The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad


Peter Hotez vs Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Joe Rogan’s Show (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_574)

Topics
nomological networks of cumulative evidence
Hosted by
Gad Saad
Mentioned
Peter Hotez Joe Rogan Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Jay Batasheria Bill Ackerman B. Anti-Hotez Scott Atlas Trump

Episode Stats


Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi 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.
00:00:30.000 regarding, 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.
00:00:56.480 But 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
00:01:14.400 of charity of charity of your choosing if you come on my show and debate
00:01:21.380 RFK Jr. And then that number was upped by, I think he's a hedge fund guy, Bill Ackerman.
00:01:31.100 And 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.
00:01:49.720 I 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.
00:01:59.420 And 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.
00:02:18.480 And 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.
00:02:28.880 And 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.
00:02:44.200 So let's, let me step back here and offer some ways by which we can adjudicate these types of debates.
00:02:50.320 And 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.
00:03:07.280 And 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.
00:03:21.380 Uh, now who should hold the discussion is one thing that we can discuss.
00:03:25.680 What is the, what are the issues to be debated is fundamental to holding such a, uh, debate for it to be effective.
00:03:33.420 So 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.
00:03:47.000 Uh, did taking the vaccine reduce the likelihood of mortality?
00:03:53.020 Yes or no, show the evidence.
00:03:55.640 Did the vaccine cause an increase in certain heart conditions?
00:04:00.500 Yes or no, show the exact evidence.
00:04:03.900 Those are different from, uh, should people have body autonomy, even when it comes to a contagious disease or not.
00:04:11.960 Uh, and as I said, it doesn't help if you start then levying accusations that one camp is conspiratorial nut jobs.
00:04:20.180 The other camp are nothing but demonic, uh, pharma, big pharma shills and so on.
00:04:26.360 That's all I was saying.
00:04:27.440 But now let's talk about the specifics of how would you go about adjudicating such a, uh, issue in science.
00:04:35.080 I explained this in chapter seven of the parasitic mind when I talk about how to seek truth.
00:04:41.920 And 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.
00:04:54.640 Right?
00:04:55.000 So a literature review says, okay, you know, here is what's been done on the effects of drinking coffee on, uh, asthma symptoms.
00:05:08.020 And then you cite a whole bunch of papers.
00:05:10.180 Now, 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.
00:05:23.740 Does the consumption of, uh, uh, coffee affect the, the, the severity of symptoms of asthma?
00:05:31.140 Notice how it's a very, very tight and narrow question that is being debated.
00:05:37.300 So you can do a literature review.
00:05:40.260 Now, 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.
00:05:59.660 So 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.
00:06:08.980 Uh, 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.
00:06:33.400 And therefore, you might find that there are 73 such studies that meet your inclusion criterion.
00:06:41.360 And 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.
00:06:57.200 And in many cases, you might include papers that have not yet been published.
00:07:01.620 You're putting them into one mega soup.
00:07:04.500 Okay.
00:07:05.080 So that you now have a meta-analysis.
00:07:07.380 It's the quantifiable measure that says, so what's the bottom line?
00:07:12.520 Now you could have just done a count when you did the literature review.
00:07:15.840 You could have said, out of the 15 studies that I found, eight found that coffee consumption reduces, uh, asthma symptoms.
00:07:27.500 Three studies found no relationship and the rest of the studies found, uh, a negative relationship.
00:07:33.340 But that wouldn't capture the fact that some of the studies might have had a hugely different sample size, right?
00:07:39.720 The studies that found that there is a positive correlation between drinking coffee and, uh, asthma severity might have been much larger studies.
00:07:48.860 So 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.
00:07:59.280 So net result, there's a moderate effect of, that we can conclude so far from all the literature that drinking coffee reduces asthma symptoms.
00:08:13.900 So 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.
00:08:24.880 This 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.
00:08:35.580 It'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.
00:08:54.880 Uh, that would point to that phenomenon being veridical.
00:09:01.900 And so I demonstrated it, for example, for the evolutionary preference for the hourglass figure that men hold towards women's body types.
00:09:11.140 I described it when it came to the sex specificity of toy preferences.
00:09:14.900 I've described it in other contexts in a 2017, uh, paper that I published in one of the major, uh, journals in the field.
