Epidemiologist Claims MAGA Is An Epidemic Caused By "Brain Flaws." Only Problem Is, That's Completely Unscientific and Based On Almost Nothing.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 465. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I'm joined by a guest today, Jenessa. You're here right at the beginning. We're cutting straight to the chase. How are you doing today?

0:00:22 Jenessa: Pretty good. How about you?

0:00:23 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, we're back to that fucking in Trump-adjusted terms thing.

0:00:29 Jenessa: Yes. It's a relative question For the next four years.

0:00:32 Thomas: And even then, it's still meh. It's still fine.

0:00:38 Thomas: No, doing well. Happy to be talking to you. We're going to talk about my named epidemiologist, Dr. Gary Slutkin. I can't help it. Sorry, that's funny. It's an objectively great name. I hope, you know how they often say that people get into fields related to their names. I hope that his nightlife is active. But anyway, yeah, is MAGA an epidemic or We're going to talk about that. Of course, we have to take our usual break. So is there anything you want to tease out of that?

0:01:08 Jenessa: I mean, like, spoiler alert. No.

0:01:13 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, it's not usually — a teaser is not usually the whole thing, but that's fine. I think in this case, it is pretty. It's a sled. Anyway. No, it's fine. As much. No. There's no spoiler. As I — As I love to do with this show and in my own life is just make checking biases. And I feel like this is such an easy thing that people would want to say on our side. And I think it's important to keep the science in mind. And so we're going to talk about this, this Slutkin, this real Slutkin and whether or not MAGA is an epidemic after the usual break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/seriouspod. So please do so. Support the show. Lose the ads. And we'll see you on the other side. Alright. So tell us about this Slutkin. How's

0:01:23 Jenessa: Yeah, you can cut the spoiler. Yes. Know we have this larger article around it but there's one paragraph I segmented out that I think is the concerning thing we wanted to talk about. So yeah if you if you want to read through that.

0:02:07 Thomas: I might read more. Had So the whole thing up, but I do, I mean, should give this its due. This is a Salon article by Chauncey DeVega. I'm not familiar with that person, but hey, hey, other than this thing we're going to talk about, proved to be pretty dead on just in terms of predicting that Trump was going to win. This was October 15th, and think [non-English speech], which is like, I don't really think you can call that a prediction exactly. I think this person, I think the — has aged pretty well, But we are going to talk about, this is someone talked to, this author talked to several experts. One of them is Katherine Stewart, by the way. Someone I think I had on the show. Yeah, the author of The Power of Worshippers.

0:02:47 Jenessa: Is she the first person they talk about in the beginning?

0:02:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:51 Jenessa: Yeah, I found her part really interesting.

0:02:53 Thomas: Yeah, she's great. But we're going to talking about Dr. Gary Slutkin. Okay. Dr. Gary Slutkin is a distinguished epidemiologist formerly with the World he founded the Intervention Unit, which designed innovations in epidemic control. Well, nice, nice job. I don't know. But this is interesting. Dr. Slutkin is credited with discovering the scientific basis for diagnosing and managing violence as a contagious disease and is the founder of Cure Violence Global, rated as the number nine NGO in the world and as the number one NGO for reducing violence. It's interesting. And that person says, a physician who works on epidemics in the US and abroad. From this, I have 15 years of experience living in dictatorships. In these countries, you can't speak or act freely, and you don't want to live there. There are always threats. Life is fear. People fear the government, their neighbors, and even their family and friends. Businesses and the press can be taken away. People become imprisoned or disappear. So just giving us a taste of the next four years. I is the most important thing in the world right now. Yeah. And I can see that we're not doing enough to prevent a disaster. So, so far, dead

0:04:04 Thomas: On, Dr. Slutkin.

0:04:06 Jenessa: Sounds about right.

0:04:06 Thomas: It's pretty good. Trump becoming president would be like a severely lethal hurricane raging across the whole country continuously. With J.D. Vance around as a possible successor to Trump, this feels more ominous. I dread the mischief every day. That's a light word for it. I feel like mischief doesn't quite cover it, but that's okay. Including expectations that some red states will refuse to certify the election, blah, blah. It turned out we avoided all that. Yay, joy, by just having Trump overwhelmingly win. So we didn't have any of that. Events so far have played out as I expected. The amount of ruthlessness, organization, and preparation of the MAGA movement and the alarming level of experience they have around them in propaganda, coups, and work with foreign governments is a grave threat. I've been following it closely and I understand it in authoritarian movements are built and of disease. However, I do have hope that Vice President Harris will win the election thanks to the votes of especially young people, women, men. Okay. Well, honestly, this Dr.

0:05:02 Thomas: Slutkin called it pretty hard and that sentence, obligatory sentence of hope that turned out to not be true. Now we get to the stuff where I think we're going to kind of ways of part with Dr. Slutkin here. Here. Understand MAGA as an epidemic disease inflicting many through what I call, quote, brain flaws. It is not their fault. There are brain pathways for copying and following others in the cortex, dopamine system, and pain centers to motivate conformity and violence. This is a movement of violence. Violence is a disease, and specifically a contagious disease. The disease spreads through these brain processes. The MAGA movement is a dangerous and lethal syndrome of what I describe as, quote, authoritarian violence disorder. Donald Trump is a massive super spreader. The contagion and the moral disengagement it causes provokes cruelty and obedience. This is accelerated by the effects of constant lies. Streams of lies are not just lies to be fact checked, but an accelerant that impacts people's brains, causing moral disengagement, allowing people to abandon their own decision-making and obey. Yeah, so right away when someone says this is infecting many through what I call brain flaws, I'm like, what? That's not, doesn't sound super technical to me. And also, I don't really care about it being their fault or not, because in a broader sense, like the difference between this making it not their fault and just ordinary determinism making it not their fault is not

0:06:30 Thomas: Really interesting to me. But that aside, what's going on? Is sort of science?

0:06:35 Jenessa: No.

0:06:36 Thomas: No? Oh, wow. Who is this person then?

0:06:38 Jenessa: Not really. Yeah! Okay, so that's That's actually the first really interesting question to get into. I think in a way, this could be really helpful as kind of a twofer on, I can talk through the process of how I went through this. I think it's a process others could replicate, you know, next time you come across a claim that you're like, hmm, this sounds a little fishy. Did I go through this, not being an expert in precisely the social cognitive neuroscience of violence, but, you a cognitive neuroscientist, having some red flags go off, I had reason to go deeper. Hopefully I can give people a sense of like, what can you do if you don't want to spend a hundred hours researching, you know, all the little nuances to it. Um, so it's definitely helpful to hear you, you caught some of the same red flags I did, especially when he says, I call it quote brain flaws. I'm like, you're not even telling me that's like not, no, that's the jargon I use. And I'mlike, Oh, that's no, that'S all, insensitive. But second Second of all, no, I can't as a person who worked in neuroscience for like 15 years, I can't figure out what you could mean.

