October 26, 2024 (updated Nov. 24) -- I watched Bill Maher's “Real Time” show last night, which included an interview with Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News personality who now hosts the Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. Bill likes to have so-called conservatives on his show, along with liberals, and everyone in between.

The problem with this, and any other talk show, is that, given time constraints, extensive real time fact-checking is next to impossible, particularly if the guest spewing misinformation happens to agree with Maher's own views. The misinformation in this particular show had to do with gender-affirming care children. Kelly said gender surgery on children is a huge problem, but it is actually quite rare. She also indicated that damage done by puberty-delaying drugs is irreversible, but it isn't, at least in over 90 percent of cases. Reference was also made to the Cass Review, a massive study on gender-affirming care in the U.K. It was used to back up false claims on the show.

I probably wouldn't have picked up on this, except that I had previously heard a very deep dive on the Cass Review presented on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast (https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_995). In episode 995, from 40:25 minutes in to the 69 minute mark there is a good explanation of the Cass Review, and the problems with it. It turns out that Megyn Kelly, and other right wing media hosts and writers, have misrepresented, and are still misrepresenting what the Cass Review actually says. Listen for yourself if you are interested.

Conservatives are using the Cass Review as an excuse to pass simplistic, one-size-fits-all, laws. According to the Skeptics podcast, conservative interpretations of the Cass Review, the conclusions they draw from it, and the laws based on it, are simplistic and flawed, as is the review itself.

Laws prohibiting gender affirming care are designed to prohibit certain medical procedures, even if the procedures have been agreed to by children, their parents and their doctors. In this regard, the laws are not unlike anti-abortion laws, in which governments prohibit patients from making certain decisions about their own medical care.

This subject is one that Maher has returned to a few times, but not nearly as often as his current favorite, college students protesting against Israel's war on Gaza. It seems to me that you should be able to protest Israel's conduct of this war without being labeled antisemitic. After all, Israeli troops have killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, as well as hostages (three Israeli hostages were waving a white flag when they were gunned down by Israeli soldiers) aid workers (including some people who worked for World Central Kitchen) and journalists. That seems like pretty indiscriminate killing to me.

From the get go, Maher declared himself to be a member of “Team Israel.” The trouble is, this is no game, and there is no need to pick a team. People in Gaza are literally starving to death due to Israeli aid restrictions. The team that Maher has joined is led by a corrupt leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is backed by religious extremists. Netanyahu is the Donald Trump of Israel, prolonging the war to stay in power and out of jail.

This war is also spreading to other countries. Some fear that it could eventually lead to World War Three. That could be a bit of a problem. It might be time for Team Israel to stop fanning the flames of war.

The Israeli government has not only peddled false news stories to stop hostage release negotiations (both sides are to blame for this) but has, at the same time, contrary to law, seized more land on the West Bank. Netanyahu seems to have fallen into an obvious trap set by Hamas to turn Israel into an international pariah, with Maher cheering him on.

Maher argues there are only two sides in this fight, Israel and Hamas, but there are many sides to it, including the Israeli government, Hamas, the opposition to Israel's war conduct, which includes the Hostage families, and the civilians in Gaza who are caught in the middle. Maher argues that if you are opposed to Israel's war conduct, that makes you pro-Hamas. That is not only false, it is simple-minded.

Another subject that Maher brings up quite often is the conspiracy story, pushed by Donald Trump and others, that Covid originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Maher is very angry that the Biden Administration pushed back hard against this theory, and suppressed it. There are extensive scientific discussions that punch big holes in the lab theory. There is a pretty good roundup at Factcheck.org (https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/scicheck-no-bombshell-on-covid-19-origins-u-s-intelligence-rebuts-claims-about-sick-lab-workers/).

As far as the science goes, particularly in regard to examination of the actual Covid samples collected from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China (see the latest study of this in the September 19, 2024 issue of cell.com) where the pandemic actually started, supports the animal to human theory, rather than the lab story. The lab conspiracy is highly suspect, because, despite investigations, there is no evidence to support it. For some, however, the conspiracy story is just impossible to resist. There are, of course, some U.S. Government agency reports supporting the lab story, and I can see the attraction, in terms of bureaucratic empire preservation and political gain.

The problem with embracing this conspiracy story is that it ignores the real danger of how this pandemic really started. Michael Worobey, one of the authors of the study published in cell.com referenced above, is quoted in a Sept. 19, 2024, University of Arizona news article, saying that although there has been an increased focus on lab safety since the pandemic began more than four years ago, “surprisingly little has been done to decrease the risk of a virus jumping from wildlife into humans again.”