00:09:25.920 Uh, I describe it in the parasitic mind when I'm trying to answer, is Islam a religion of peace or not? 1.00
00:09:32.220 And 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?
00:09:44.040 So 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.
00:10:00.860 Uh, I think that might work better because then people won't say, oh, it's just a, a lay person versus, um, Hotez. 0.88
00:10:10.880 And it might, the, the, the structure of the debate might be that they start talking past each other.
00:10:17.340 But 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.
00:10:34.820 Because you don't have cross-cultural, well, I guess you do have cross-cultural data, but you may not have cross-temporal data.
00:10:41.900 You're certainly not sure if you have cross-species data.
00:10:44.520 In 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.
00:11:03.240 Don't mix moral, ethical, public policy issues with scientific issues.
00:11:08.420 So 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. 0.66
00:11:23.380 Anti-Hotez camp, show the opposing evidence, right?
00:11:28.020 If that's how that debate were conducted, I think that that would be wonderful.
00:11:34.880 Because number one, it would teach the public how to construct evidence-based arguments.
00:11:42.880 So that would be a really important epistemological tool.
00:11:46.180 And it would allow people to develop the critical thinking and emotional restraint that is required for such discussions, right?
00:11:56.040 So 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.
00:12:05.560 But it's just amazing.
00:12:06.860 I 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. 0.73
00:12:19.180 And 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.
00:12:35.000 I don't think people are debating that, right?
00:12:37.760 It'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.
00:12:50.980 Again, temperance, nuance, critical thinking.
00:12:56.040 So where do I stand on this?
00:12:59.240 Well, here's some epistemic humility.
00:13:00.960 I have not done the requisite analysis of the scientific literature to allow me to adjudicate this issue.
00:13:12.000 And by the way, I don't know what this issue is because it's not clear what it is that we are exactly debating.
00:13:19.600 People talk one past one another.
00:13:21.900 You know, should children have been forced to be masked?
00:13:25.720 That's a different issue, completely different from does the vaccine stop the spread from person to person?
00:13:35.080 So decide on the exact issues to be debated.
00:13:39.780 Decide on the exact standards of evidentiary threshold that you must reach in order to win the argument.
00:13:47.340 And let's have at it.
00:13:48.820 If Joe wants to host that debate, great.
00:13:51.840 I certainly have the ability to do so.
00:13:56.060 I'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.
00:14:11.360 So, 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.
00:14:19.120 That'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.
00:14:34.700 There is decorum, there is protocol, there is etiquette, there is evidentiary standards and science that we could all adhere to.
00:14:44.880 I understand that this is a, you know, very heated topic.
00:14:48.540 And people were writing to me, well, you didn't lose a grandfather to this evil demonic vaccine. 1.00
00:14:54.760 So F off, Gatsad, you're an asshole. 1.00
00:14:57.260 And then the other camp would propose a similar type of hatred for exact opposite position, which exactly speaks to my point. 1.00
00:15:07.540 I don't have a vested interest.
00:15:09.600 I 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?
00:15:19.260 I've had Scott Atlas on my show.
00:15:22.720 He's a guy who was heading the national task, COVID task force of President Trump.
00:15:29.360 I'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.
00:15:41.400 I've had Paul Offit, who's a very well-known virologist.
00:15:46.160 I've had all sorts of people, all of whom have, you know, what appear to be very interesting and sober positions.
00:15:52.820 In many cases, they disagree with each other.
00:15:54.720 So it serves no purpose to constantly be levying an all or nothing kind of accusation.
00:16:01.900 Peter Hotez is a spotless, unblemished science truth teller. 0.99
00:16:08.500 And if you say anything against him, you're an asshole who should be, you know, excised from the public square or the opposite. 1.00
00:16:16.560 Peter 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. 1.00
00:16:29.680 My feeling is, I don't know Hotez or any of these, many of the people on both sides.
00:16:37.820 And my feeling is that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
00:16:40.780 I 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.
00:16:54.780 I think we were wrong on many things.
00:16:56.360 And so they doubled down.
00:16:57.880 They start accusing anybody who has any questions of being science deniers and neo-fascists.
00:17:03.280 That kind of language then creates an opposite reaction from the other camp.
00:17:07.620 And here we go with the endless hurling of insults.
00:17:11.040 So 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.
00:17:22.520 And therefore, both camps can present only the scientific evidence in support of their positions.
00:17:30.160 And then let's see what happens.
00:17:33.240 Take care, everybody.
00:17:34.400 Cheers.