0:07:41 Thomas: Is that the preferred nomenclature? Flaws. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:58 Jenessa: Doesn't mean like brain damage. So what is this about? So that's usually my starting point is exactly what you were saying is if I'm looking at a thing and I'm confused, who is it? But because if it was somebody who, yeah, this is a person who is a social cognitive neuroscientist, like, first of all, step one, identify what the claim is. Like, what field is this? Because I think the temptation, Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist, worked for the World Health Organization.

0:08:15 Thomas: Who dealt it. No, I'm sorry. Yeah.

0:08:37 Jenessa: He's talking about this as a contagious disease. Disease, if your temptation is to go, this is an epidemiological question, as far as I can tell, he's qualified to talk about epidemiology, extremely qualified. Identifying that that's not what this question is. This is cognitive neuroscience. This ist about, first, how the brain behaves, the just that you have a brain, not just at your brain could have a problem, but that it could affect your behavior. So we're going to go past separating out, for example, a medical doctor could be a neurologist, somebody who studies diseases in the brain, like brain cancer, the effects of a stroke, maybe.

0:09:20 Thomas: Brain flaws. No.

0:09:22 Jenessa: Kind of, I guess. Maybe that's I don't think your medical doctor would say that to you, but a neuroscientist is tending to be more focused on the behavior. When we're talking about something like violence and conformity, moral disengagement, yeah, very much so.

0:09:42 Thomas: It seems like social psychology or yeah, some other related fields.

0:09:49 Jenessa: Yeah. So social psychology, social cognitive neuroscience is really just using neuroscience tools to get at social psychology questions. That's kind of the field we're in. And that's kind of who I'd be looking for to make this claim.

0:10:07 Thomas: Because there's not — there's not going to be if anything that's actually an epidemic that this person would have maybe relevant experience on like okay what's the pathogen that — it's all in metaphorical terms that they're doing this. And it's like, okay, you could, I guess you could talk about it in metaphorical terms. I don't even think it'll really hold up in that way because what already, what we do see in Trumpism is any sort of like spread. We see is like pretty much the same amount of support for the whole time, except like on the margins, it changes. It's not as though like, well, we've got an epicenter of MAGA and it just spreads and spreads and spreads no not really like that's I mean maybe that's an analogy but I don't really think it is because that has so much more to do with the specifics of our political system of our country of the party um machinery like all like the if you look at the rise of trump it has way more to deal with a lot of that stuff uh and obviously multifaceted is is an understatement uh you know the latent racism

0:11:09 Thomas: And sexism of our culture all that stuff it doesn't have to do with like, okay, there's a contagion and it spreads in like, that isn't meaningful to me. Like just right off the bat, but Hey, I'm I'm not no Dr. Slutkin. I often say my mom said, Hey, you're not, why can't you be more like Dr. Slutkins?

0:11:28 Jenessa: In a world where you can change your name, it's...

0:11:31 Thomas: I love that. I wouldn't change it for anything. I love it.

0:11:35 Jenessa: Yeah, no, I totally agree. It didn't resonate with me. Maybe — maybe the idea that violence could metaphorically be thought of that way. Initially, when I read this, I thought, what that's plausible yeah

0:11:50 Thomas: There are breakdowns of structures and, and and, morality in a way that does make like the, the more you lose any sort of feeling of system, Yeah, there's going to be breakdowns. I still don't really see that as like a viral kind of spread. It's more like if you have these conditions, it's going to enable more and more violence.

0:12:09 Jenessa: And like to think then about the metaphor is like well what's the application like what's the quarantine yeah

0:12:15 Thomas: Yeah, how does it help to think of it in these terms?

0:12:18 Jenessa: What's what's my medical treatment what's my vaccine and at some point you just stretch this metaphor so far that I I don'T really know what it's doing for me. Was kind of already feeling that way. This is raising red flags because the language does not fit with what I would expect a person who knows things about the brain to say, especially from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. It raises a A lot of, guess I I'll kind of get to this near the end, but this raises some very questionable and concerning red flags in terms of like the implications of something's just wrong with your brain and it's not your fault. I was like, yikes, don't love that. Um, so, okay, we've got our question that is, while know, the argument is that it is metaphorically an epidemiological question, it of the data you would want, the facts of it are cognitive neuroscience. Science. And I through his background. Funny that, you know, with that background that's reported in the article, you went through it, distinguished epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, founded this unit, blah, blah. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page. I was kind of surprised by that. Kind of had to rely on it. This isn't necessarily a criticism of him. But there is a general thing where when a conference, when you get asked to be in an interview, usually people ask you to kind of write your own bio. I don't know the extent to which those get fact checked.

0:13:58 Thomas: Yeah especially with the, you know, obviously journal of the state of journalism and you.com is fine but yeah it's like the resources that are involved in that particular task they're not going to be a ton

0:14:11 Jenessa: Yeah, so I have no idea the extent to which it's been fact checked, like the organization he works for, I would assume he writes his own bio there. It feels very self -written, but I'm going to just assume what I'm reading is accurate and that he did work on these really major issues and all of that. Got an MD, so that's a medical doctorate, not a PhD, not necessarily an experimental research degree. MD probably had some neurology training, but not neuroscience training necessarily. And a whole thing of, you know, he was chief resident at San Francisco General Hospital. He worked in infectious disease training, a tuberculosis program. So it's a ton of epidemiology work. Great job. Working in the World Health Organization AIDS Project. And years and years of this. Then just kind of out of nowhere, after 10 years, returned to the U.S. and shifted his focus to violence. This is from one of the bios I found. So what don't see anywhere in here is formal or informal training in neuroscience or training in psychology. So, know, sometimes I want to cut people slack on like maybe you don't have a PhD in neuroscience, but maybe you got this experience somewhere that might qualify you to make the statement and I just don't see it. So, okay, is a Salon article. They don't usually like cite all the scientific journal articles and have like a bibliography at the end, you know.

0:15:55 Jenessa: But there's some published research on this.

0:15:58 Thomas: Maybe.

0:15:59 Jenessa: So I go looking. I do find an article or or two that is published by on this idea of violence as an epidemic. Of the ones that jumped out, you know, when I put put him into Google Scholar specifically, really great resource. Put his name in there because what I don't want is the salon article or five, six, seven copy pastes of the salon article. I journal article. So has he published research? And I find one, you you know, when I put his name in, I get a bunch on tuberculosis and AIDS, like, yeah, the research he's been publishing before this, right? And then I get one here, how the health sector can reduce violence by treating it as a contagion. Okay, perfect.

0:16:47 Thomas: Here we go.

