“Why are places like Stanford and Johns Hopkins hosting gatherings of well-known coronavirus cranks?”

Joshua in comments asks:

Why are places like Stanford and Johns Hopkins hosting gatherings of well-known coronavirus cranks?

My reply:

Considering that about half the electorate plans to vote for Donald Trump, who endorses lots of conspiracy theories that are much more ridiculous than those of the coronavirus cranks–and lots of non-Trump voters also believe in conspiracy theories of their own–it makes sense that some nonzero percentages of Stanford and Johns Hopkins faculty would support such views and some additional percentage would consider it a savvy political play to endorse these views. On the other hand, yeah, there are lots of minority views that still aren’t supported by conferences at these universities. For example, I’d guess that more than 10% of Stanford and Johns Hopkins faculty believe in astrology, but they’re not about to host conferences on the topic, as it would be just too embarrassing.

I think that if the coronavirus cranks did not have major political support, they wouldn’t be holding these conferences.

The other thing is that a lot of people are rightfully annoyed by the b.s. coming from mainstream coronavirus authorities, so they feel like it’s only fair to give the coronavirus cranks a hearing, as, for all their flaws, they’re providing an alternative perspective.

P.S. Just to be clear I don’t think that anyone is claiming that all the speakers at these conferences are coronavirus cranks. Many of them, though, yeah, they are. Remember these people?

P.P.S. Oddly enough, I spoke at Stanford the day before that covid conference—and I was talking about the political content of unreplicable research, in a seminar series whose previous speakers included some of the speakers at the covid conference. It’s a close-knit world.