It’s funny that rolling stone has the gall to publish this
In 2005 they published his article “deadly immunity” along with salon.com. It was filled with factual errors but it helped popularize the anti vaccine movement.
Salon eventually listened to fact checkers who were vocal about the fact that the article was absolute nonsense and misinformation. They admitted fault and that they should have done more due diligence. Even that was a fucking joke - a year after the article they listed numerous corrections showing the article was horrendously researched by an absolute fool with no peer review whatsoever. And while salon did eventually retract the article and distance themselves from the article it took six fucking years for them to do so despite glaring errors
Rolling stone on the other hand left the article printed for a decade and a half, at least. While the article above suggests they both retracted it that was clearly not the case:
heres a snapshot from 2020, when it still existed on their site
Note the byline: they moved to preserve the article, it actually had been broken in a site facelift. They made effort to ensure the article was not retracted
Rolling stone is a key factor in the anti vaccination movement and why Kennedy has a platform
Rfk was one of a dozen people responsible for 65% of antivax content on instagram
Fuck rfk and fuck rolling stone. Have journalistic integrity and do the bare minimum of fact checking. Fuck this “we always have to present both sides to be fair” bullshit. You don’t have to do that when one is objectively wrong
The weird thing is for some reason people will lie to perpetuate these falsehoods
Like I do therapy and I talk to teenagers regularly because teenagers need mental health support, obviously. And sometimes they’ll bring up shit like this: “my school installed a litter box because of these woke kids”
But even the most basic of prodding: “did they really” with a tone of like “come on” and they’ll backpedal, “well no, but like there are kids that have fursonas and shit”
It’s crazy to see it start so young. They’re realizing at like 16 they can get adults to gang up on the kid they think is weird by being dishonest, and adults buy into it because it’s a chance to bully someone weaker and politicians jump on it because it’s a new wedge issue to distract people from class consciousness
And what’s crazy is that by some perspectives if I call them out on this dishonesty and point out this cycle I’m indoctrinating them