0:16:48 Jenessa: It is. What — And I'm looking for here is, first of all, I want to look at uh what is in this study uh the brain claim specifically because that violence is a contagion that's not exactly the brain part um and that's not exactly the like ideas part being transmitted or obedience being transmitted um uh looked for it in that article and it's it's a very long article There's like one or two sentences about this idea. I'll particular contagion of violence is initiated by victimization or visual exposure and mediated by the brain, just as the lungs mediate replication of tuberculosis or the intestines, cholera. That's nothing. There's no citation on that. That's just like a metaphor that, I mean, yes, insofar as violence is a behavior and the brain does behaviors, the lungs do breathing and the intestines do pooping. Like, yes. The brain did the violence. And then the next sentence, the brain processes violence exposure into scripts rips, or copied behaviors, and unconscious social expectations. Again, no citation. This processing can lead to several situationally adaptive responses, including aggression, impulsivity, depression, stress, exaggerated startle response, and changes in neurochemistry. I was like, okay, we finally have a citation here. And it's to an article by himself and one of his co -authors on this paper titled Seeing and Treating Violence as a Health Issue, and it's a chapter in a book. Not a scientific journal article. This keeps happening. Everywhere I find this brain claim that he makes, it ends up citing back to book chapters he wrote.

0:17:36 Thomas: What? Yeah. Yeah? Okay. Yep. Yeah.

0:18:51 Jenessa: I can't find that type type of violence in the brain is an epidemic by anybody. And maybe it's out there, but when I try to find where he got the idea, he seems to have got it from himself.

0:19:07 Thomas: Jordan Peterson does that too. We have that. It's like that old thing. Oh I'm seeing a google result so jordan oh it's jordan peterson so it's like that so it circles in on it yeah it's and it's amazing how I think easy it is to do that in this day and age yeah

0:19:15 Jenessa: It kind of, yeah, yeah. Mm Because you just see citation number 12. And

0:19:25 Thomas: One should yeah you check citations I sometimes do if I have to for something but who else does nobody

0:19:32 Jenessa: Yeah and that's my that's jam is the like well who but who said it and why and it's really important to catch that that is a book chapter because that is not peer -reviewed in the same way and

0:19:44 Thomas: Really so you wouldn't and and stupid question there's not like quote unquote science in book chapters that is, you know, like referenceable.

0:19:53 Jenessa: Be so you a general rule we would think of like textbooks as a a secondary source, kind of the way that an encyclopedia, you know, part of why I would tell people like, don't cite Wikipedia. It's not that I think it's inaccurate. It said it's a secondary resource. Go to the first source, go to the primary. Where did the information come from? So a lot of times books should really be thought of that way. Ideally, primary source just did an experiment, just came up with this data going to get through the normal peer review process which like granted has a lot of problems um in a scientific journal as like a very short paper you longest papers will be like oh my god like 20 pages and it's you often like three pages people go through it and check your data a book chapter tends to be more narrative format more for the average reader even in a textbook it's more for a college student you you know? So it's, yeah. And it's not going to be, go through the same peer review process. It's your fellow peers who asked you to write a book with them, which is different.

0:21:02 Thomas: Well, that's interesting side topic. Like, I guess the textbook could be inaccurate and who checks it? Just, I guess, people teaching it.

0:21:08 Jenessa: Yeah, and I would say, you know, your average textbook can be really good, but I mean, it's never perfect. I used to give my students an assignment that was go through your textbook, find something thing that's wrong and write me a paper about it. I think it was a really eye-opening assignment for my students to just fact-check things and check on, you know, this textbook was written and it be three or four years old and that's enough for it to be a little out of date. Something as simple as that. Or just an oversight. The person who wrote this has probably probably been working in the field for years and years and years and could be a little out of date. Their own brain is out of date." Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that something I found really concerning, is that when this brain claim comes from, I cannot easily find him making the claim and citing to someone else. I find him citing himself.

0:21:53 Thomas: The brain flaws. Yeah, yeah. Well, and even if he was citing himself, but it was some sort of like study thing, right?

0:22:18 Jenessa: Yes. At least something. Give me a paper. And sometimes it would cite to a paper, but all of the data in the paper is about these violence prevention things that are not, they're not brain papers. They're not doing neuroimaging. They're not doing any it's not a neuroscience paper it's a public health paper and he's he's only citing back to it insofar as he also just unscited made the claim in that paper so

0:22:48 Thomas: That Yeah. Yeah. But I'm citing that I cited that on unsighted claims. So now it's cited.

0:22:54 Jenessa: Right it's basically that so maybe somewhere buried in the literature of social cognitive neuroscience of people who are actually qualified to make this claim I maybe I would find find someone who says there is a violence pathway in the brain or that violence, you the brain in different ways. But but I don't have any reason to believe that yet, based on what I'm seeing here.

0:23:19 Thomas: Now what about like anthropology? Is that maybe also another? I mean, that wouldn't be the that wouldn'T be what this person's talking about, really. But I mean that that would be someplace where you might study like the patterns of the quote unquote viral spread of violence or something, if that was a thing.

0:23:34 Jenessa: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I see in all of this a lot of room for sociology, political science. Historians, of course, are going to be useful for talking about fascist movements. Tends to be kind of focused on individuals' behavior. Even social psychology is going to about how the individual navigates a social situation. Sociology might be be more about how the groups behave. Anthropology might be more about how humans across a long historical period have behaved. This is my very general understanding of that. But yeah, I think you're totally right that there's room for a lot of different fields to collaborate in understanding violence and understanding conformity, all of these buzzwords he's throwing in here. I'm sure there are people publishing on these and maybe cross -collaboration, which is actually the place I wanted to go next.

0:24:35 Jenessa: I see this and I'm like, okay, the person who said this may not be themselves particularly qualified, but what if their co -authors are?

0:24:45 Thomas: Okay.

0:24:46 Jenessa: Have collaborated with people who are outside my field. So the claims you'll see in the paper that are psychology and neuroscience related came from me. And, you know, of course, my co -authors reviewed it and understood it to their satisfaction that they were comfortable putting their name on it. But, you Know, if they solo authored a paper, they would not have put that in there. Right. So that same paper, the one that had like the one that we just talked about, where it first came up as I was looking, there's two co -author's on it, there is Charles Ransford. He a master's of public policy. He happens to be the director of science and policy at Cure Violence, which is the charity that Dr.

0:25:30 Thomas: Yeah, the, yeah, the NGO or whatever.

0:25:32 Jenessa: Yeah, the NGO where Dr. Slutkin works. There's also Daria Zvetina. I hope I pronounced that right. Right. She has a master's of education and is the chief of staff at Cure Violence. So neither of them has the neuroscience or psychology background I was hoping to find. And now I've spotted a conflict of interest issue of

0:25:45 Thomas: Okay, everybody who's cited on this, they all work for the same thing that the guy who we're talking about came from

0:26:02 Jenessa: All three of them work together at the same NGO, which benefits from and profits from people believing violence is an epidemic. Epidemic that can be treated through epidemiology methods.

