:17.340But if you have a very, very tight question that you're trying to debate and the rules of evidence are very clear, okay, I'm not sure that you could develop a nomological network of cumulative evidence to, uh, adjudicate any of the issues relating to this COVID vaccine.
00:10:34.820Because you don't have cross-cultural, well, I guess you do have cross-cultural data, but you may not have cross-temporal data.
00:10:41.900You're certainly not sure if you have cross-species data.
00:10:44.520In any case, even if you didn't have the ability to build a nomological network of cumulative evidence to adjudicate between the pro-Hotez and anti-Hotez camps, you certainly can present all of the meta-analyses that have been done, again, on a specific issue.
00:11:03.240Don't mix moral, ethical, public policy issues with scientific issues.
00:11:08.420So that all that Joe would do is he would be serving as the person who says, okay, pro-Hotez camp, present your scientific evidence in support of A causes B.
00:11:23.380Anti-Hotez camp, show the opposing evidence, right?
00:11:28.020If that's how that debate were conducted, I think that that would be wonderful.
00:11:34.880Because number one, it would teach the public how to construct evidence-based arguments.
00:11:42.880So that would be a really important epistemological tool.
00:11:46.180And it would allow people to develop the critical thinking and emotional restraint that is required for such discussions, right?
00:11:56.040So that's all that I was, I mean, in today's clip here, I'm providing you with the background of what I was trying to say yesterday on Twitter.
00:12:06.860I had a guy who has been following me for a very long time unfollow me because the mere idea of me suggesting that Hotez should go on Joe Rogan really upset him because he's super pro-vaccine.
00:12:19.180And so his view is, you know, just like you don't like people to denigrate evolutionary psychology as a valid scientific framework, you should also not want people to be debating whether vaccines work or not.
00:12:35.000I don't think people are debating that, right?
00:12:37.760It's not that those who are arguing against some of the Hotez positions are saying that we are, we think that science is the work of the devil and we think that all vaccines are nonsense.
00:13:48.820If Joe wants to host that debate, great.
00:13:51.840I certainly have the ability to do so.
00:13:56.060I'm happy to also host it, not because I'm trying to infuse myself in this debate, but because I think it takes someone that has the scientific discipline to keep things on track.
00:14:11.360So, you know, I don't think it's right that people are now going to Peter Hotez's house as he's trying to leave and hounding him.
00:14:19.120That's exactly the same type of behavior as when you get upset because, you know, the progressive types are going after, you know, some conservative justice when, you know, he's leaving his home.
00:14:34.700There is decorum, there is protocol, there is etiquette, there is evidentiary standards and science that we could all adhere to.
00:14:44.880I understand that this is a, you know, very heated topic.
00:14:48.540And people were writing to me, well, you didn't lose a grandfather to this evil demonic vaccine.
00:15:09.600I would love to see this debate because I've had people on my show and I have very good friends who are on both sides of this issue and they're experts, right?
00:15:22.720He's a guy who was heading the national task, COVID task force of President Trump.
00:15:29.360I've had Jay Batasheria, who's also from Stanford, who's an incredible academic, who, you know, did not agree with any of the policies of COVID.
00:15:41.400I've had Paul Offit, who's a very well-known virologist.
00:15:46.160I've had all sorts of people, all of whom have, you know, what appear to be very interesting and sober positions.
00:15:52.820In many cases, they disagree with each other.
00:15:54.720So it serves no purpose to constantly be levying an all or nothing kind of accusation.
00:16:01.900Peter Hotez is a spotless, unblemished science truth teller.
00:16:08.500And if you say anything against him, you're an asshole who should be, you know, excised from the public square or the opposite.
00:16:16.560Peter Hotez is a demonic, big pharma shill who only cares about lining his fat pockets and he's willing to do anything and say anything.
00:16:29.680My feeling is, I don't know Hotez or any of these, many of the people on both sides.
00:16:37.820And my feeling is that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
00:16:40.780I think that the vanity of people and pride has not allowed many of the super pro COVID vaccine people to step back and say, you know, I think we oversold the bill of goods.
00:16:57.880They start accusing anybody who has any questions of being science deniers and neo-fascists.
00:17:03.280That kind of language then creates an opposite reaction from the other camp.
00:17:07.620And here we go with the endless hurling of insults.
00:17:11.040So again, to conclude, the right way to approach this is defined in a very, very structured manner what the exact questions that are being debated.
00:17:22.520And therefore, both camps can present only the scientific evidence in support of their positions.