Marty Makary is neither anti-vaccine nor a conspiracy theorist. He's a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, author of the paper that turned into the "checklist manifesto", as well as multiple NY Times best-selling books on medicine. Please stop.
Oz was a professor at the columbia university medical school until like 2015 and he was by all accounts an incredible cardiac surgeon before swerving into being a professional crackpot. He's still a crackpot though, and for quite a long time was both a crackpot and a professor at a prestigious medical school.
I'm not sure how "was a professor at Columbia" is supposed to be a rebuttal, and "crackpot" is just a slur. He's currently a professor at Johns Hopkins, and in fact, right now has a book at #10 on the New York Times best seller list [1]. He's a completely mainstream doctor who happens to (I assume) disagree with you about something.
I was talking about Mehmet Öz. I was pointing out that affiliation with a mainstream medical institution appears to be compatible with crackpot beliefs. I don't know anything or have an opinion about Makary but Öz is a crackpot. Crackpot is a slur and I am using it intentionally.
Except he plainly isn't anti-vaccine, nor a conspiracy theorist. It's a lazy slur, and it's discouraging to see people repeating it.
He was against a Covid vaccine mandate, which is not "anti-vaccine", except in the heads of people who have replaced logic and scientific knowledge with politics.
He’s a contrarian, not a conspiracy theorist, but that led him astray when he became the goto guy for reporters looking for a real doctor (well, surgeon) to represent the anti-vaccine mandate side. That still puts him ahead of the solid anti-vax side but suggests that he’s likely to make the same choice again in the future – it’s addictive to think you’re on to something everyone else missed – and I would imagine it’s especially a risk if that means getting on the bad side of a famously vindictive boss.