Worobey also said in the article, “We need to start putting the evidence of how this pandemic started into action by taking serious, concrete action to stop the perilous practice of bringing live animals with potential pandemic pathogens into densely populated urban areas.” Maher himself said as much on his show before he got hooked on the lab conspiracy idea.

Another topic that Maher likes to hammer on is the government restrictions imposed during the Covid pandemic, particularly school closures, isolation and masks. School closures make sense, since schools are places where diseases routinely spread between students. From the students, Covid would then spread to teachers, and from students to their parents and to their grandparents, and others who are vulnerable. But, what the hell, do it anyway, I suppose. Who cares about teachers or grandparents? Maher particularly knocks the mask requirement, quoting a study, the British “Cochrane Review,” which some, including Maher, have misrepresented as saying that wearing masks do little to stop the spread of Covid.

The problem with this, as with Maher's reference to the Cass Review, is that his representations on the show do not accurately reflect what the Cochrane Review actually says. For instance, the Cochrane Review did not test the effectiveness of masks themselves. The review itself admits it does not prove masks are ineffective because the study was extremely limited. For an honest review of the real science on Covid, check out the “Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson” podcast on YouTube. Dan Wilson is a molecular biologist who defends science, reason, and good medical practices.

Back to the Cochrane Review, it reads, in conclusion, “The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions ... The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect.”

The American Journal of Public Health summed up the Cochrane Review this way, “The science of masking and its impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission is complicated. Observational studies present valuable data that warrant consideration in informing policy with a full understanding of the utility of mask use in a variety of settings. The Cochrane review did not include a large body of evidence, and that resulted in a biased conclusion. If all types of studies are considered, it is clear that well-fitting, properly used masks do have a measurable and significant effect on reducing transmission when properly worn by the vast majority of the population during times of high community transmission.”

In other words, Maher's representation of this study's conclusions as strong evidence of the ineffectiveness of masking, is the opposite of what the Cochrane Review actually says. The prevalence of anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-distancing sentiments in the U.S. probably caused increases in the number of deaths during the pandemic. Maher has often criticized and complained about masking on his show, so he was quick to embrace a supporting sentence or two from the Cochrane Review.

On his show, Maher has often railed not only against masking, but against Covid lockdowns and school closures. Instead, he seems to favor a natural immunity strategy, often referred to as “herd immunity.”

Sweden tried “herd immunity” during the Covid pandemic, and it was a disaster. A scathing report in Nature (March 22, 2022) notes that the Covid death rate in Sweden was 10 times that of Norway (which, unlike Sweden, followed the science). The Nature report says The Swedish pandemic strategy seemed targeted towards “natural” herd-immunity and avoiding a societal shutdown ... If Sweden wants to do better in future pandemics, the scientific method must be re-established ... ”

I do like Maher's show, even though he is showing his age, getting more conservative, and more cranky, as time goes by. That is natural. He claims not to have changed, but he has. He is not as anti-vaccine, anti-science and anti-mask as the lunatic fringe, but he certainly is providing them with some comfort on his show.

He is still funny, though, and his funniest show I've seen in a long time is a recent one, in which he participates in a comedy skit interview on his show conducted by Jiminy Glick (comedian Martin Short). You can find it easily on YouTube. Check it out. It is a scream. I especially appreciated Glick's snide comment about relying on medical information supplied by a comic's nightclub act.

Here is an update: On his last show of this season (November 22) he had noted physicist Neil deGrass Tyson as his guest, who pushed back against Maher's anti-science stance in the show's “Overtime” segment. Tyson argued that people, in general, are not good at understanding the laws of probability. He argued the same people who are unwilling to accept the tiny risk of taking a vaccine, are willing to accept the larger risk of becoming infected and exposing others to a deadly disease.

This anti-vax stance fits into Carlo Cipolla's “Five Laws of Stupidity” theory. That is, an intelligent person, takes the “win-win” of taking the vaccine: It helps me and it helps others, too. The stupid person adopts a “lose-lose” stance of not taking the vaccine: I take the chance it won't help me, but, in doing so, I also take the chance it may hurt others, by further spreading the disease.

Tyson said, “I'm trying to give credit back to doctors, where our life expectancy is three times what it was 150 years ago, and everyone before 150 years ago ate organic, and half of them died before they were 35. Science matters in this!”

Maher replied, “Of course it does.”

Thanks to sprouts schools YouTube channel (by way of the religious site onthewing.org) for source material on Cipolla's “Five Laws of Stupidity.”

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Copyright © 2007 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.