An interesting development in fact checker world.
Attentive reader may recall that Mr. Thacker wrote an article for The British Medical Journal: "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial" which Facebook decided didn't fit the narrative and "fact-checked."
The BMJ basically asked "And who are you?" and it was off to the races.*
From the substack of Paul Thacker, The Disinformation Chronicle, May 24:
Emmanuel Vincent is a hunted man.
On June 24, an officer of the French Ministry of the Interior, acting under the terms of the Hague Convention, summoned him to a police station and served him papers to appear in court for posting false and misleading statements in his role as president of Science Feedback, a Facebook fact checking service. On top of this, the beleaguered nonprofit has weathered multiple critiques for posting politicized, biased opinions that call themselves “fact checks”—including a Wall Street Journal editorial that called out Science Feedback for attacking Johns Hopkins physician-researcher Marty Makary, after he wrote an essay predicting the arrival of COVID-19 herd immunity.
“This is counter-opinion masquerading as fact checking,” the Wall Street Journal wrote, noting that Dr. Makary never made a factual claim; he had made a prediction based on his analysis of available evidence.
If you’re interested in falling down a science rabbit hole, feel free to read what Dr. Makary wrote and how Science Feedback responded. But here’s the thing, you don’t need a PhD in epidemiology to understand that when experts analyze studies and make predictions they might be wrong.
Duh. Predictions are opinions, not facts.
And while there’s nothing wrong with Science Feedback posting a contrary prediction, labeling their own opinion a “fact” just proves they fail at logic.
This inability to grasp the difference between opinion and fact has made Science Feedback the butt of online scorn, but what landed Vincent in a police station and sent him fleeing from justice like a man who stole something is colluding with Facebook and the federal government to deny people their First Amendment rights.
All while pretending to be an “independent fact check.”
We’ll get to the specifics of that in a second. Nonetheless, the charge alone has sent Vincent running from address to address, all over Paris.
Man on the run
Back in August of 2020, Vincent was first served a legal complaint at the address for Science Feedback, at 40 Rue Alexandre Dumas, 75011, Paris, France. He was then served at a second address in Paris, 16, rue Cecile Furtado Heine.
By September 2020, a French legal agent learned that Vincent had registered Science Feedback at a different address in Paris. He then called Mr. Vincent on his cell phone and delivered him the documents at a completely new address. (I think we’re now at four addresses) Vincent confirmed to the legal agent that he had already received the documents at one of the addresses, and then refused to sign a receipt....
- British Medical Journal To Mark Zuckerberg
- BMJ Video: "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"
Izabella Kaminska was also on top of the story in one of her posts at The Blind Spot:
...That said, the Covid situation today (i.e. February 2022) is very different to the situation voters were presented with in September. In the interim, there have been a number of developments that could have changed popular opinion significantly. The biggest of these is obviously the Omicron variant, which has led to rampant transmission and re-infection rates among the vaccinated. The other is the award-winning journalism from Paul Thacker, which came out in November, 2021, regarding data intergity issues with the Pfizer trials....