0:26:10 Thomas: Thing. Yeah. So they get funding and so forth.

0:26:18 Jenessa: Yeah, which I guess, you know, I guess an NGO, I shouldn't think of it as like for profit, but their salaries come from there. Okay, now I'm a little like, that's suspicious. I'm going to try, okay. He also said the MAGA movement is a dangerous and lethal syndrome of what I describe as, quote, quote, authoritarian violence disorder. In quotes here, so I'm like, okay, what I describe as, I should be able to find this, pop that into Google Scholar, nothing.

0:26:51 Jenessa: Not even a source of him saying it.

0:26:46 Thomas: Nothing. Okay oh wow he's got to source himself on that he's got a sight to himself real quick other

0:26:59 Jenessa: It'd be one thing if he was saying it, but not even he has said it in a published source that makes it onto Google Scholer.

0:27:07 Thomas: Than this yeah wow yep

0:27:10 Jenessa: It's it's basically this if I pop it into regular google I get the salon article and I get very similar articles you know how it is that like a lot of a lot fully understand why this is but there's a lot newspaper articles that end up like identical or almost identical in like multiple sources it's essentially that this far as I can tell this is the first time he's ever said that he describes this as that avd authoritarian violence disorder um I can't find a source for that um then I start looking into this is where I'm getting a little out of my depth but I'm like I'm just a little curious about this like violence epidemic epidemic thing. The short answer is, as far as I can tell, it's controversial. Cure violence NGO, it is happening multiple cities. It's happening in other countries. Working is hard to say because some are pulling data that seems to show it works. Other people are saying,

0:27:37 Thomas: What

0:28:12 Jenessa: Well, oh, yeah, it's it's interesting. It's like this whole idea of intervention, like with interveners. So a person who is a trusted member of the community is supposed to be like as essentially a source of the violence. A person who, you know, what the police criticism of this is like you're paying criminals. Is part of this community that is experiencing violence and is trusted in that community intervenes and detects where they think violence is going to happen and who is going going to commit

0:28:13 Thomas: Are they doing what's the it do we know hmm hmm oh

0:28:51 Jenessa: Violence and tries to approach that person and stop it

0:28:54 Thomas: I think I've heard of this same kind of thing just in talking about crime in america and like different ways of dealing with it different kinds of justice rather than just you presence I think I've heard if something like like this so but like where in that does the either metaphor or as they mean it literal epidemic of violence where does where does that help that because know like you don't need that claim to think that maybe a community member like a trusted community member intervening might have an effect on violence or

0:29:26 Jenessa: Like that's where I think it gets a little awkward as like okay so are you saying they they had the virus and they spread it and it

0:29:33 Thomas: There oh or we we uh vaccinated that person and then they go in they're a white blood cell it doesn't really yeah that's not

0:29:41 Jenessa: Doesn't help does it and like if I'm all fine with like Think of it as a public health crisis. That makes sense to me. Violence as an epidemic in that sense. But the spreading part is still confusing to me, the contagion part.

0:29:58 Thomas: And the brain floss part okay yeah that'S nothing

0:30:01 Jenessa: That's nothing. That is just nothing. But if it's not just him saying that, if you go to Cure Violence Global, their about page, they write, violence behaves like a contagious problem. It is transmitted through exposure, acquired through contagious brain mechanisms and social processes, and it can be effectively prevented and treated using health methods.

0:30:27 Jenessa: I don't know. I don' t really understand it, to be honest with you. I've

0:30:26 Thomas: What okay like What health methods but you said you started that by saying they're not the only one saying that but that was just them who else is saying that

0:30:35 Jenessa: Yeah what I mean is he's not the only one saying it um organization on which he is one board member of many they're putting that on their website as like contagious brain mechanisms they're fine with this brain language apparently and

0:30:50 Thomas: But we that we don't have anyone else like any other like scholars

0:30:54 Jenessa: Yeah not that that I can find. There may be, if I dug really deep into like social cognitive neuroscience experts, maybe I would find something like that, but I just like could not find a way to get myself there where I was like, am I going to really take the nonsense this guy appears to be making up and like sane wash it into a claim that made sense and then debunk a claim. That is probably not not even what he meant that I made up. Let me stop myself. I went through everybody on this about page, all their staff, like the CFO and the director of this and the direct of that and all the board members. Nobody has a PhD in neuroscience or psychology. There is one clinical psychologist, which nothing against clinical psychologists, but they're not trained as as like studying brain pathways. Like nobody, as far as I can tell, nobody in the main leadership of this organization is qualified to make that statement. And they're not publishing research that is qualified.

0:32:04 Thomas: Was gonna say that's not even — so that that would be just step one like then it would be like, okay, do we have a lone neuroscientist or that is trying to make fetch happen or whatever the hell that thing like that would be the next — like that even just saying, oh, there's a person in the field making this claim still doesn't mean it's true, but we're not even getting to that point.

0:32:27 Jenessa: Exactly. I can't find a qualified person making the claim. And if they were unqualified, but they had good data, that's fine with me. But I also can't find that. And if they don't have the expertise and they don t cite to someone who has the expertise and they dont cite to even data from someone who doesn t have the expertise, where do I go from here? And I looked at like I'm usually my go -to starting point is like let me just go to their Wikipedia page to get a summary for like who are these people?

0:32:58 Jenessa: What are they about? And like I said, he didn't have a Wikipedia, but Cure Violence and Cure Violence Global, they had one. And on the talk page, a user, C. Ransford, who I suspect is probably Charles Rans Ford, the co -author, is getting yelled at on the Talk page for editing that Wikipedia to take out criticisms.

0:32:57 Thomas: Yeah oh really that's interesting this is a level of research that I have not yet done is delving — I know I should, we should for Where There's Woke, getting into the Wikipedia edit battles on the — I didn't know so we can just go look at that you got to teach me that one I should have known that a long ago

0:33:39 Jenessa: If you hop into the talk page, sometimes people, when somebody has been like editing repeatedly and making edits that other people don't love and they don't know why they're doing it, like this part says, hi, at C. Ransford. Thanks for helping to improve this article. I see you've made several edits recently.

0:34:00 Thomas: Are you a charlatan, no, they don't say, yeah yeah

0:34:03 Jenessa: And I person replying to them knows, like, has made the connection of who this is. Know, you go down and they say here, I disagree with the removal of the medicalization section. Stated reason for removal, that it is not medicalization because public health is not medicine, example pharmaceutical drugs, is a misinterpretation of the term medicalization.

0:34:30 Thomas: I may need to know further context. When it comes to medicalization, was that a thing, criticizing this, saying this is inappropriately medicalizing it, and then, but then, I guess I didn't totally understand the vax, what was the reasoning there? Can you repeat that?

