@Oddthinking On that "Magnetic vaccines"§ thing: Votes are harsh & "the pattern". "Fact-checkers" of that quality: third hand ad-auctoritas persuaders at best, the usual, since '20 & in bad reputation.

What else in As? Perhaps looking at the better made claims that float around, not just "aw, that nut-job does… shootemdown". EG those 'theorists' that rely on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22848170 or henrymakow.com/2021/06/-dr-jane-ruby-warns.html chemicell.com/home/index.html genengnews.com/topics/omics/…

chemicell.com/products/Magnetofection/… europepmc.org/article/CBA/601211 nature.com/articles/3301624

You'll know that I do endorse the claim as made in the Q?

But it is exactly 'the pattern' I describe & lament: ideological trench warfare when it comes to vaccines.

That magnetism may indeed be an old trope for the anti-camp. But the recent wave of discussions around that I saw are mostly based upon real scientific articles, research etc. Similar to things like Quantum Healing?

The Reuters 'fact check' "Fact Check-'Magnet test' does not prove COVID-19 jabs contain metal or a microchip" would be of no use at all to argue with someone who read up on magnetofection tech?

@LаngLаngС Sure. The original SE developers strove for upvotes and comment likes to be anonymous, and "thank yous" to be deprecated. I sometimes feel that decision exaggerates the size of small disagreements. I especially want the ability to publicly like a comment or edit.

@LаngLаngС I am confused here. It reads like you endorse the claim that vaccines cause you to become magnetic. I don't believe that is the case, so I am not sure what you are endorsing.

@LаngLаngС I see this magnetism claim as very much a leap from the old-school "Look at my supernatural ability to stick metal to my body" to the anti-vax camp. I hadn't heard the idea that vaccines turn you magnetic until this year.

@LаngLаngС We should not be drawn into speculations on what science may underpin the amazing magnetism of vaccinated (?? wasn't even clear in the claim) people until we have shown that there is an effect to explain.

I don't need to read up on magnetofection tech, until people can pass the talcum powder test.

@Oddthinking That's what I wanted to avoid by being explicit about "I do not endorse the claim! And as fast typing goes, the 'not' went AWOL. Embarrassing. Sorry about that.

@LаngLаngС No worries. I was pretty sure you didn't mean to endorse it.

Magnetic may be old news as such. But when people then use articles like those about magnetofection tech being explored, they have a totally different web of rationales in place. That is not 'sciences that underpins' but 'science used as interpreted'. The mentioned web may be full of errors and non sequiturs. But if these articles are used those need to be taken at serious face value and weighed against the other arguments.

What I see with most 'fact checkers': take the most ridiculous part, then throw something at it, get an 'expert' testimonial. That's ideal for talking past each other.

Take Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment, where it is absolutely clear in the body text that it is a active listening question, explorative, and working with analogy; not what the headline made of it.

It gets full-on sinister, yet also laughably ridiculous, when we then read:

> Donald Trump […] then suggested injecting disinfectant as a miracle cure.

That quote is from a fresh Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 10TH EDITION PDF

A publication worried about 'fake-news' online. With the most horrible methodology.

That brings me to another more general question:

On HistorySE a Q is deemed 'too basic' if 'it can be answered by single link on the net'.

That's not a very good policy per se on HSE, and cannot be read as 'that should suffice in any case'. Its main intention is to nudge people to research their Qs beforehand and document that within the post.

For SekpticsSE, I see that sometimes an answer is basically "Snopes did that already and here's it".

That's problematic on several fronts.

This is x-hand info, relies on authority of the nth degree, the fact-checking is often very sloppy (there are good ones, TBS, but at least we have not the slightest guarantee for any case)—and in the last year was very often quite 'motivated'.

Is here a metaQ on the reliability and suitability for facxt-checking sites as source/references in answers?

I'd suggest to firmly discourage reliance on 'fact-checkers' as primary pillars in any answer.

It feels like if we do have something like that for Wikipedia as ref:

Free feel to be inspired by it, but if you can in any way: retrace those steps and check the sources for yourself (if WP indeed has them!)?

@Oddthinking Well, are we drawn in when reading stuff like this henrymakow.com/2021/06/-dr-jane-ruby-warns.html ? For some it is exactly underpinned by that. IDK how popular that is now. And I agree that we cannot cover absolutely all angles. But that one seems quite big right now?

I keep wondering whether it would be better to improve questions to explicitly include such things, or insist on answers to cover it then in more detail?

@LаngLаngС I am not interested in relitigating Trump claims. I think we already covered that one.

@LаngLаngС If you want to try to get fact-checking sites banned, ask on Meta.

@LаngLаngС The answers should provide more robust references than the question. If the question provides high-quality references debunking the nonsense (as the magnetism one did), it makes it much tougher to answer. At some point you are left asking the OP "Why don't you believe the sources you are quoting?"

@LаngLаngС I do not need to read, let alone debunk, that speculation of how a person became magnetised until there is some reasonable evidence that a person became magnetised. There isn't any. Problem solved.

Not interested in hearing which species the Loch Ness monster is, or how many of them remain, or how it survives the cold, or how it migrated to Scotland, until someone shows there IS a Loch Ness monster.

@Oddthinking Nothing "relitigating"; just illustration (and imo pretty self-evident) that reliance on the label 'fact-checker' is misguided (and some so called outright fraudulent as well). Illustration for x-hand level information, of chinese whispers.

@Oddthinking Not 'banned' (way too radical) just encouraging users to try to avoid using that as primary point in any A. I'd allow an A to contain theory, math, own research, logic etc. But: we do not allow logic as the sole basis for an answer More like that for 'fact-checking'-sites shouldn't be your only material you use as references?

@Oddthinking If you could rephrase that with a more fitting analogy, like sth with the wind in the flag visible during the moon shots Kubrick made ;)