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German physician Sucharit Bhakdi received the “Gold Tablet in front of his head” on Tuesday evening “for his unscientific trivialization of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The satirical award was given for the tenth time this year for the biggest antiscientific nonsense of the year. The “Golden Board for Lifetime Achievement” went to German Ken Jebsen’s KenFM web project, for years of work to digitize the mystical conspiracy scene.
Sucharit Bhakdi, author of the book “Corona False Alarm?”, Prevailed against the other two finalists, the founder of the “lateral thinker” Michael Ballweg and the influential of the conspiracy Attila Hildmann. They were selected by a jury of more than 300 submissions. In Austria, the Vienna Skeptics, the local branch of the Society for Scientific Parascience Research (GWUP), are responsible for awarding the award. This year this took place virtually in an event broadcast on the web.
When awarding the “Golden Board” there are a series of criteria, such as the absurdity of the statements made, the candidate’s resistance to criticism, the economic benefits of the proposed person or the extent to which the theses are disseminated. “Sucharit Bhakdi scores in all these categories; perhaps there has never been a candidate for whom the ‘gold slate in front of the head’ fit as perfectly as he did,” said a GWUP broadcast. For months, Bhakdi has been repeatedly noticed with statements that contradict the consensus within science: there will be no second wave, the majority of the population has been immune for a long time, but the masks must be removed.
Bhakdi has become a popular talk partner and permanent guest on Corona talk shows, and as an infection epidemiologist, he is viewed by many as a scientific authority, even if his thoughts are far from established doctrines. “That is a grain of sand for all those people who celebrate themselves as ‘lateral thinkers’ and claim that science cannot be trusted,” emphasize the skeptics. For them, Bhakdi also illustrates the phenomenon of “false balance”: the media tries to give a similar weight to different opinions. “That makes sense if both opinions are justified. But if one opinion is based on scientific fact and the other is not, then it should not be pretended that both are on an equal footing,” the broadcast said.
The Lifetime Achievement Award went to journalist and activist Ken Jebsen and his spokesperson “KenFM,” which began as a radio broadcast and then migrated to the Internet. “At KenFM there doesn’t seem to be any fear of coming into contact with crude conspiracy theories: from the Charlie Hebdo attacks that were supposedly organized, to George Soros and Bill Gates, who supposedly have the world under control, to disturbing statements about the Holocaust. “. , emphasizes the GWUP.
Those: APA