0:34:48 Jenessa: So was kind of my hint to go look at what is this about. When I looked at the, they've put it back into to the article since then. And I also found this in Google Scholar. When you look up some of these papers, there's two papers supporting this Cure Violence Global. And then the third one down was the medicalization of violence. So Google Scholer thinks this is a popular problem to research related to Cure Violence Global, and it's in the Wikipedia as well, the issue that we have taken something like violence, which is a social problem and a cultural problem and has oppression issues and power dynamics and racism, everything, and we've medicalized it. We've individualized it. We've made it so that you have the violence disease and you have to cure yourself or we have to care you and you are spreading it, your disease to the people around you. And that's the argument being made, that it is medicalizing something that's actually a sociocultural problem. Um, so user C. Ransford went through this Wikipedia and deleted that because medicalization, uh, this isn't medicalization. Public health isn't medicine.

0:35:37 Thomas: Socioeconomic, I mean, there's a million factors to that. Yeah.

0:36:21 Thomas: Isn't medicine. Okay. That's what I didn't understand. Cause I would have thought public health is medicine in a way, but I guess maybe not. I don't know.

0:36:27 Jenessa: I would agree. Maybe in a very literal sense, you could make that argument, but that doesn't, I think, at all justify taking out that criticism out of the Wikipedia.

0:36:38 Thomas: So I, I, I want to make sure that, so that's the person taking taken out logic for why it shouldn't be in there. Okay, it was a little ambiguous. I thought, I thought the person, I though the user was saying that, that was replying to them, but okay. Yeah. So now it all makes sense. It's kind of a weird rationale to take it out and it sounds like it's just not correct.

0:36:45 Jenessa: The user. Yeah. So the person replying who wants to put it back in says the stated reason for removal that it's not medicalization.

0:37:05 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:37:06 Jenessa: That's a misinterpretation of the term medicalization and then goes on to explain like what it's really about and why this belongs in the article. And yeah, like I was saying, you get on Google Scholar, you put in Cure Violence Global, the third hit is somebody writing a thing about how this is a problem because it's medicalizing the problem. So, you an issue. And I find it concerning that somebody who has that conflict of interest is getting into the Wikipedia to edit out a criticism. So far the talk page looks to be mostly just that

0:37:40 Thomas: Yeah. Is there any more, any more drama going on in the talk page?

0:37:47 Thomas: Oh, so that was the end of that exchange.

0:37:49 Jenessa: That exchange ends with um been a couple of weeks without a reply I'm going to go ahead and make the edits described above which is essentially reversing those edits um it back in um there was one other point here uh other point that I disagree with is changing the section heading from quote outreach work to quote behavior change. And there's a whole thing about like what that word even mean? That's not a term that is used in the field. That that's not an operationalized defined term behavior change so

0:38:00 Thomas: Which term behavior change. It seems kind of generic.

0:38:27 Jenessa: So this same user c ransford went through and took the section heading outreach work which I think we could all take a good guess what that is and changed it to behavior change and like again it's the same sort of like why is this like behavior change violent violent epidemiology like it's

0:38:44 Thomas: Just making it a little sound a little more like official or something like a little more jargony yeah

0:38:51 Jenessa: Just weird it's just weird. It's terminology that is not what people in that field would use. People who study behavior like would be like that's that's so vague. I don't know what you're getting at. So yeah there's other stuff going on in this talk page of just like people people uh know going over like what sections should be merged together how to you know criticisms got merged up into other paragraphs instead of a separate section section called criticisms which

0:39:24 Thomas: That's funny okay that seems pretty intentional yeah

0:39:28 Jenessa: Like I really feel like you should just have a criticism section I don't love that it's just sprinkled in, you know? So yeah, as far as I can tell, you as somebody who does not study violence prevention as like a public health community thing, as Far as I Can Tell, it's controversial. Not just clearly 100%. Everybody loves it. The data is crystal clear. You know, there was one paper that was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, violence did go down in the neighborhood where you implemented this, but it also went down in The Neighborhoods where you didn't implement it. So what's that about? Is this really?

0:40:06 Thomas: Especially if they did it around the same times that violence was going down it was first up and then back down that

0:40:13 Jenessa: Exactly. Exactly, and you'll see the reply from those authors is just, oh, no, no. You're misunderstanding. We were working within an even narrower or a couple of like 10 block radius and you analyze the whole neighborhood. And I'm like, how are you going to ever assess violence reduction in a 10 block?

0:40:33 Thomas: My that yeah that respected community members only respected and they They have like a AOE effect area kind of, and they're only a 10 block radius. Yeah. I think that also, once again, not lose sight of the fact that right now what you're talking about is, is violent medical, little bit of the medicalization of violence in general.

0:40:52 Thomas: And we're not even anywhere in the, in the 10 block radio stuff, authoritarian violence disorder. That's nothing.

0:41:01 Jenessa: This is nothing. Is pulled out of thin air as far as I can find. So I that's sort of the theme of it all you know, if there's a methodology to the madness of how I go through this stuff, it is start with identifying what the claim is. It turns out this isn't really an epidemiology claim. This is social cognitive neuroscience. This is violence in the brain. This has political decision -making is this person qualified to make the claim or any of their coauthors qualified to to make the claim. What is the source of it? Is it a journal article with data? Is it a book chapter? They're using specific terminology, do people in that field use that terminology? And what are other people saying about it? That's one other thing you can do is when you put it into Google Scholar and you find an article that looks like kind of of what you're looking for. So like the article we talked about, you can click on cited by.

0:42:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I do that.

0:42:07 Jenessa: Really helpful. First of all, that one that's like, oh, one of the main articles by these authors to like show that their thing works. It's cited by 17 people. And this is like a major, it's not nothing, but it's Not great. I mean, like, pop into Google Scholar just now, Attention in Video Games. I recognize the first author of the first paper that came up. She's actually my academic grandmother.

0:42:18 Thomas: That's not nothing.

0:42:32 Jenessa: She was the advisor of my advisor. One, the very first paper to pop up, cited by 1,082 people.

0:42:41 Thomas: I that's a pretty popular subject, though. What's equivalently sort of obscure area?

0:42:51 Jenessa: Okay, let's see. Um sensory adaptation in a vision loss that's like my super narrow thing uh first paper is adaptation to sensory loss it's been cited by 90 people second one is the role of sensory adaptation in the retina cited by 307 people so 17 is low it's not great this

0:43:17 Thomas: So remind me now you're looking at 17 for like the main paper of what exactly? And were there other papers of it?

