Pathetic Burden Shifting is the Dismal Zeitgeist

Watch how much wrong can be packed into a single short social media post if you really work at it:

Timothy Caulfield @CaulfieldTim

Dear Anti Vaxxers, Aren't you all about "doing your own research"? Every time we (ie, the science-informed & less off-the-rails) highlight your BS, we are not obligated to provide a list of references that #vaccineswork. You are making the extraordinary claims. Onus is on you.

This is the scientific method in 2023: My hypothesis is presumptively correct; if you disagree, the burden is on you to disprove it. Imagine how much time this approach could save in the lab. I know that #2 pencils cause lightning to occur in the human kidney — prove otherwise, pencil denier. Where’s the peer-reviewed paper that says it doesn’t, moron!?!?!

Timothy Caulfield is a law professor and a health law scholar, so he packs more logical fallacies into 280 characters than any mere amateur. "#vaccineswork,” he says, making a categorical claim. Did the vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 work? Tell us about the vaccines for Marek’s disease in chickens, please, since #vaccineswork. That means all of them, apparently, and perfectly — in The People’s Republic of Hashtagland, we exclude all middles. We don’t argue that some vaccines work well, some work poorly, and some are plainly harmful. All of the thing is the same. But here, look, these idiots don’t believe in science:

Dumb morons, try believing! Stop being deniers!

But Caulfield isn’t making a dumb argument, because he isn’t making an argument. Talking about science and research and scientific references, he isn’t actually talking about any of that at all — he’s just preening his feathers. He’s engaged in status display and cultural posturing, which he dresses up with a science frame. It’s a John Hughes high school movie about the insecure jock:

Timothy Caulfield @CaulfieldTim

@robfoot My Twitter feed is FULL of studies on a range of vaccine issues. I've spent my life translating science using various methods (peer-reviewed studies, books, documentaries, art, etc). But I have no time for deniers who seek to doubtmonger by JAQing off (just asking questions).

Yes, this is the language of scientific inquiry. Stop doubtmongering, jaqoff deniers! You can feel the deep seriousness of this important scholar.

Clinical trials for the mRNA injections marketed by Pfizer and Moderna as Covid “vaccines” are not complete, so the affirmative case for them hasn’t even been made.

But already, the burden of proof is somehow on critics, because science, the process in which new medical products are presumptively safe and effective until someone proves otherwise. I’m injecting people with hamster urine to prevent brain tumors, because no one has proved yet that it doesn’t work. I don’t have to show that it does, stupid denier — you have to show that it doesn’t.

It’s long past the moment when we needed to lose patience for this behavior.