0:43:24 Jenessa: Was like the big paper that Slutkin put out about like violence is an epidemic. And

0:43:31 Thomas: There's no other like related and that was pretty much all you found, right? There wasn't any other or

0:43:36 Jenessa: Talking about violence in do I describe this? If So you put in just like violence epidemic, you get other authors and their papers are getting cited and you'll see recent trends in youth violence uh youth violence epidemic but that's not like literal

0:43:54 Thomas: When people thought like people were looking at TikToks and then that was causing them to like do, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah no that that's so funny that was a kind of a myth that happened somewhat recently gosh now I'm realizing when was that there was remember all those those like news stories oh for videos the teens are roaming around killing like it was like okay it was blown out of proportion so that's a kindof a different thing that has nothing to do with this

0:44:00 Jenessa: Well actually this one is called the youth silence epidemic colon myth or reality uh that was yeah sure sure yeah so that paper was 1998 sure

0:44:27 Thomas: Okay but I think there's another round of it with tiktok or whatever that's probably it's probably a pretty frequent like moral panic the youths they're roaming around beating people up um another thing though if this was a real thing shouldn't you be able to just look at the sluts paper and be like okay what is this slut uh now that this is like kind of fraudulent I'm cool just making fun of the name even though you know no slut shaming but this name is the best thing about dr and so far um wouldn't this slut be a citing bunch of other research that you could like check those citations and be like oh okay there's like a body of research here yeah

0:45:04 Jenessa: And at some point I started being like I gotta focus on the brain part of it but like um I go into like just violence contagious I do get is gun violence contagious um violence as a a contagious social process from 1986 uh contagion of violence so like there's other people publishing on it for sure but they're not citing him

0:45:15 Thomas: Gun violence okay peak yeah well those aren't really the same thing that's like the 80s tough on crime like epidemic you know that kind of that's it's still not like an epidemic and a brain flaws and authoritarian whatever like and you're saying he didn't he didn'T cite those right weren't you just looking did

0:45:47 Jenessa: That's just me looking at like you

0:45:49 Thomas: He cite anything or just his book okay

0:45:52 Jenessa: Does have other citations in here so let me let me scroll down what do we got uh we got the problem is a lot of it's to epidemiology so like the first one is like the centers for disease control what's the leading causes of death um relationship of childhood abuse to household dysfunction and leading cause of death intimate partner violence relationship power inequity and incidents of hiv infection um exposure to violence and and associated symptoms of psychological trauma. So they're all tangentially related.

0:46:01 Thomas: That's nothing okay yeah but again some of those almost go against this epidemic idea if it's like well actually this is caused because if you have violence in your childhood then like this that that can be a, I mean, I guess you could say then that self -perpetuates and then everybody's violent and they're, but like, that's sort of a different explanation entirely, it seems to me, or at least not, it's, I may might be kind of related, but it's not, that't not the same thing.

0:46:48 Jenessa: Community violence -related PTSD. So, like, getting emotionally affected by the fact that community violence exists.

0:46:56 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. That might, that might be, okay.

0:46:59 Jenessa: These just off to the side of what he's saying. The effect of gun violence on local economies. And then finally, violence is a contagious disease. His book chapter so

0:47:15 Thomas: Darn. We got there finally.

0:47:17 Jenessa: Um chronic exposure to violence and chronic violent behavior closely related to developmental processes during adolescence criminal justice behavior I would have to look these people up that sounds like the closest thing maybe contagion and mass killings and school shootings. Yeah.

0:47:37 Thomas: Yeah. But again, that's also like copycat killer stuff. That's a little bit. Again, none of this has any bearing on MAGA whatsoever.

0:47:47 Jenessa: None, none.

0:47:48 Thomas: There's no I don't even see anything about authoritarianism at all in anything that you've said. That'S just something that he decided to add to like or somebody, you know, like they're trying to be more relevant in this particular context or something. And it's just there's nothing scientifically from what you you can tell that supports that at all.

0:47:48 Jenessa: So no none of that. No. If we assume he's right, that violence is contagious somehow, and that the metaphor, obviously he doesn't mean it literally, that the metaphor, well, I

0:48:17 Thomas: Obviously, I think he does mean it literally. I think you're giving him too much credit.

0:48:22 Jenessa: What I meant is he doesn't think there's a virus. They didn't all catch something. But insofar as like that, you know, yeah, it's

0:48:26 Thomas: Fair. Yeah. I mean, he does say violence is a disease and specifically a contagious disease is a sentence that we read. I just want to make clear.

0:48:40 Jenessa: He makes it about as literal as humanly possible without saying, and if only we could identify the bacteria um so yeah I mean it's it's very close to literal language and it even if we assume that's true that like when somebody next to you is engaged in violence it makes you more likely to commit violence and then you spread it he still has this donald trump as a massive super spreader

0:48:59 Thomas: You catch it. Yeah? You start sneezing, your nose runs, and then you start hitting people. Oh man. Yeah.

0:49:11 Jenessa: Like this is giving elements of like video game violence and like Like, yeah.

0:49:17 Thomas: Donald Trump's a super spreader. I mean, yeah, it's just useless. This is, yeah. Okay. What a weird thing. This is a whole made up thing. And I wonder about the funding. Did you happen to check whatever these NGO rankings are?

0:49:30 Jenessa: Oh, my God. This is so funny to me. Okay. I was trying to find it because I was like, who? Number nine NGO in the world.

0:49:37 Thomas: Yeah, it was like, did

0:49:38 Jenessa: And I was, like, yeah, is there an award show? Like, what is this? This is from the .good, all one word.

0:49:38 Thomas: They have a Mortal Kombat tournament over that? Like, how do we, yeah? Huh?

0:49:49 Jenessa: T -H -E -D -O -T -G -O-"O -D, the .good. Formerly NGO advisor. Now, why you would change your name from NGO advisor, which is very useful in my understanding.

0:50:00 Thomas: It seems seems to be directly what we're talking about more to the dot good okay really

0:50:07 Jenessa: Looking that up. Once again, neither NGO advisor nor the dot good. They don't have a Wikipedia page. So they're ranking all the NGOs and they don't garner their own page when the NGOs have a page I cannot verify what like what criteria they're using

0:50:21 Thomas: So so this could be like when the christian movie makers over on gam have their own film festival that's like the just the oh the la film festival it's like just one guy and in one film it's not real it could be for all we know is

0:50:38 Jenessa: I can't it could be I I you know I didn't look too deep because I was just like this is not worth my time but um it's not clear what this organization is and like what what value added I'm getting, there's

0:50:53 Thomas: Anyone else using it like is there any can you find, there's just no, not clear.

0:50:59 Jenessa: Just, I tried Googling it. I was like putting like the dot good into Google and every hit is themselves. There's cause that's why I would be looking for it on Wikipedia is like, what is a third party, an independent source tell me about? Cause obviously I can go on the dot, good and read what they say about themselves, themselves but like what does any other organization say they are and the only people I can find there are ngos who won an award from them saying we got an award and it was pretty much these guys come up

0:51:28 Thomas: Oh, now which NGOs are those? Yeah. Were there any other, that's actually interesting though. Were There Any Others? Because I can imagine that's another way to sort of, you're like farming karma. You're like farming like cred by just like, hey, we're giving you an award. And then I imagine some NGO would be like, oh, cool. I like awards. And And then if then that kind of adds legitimacy to it.

0:51:51 Jenessa: Much yeah we've got if I google them the first hit is of of course, their website. That's what you'd expect. Then it's their LinkedIn. Then it's Their Facebook.

0:52:03 Thomas: Who's sorry? Who now is this another?

0:52:04 Jenessa: This this is The Dot Good. Is that name? Whatever. LinkedIn, Their Facebook, another LinkedIn for them. Then there's Generation.org bragging that they are honored as one of the top 100. Then it is yeah uh then it's the dot goods x account twitter account um Junior Achievement of Central Carolinas bragging that they are in the top 10 ngo slash sgo for the fourth consecutive year I've never heard of them first

0:52:19 Thomas: 100. OK. Interesting. Only that, I'm just realizing if you look at that intro, is the founder of Cure Violence Global rated as the number nine NGO in the world? And as the number one NGO for reducing violence. So like that first one, you might've thought that first, like number nine, that has to be within a category. Nope. Number nine NGO in the world. Could that be right?

0:53:04 Jenessa: That's I tried to figure that out I was well because initially I that article doesn't cite where it came from I finally found this the dot good slash ngo advisor by going to the about page for cure violence global does once again brag about this um and they give not a link but the citation of that name and that's how I got there and yeah

0:53:28 Thomas: This is so made up.

0:53:30 Jenessa: It's it feels very made up because why is, I

0:53:31 Thomas: Number nine in the word. Okay. Is there a real NGO ranking organization? And if so, can we look them up right now and see what the actual top 10 list is?

0:53:44 Jenessa: Tried to figure that out too. I was like, what would that even mean to rank NGOs?

0:53:48 Thomas: It could be in terms of don't, and yeah, it

0:53:49 Jenessa: I just assume you have to do it by category because what would it mean for an NGO of public health and an NGO of maybe

0:53:56 Thomas: Could be size, I guess. It could be like in terms of dollars or, you know, that's

0:54:01 Jenessa: Like, cause you can't rank them by like good done. What would that be?

0:54:05 Thomas: Hard to evaluate. I mean, you could try, but I, yeah, it would be tricky.

0:54:11 Jenessa: I mean, Like, know there are places when you're going to donate that will give you, like, rankings of, um, yeah, yeah. Like, transparency, effectiveness, you know, do experts in the field.

0:54:16 Thomas: Like the metrics, like how much money is spent on, you know, salaries versus whatever. There's that kind of stuff.

0:54:25 Thomas: Yep, yep. Per dollar, thing per dollar that, yeah. That kind of thing.

0:54:31 Jenessa: Yeah, I would love to see if it's a charity about vaccines that, you experts in vaccines believe this is a good thing to do. Um, kind of thing. But I know how you would compare. Like if you go to this thing's website, I Also, they brag about being number nine in 2021. Oh there's still number nine and 2023. 23.

0:54:53 Thomas: That's a remarkable coincidence.

0:54:56 Jenessa: Number one is BRAC. I've never heard of it. How can I have never heard of the number one NGO in the whole wide world?

0:55:04 Thomas: Well, my only hesitation there is if this is bullshit, I feel like they would rank the number one and two, like they Would probably pick the real ones for like the top ones. That would be so easy to check.

0:55:16 Jenessa: Says the country of registration is Bangladesh. The last known income is $1.08 billion, and it has 107,259 employees. But when I click on it, it just takes me to another page that's not related to that organization, I think. This is nonsense. This can't mean anything. It can't, this can't means anything, right? The number two that's from the United States is the Open Societies Foundation. Have you ever heard of that?

0:55:49 Thomas: It sounds like something, but I know, I don't know. I, again, once again, I just feel like if this Is bullshit, it, they would probably rank the few as normal, you know, because it's so easy to check. SGOs. Oh, yeah. What is an SGO?

0:56:08 Jenessa: Yeah, I've never heard of an SGO either. That's probably just my own ignorance.

0:56:16 Thomas: Oh, yes. What? That's a different... I didn't even catch that. Did you say that?

0:56:21 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah, some of them are, is not a non -profit wait

0:56:24 Thomas: Good Social Organization, maybe. Okay. So, this is... So, here we go. This is well but this is important because this website is not ranking NGOs I feel like you didn't say that they're ranking SGOs am I am I at the wrong thing the .good .net yeah they're banking SGO's

0:56:39 Jenessa: What how yeah that's where I am too but it says it says s you're right it does this

0:56:49 Thomas: And so that's a quote a quote social good organization and that could be whatever the F they decide it is.

0:56:57 Jenessa: Is nonsense what is that okay they have an eligibility page yeah

0:57:02 Thomas: Is if you look at the ratings and their last known income, that's not just ranked by that. So there's some other ranking they're doing. Ooh, subscribe to view more. Okay.

0:57:09 Jenessa: It's not the income. Oh,

0:57:13 Thomas: Eligibility.

0:57:13 Jenessa: So you have to pay to learn why this happened.

0:57:15 Thomas: Compete. Yeah. Wow. Fill in eligibility.

0:57:18 Jenessa: And you for this.

0:57:21 Thomas: If you have to pay, this is a pay to play kind of thing. Okay, so that makes sense.

0:57:23 Jenessa: So yeah, if this was a normal ranking organization, they would just rank, this is the best one to donate your money to. This is the most effective. They would not rank them by who applied to be here.

0:57:39 Thomas: I'm interested in this name change too though because didn't you say it used to be something else NGO

0:57:41 Jenessa: What is is that? It used to be called NGO Advisor.

0:57:47 Thomas: But they changed to SGOs now maybe that maybe there was some legal reason or something maybe

0:57:52 Jenessa: Maybe there was something deceptive about calling themselves that. I couldn't figure any of this out. I was just so confused. What's happening? Literally, when you search the .good, at least as far as I scrolled, it is only them talking about themselves and other people bragging that they've been ranked by them.

0:57:55 Thomas: But did you did track it that down at all or no yeah

0:58:18 Jenessa: And when I Googled NGO advisor, I got a complete, if I put that with like advisor Wikipedia, because I just want a Wikipedia article so bad, I got completely different organization and I get anywhere. Anywhere it's very weird so I don't know they're bragging about being number nine in the world and number one in the reducing violence but they had to apply for this and submit an eligibility form and enter a contest and now it's sgos not ng maybe that's why they're bragging about 2001 2021. Yes. Their website, they're like, we were ranked this in 2021, and they're still ranked that in 2023. don't

0:58:17 Thomas: 2001 Yeah.

0:59:02 Jenessa: Know. These people are doing...

0:59:02 Thomas: Is fascinating. Looking at this, too. Yeah, this is just nothing.

0:59:08 Jenessa: It's so weird.

0:59:10 Thomas: Like this way to get I mean, I don't know much about this world, but I have to imagine like anything else in terms there's got to be a lot of bullshit in terms of trying to get funding, trying to appear legitimate. And this seems this seems almost it reminds me of like a pay to play journal kind of thing when it came to penis hoax crap like publishing like you need to get the credit for publishing and so everybody's incentivized really to just be like oh cool and top whatever I still see the ngo advisor facebook page and that has a lot of stuff but then they they 2021 they did start saying meet the world's best or 2020 social good organization and before yeah like it used to be ngoadvisor .net that as you say that does that redirect maybe

0:59:54 Jenessa: I have to imagine ngo must be some sort of protected legal term like you can't just call yourself that true

1:00:01 Thomas: But we're dealing with like international crap so I don't know yeah

1:00:05 Jenessa: So you don't know what other countries are doing but social good organization I bet you that's not like official I

1:00:10 Thomas: That's just they can just decide what that is so this is interesting

1:00:14 Jenessa: I would imagine oh god so So this is nonsense. So he presumably writes his own bio here or maybe somebody else wrote it, if we're being generous, the citation is credited with discovering the scientific basis for diagnosing and managing violence as a contagious disease. Credited with discovering implies that, yeah, that implies we are all in agreement that this is real. Like exactly I couldn't figure that out yeah

1:00:41 Thomas: Credit and credited by whom because there's so far there was only one thing it's him credited by himself this is wow what a load of bullshit this all is

1:00:50 Jenessa: It it's very strange you know maybe I was very frustrating trying to get to the bottom of any of it and I was really hoping I would find something but if this was social cognitive neuroscientists were either on a a consensus on this, or it was actively debated in the field, I would not feel comfortable like weighing in like I'm some expert. But when all I can find is like, other people using it extremely metaphorically, like an epidemic of violence does not in any way imply that we would apply the principles of epidemiology to it. And blank is just a word. Um and they're not suggesting that they're going to actually apply like quarantining principles um I'm not seeing him cite to people who are qualified I'm Not seeing his qualifications I'm Not seeing co -author qualifications i'M just not finding any reason why I should keep digging and try to find a way to give this credit and the thing is too I I just find the whole phrasing so concerning in terms of like brain flaws it's not their fault there are brain pathways for copying and following others that that is eugenics language of just like your brain came this way it's Not Your Fault like implies a lack of control role.

1:02:21 Thomas: It sounds innocent enough it sounds like a way to to be less mad at them but ultimately it depends on yeah like what you're trying to do there it does have a have a feel of like oh so therefore someone else needs to like intervene and it's not it takes away their self -control or their self determination but yeah most more than anything though it's also just 100 bullshit we got nothing here authoritarian violence disorder is not anything that's so this is just complete scam and my I'll say it this is very scammy that ngo ranking thing so far as I can tell it's not like necessarily related to them at all but it sounds like one of those kind of feels pay -to -play where it's like they're gonna both benefit by giving giving each other legitimacy. And I love that it's not NGO anymore. It's SGO. Probably they had to redefine it for legal reasons. We are suspecting. This is very, very, wow. Well, this is a bullshit thing.

1:03:17 Jenessa: Yeah. It's just fishy top to bottom. And then with a little sprinkling of bullshit on top of it that is just and it all started from bullshit. And

1:03:27 Thomas: There's just no basis in science to make this claim at all that you can tell.

1:03:32 Jenessa: Not yet. The paragraph we're focused on, there is no basis for any of this. And I think it's really harmful.

1:03:42 Jenessa: And And it lets people have just some easy answer that is, in addition to being wrong, it's isn't going to be an easy answer to explain any of this. If it was easy, people would have solved, easy problems are solved. Like, is so simplistic in its thinking. Thinking and I guess a way to set up for like going forward if you see brain claims like that suggests your brain is kind of stuck is just not going to be accurate because the way we learn is our brain changing every time you learn you experience something new your brain changes. And so the idea that your brain is a certain way, and therefore you learn to be a certain way. It's like, well, no, but that's not what that means. So the defining...

1:04:29 Thomas: You're giving this entirely too much credit to even go there. This is just a bullshit. Sorry.

1:04:33 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah. I guess just to spot another bullshit claim in the future, like brains don't work like this. This be true because it's not how brains work. Brains don't lock in like like this. They're flexible and changeable.

1:04:49 Thomas: This is very interesting. Well, I believe how long we've gone because this is so fascinating. I love a good scam. Yeah. So this is horseshit. I think let's the kind of thing where it's not obviously super relevant anymore, but we we should should contact salon. On. We should get them to retract that part of the thing because it's just nothing like it's not important. But also this is the kind of like skepticism work that I think more people need to do because there just needs to be more of this general thing of actually checking sources and and, calling the bullshit a little bit. And so at least we can do that. So in terms terms of understanding MAGA. Oh, and that's the thing. Article, actually, yeah, no, this is more important than I thought, because while I was just looking at the body of the article and looking at some of these interviews that are actually interesting, the headline is brain flaws, understanding MAga as an epidemic disease.

1:05:41 Thomas: Epidemiologist, Dr. Gary Slutkin, MAGA is a dangerous and lethal syndrome of authoritarian violence disorder. That's entirely bullshit. Now the authors don't choose their titles. So that makes sense that like the author probably had a a more moderated kind of thing and this was one of the people and then they're like hey let's latch on to that that'll spread so yeah let's try to make some some difference here and um get this retracted because this is nonsense oh

1:06:06 Jenessa: Yeah. I would definitely credit, like you're saying, the other people in this article. For all we know, they had no idea they were, like, what other stuff was going to be in here. And a lot of of times I also want to give people credit that like oh you know sometimes you do really good science and then a journalist just misreports it this is all I language this guy clearly wrote this himself I understand this this way I call it this like this this is his own words uh unless somebody has done him a terrible injustice this is His Own Words so um you don't even get that excuse here it like five layers deep bullshit and it's a huge miss of the public yeah

1:06:13 Thomas: Of course yeah yeah absolutely all right well doctor Dr. Jenessa Seymour, is there anything you want to shout out while you're here? Ah, boy.

1:06:52 Jenessa: I you know I work in voting rights and voting times are in a bit of a lull so we're good

1:06:58 Thomas: Yeah. Topic for another time. All right. Thanks so much. That was fascinating. And Hey, Hey, good looking out, everybody. Spread like the violence epidemic we are that this is not real.

1:07:26 Thomas: I'm no Dr. Slutkin. I often say my