(If you post a link, a little context helps others to see if it is something they might like to read.)
[All french geeks now in their 40s took that show right in their face] #love
Also I am trying to understand their relevance / importance in the grand scheme. Why is this getting traction?
I don't think that is true at all for "geeks" that witnessed first-hand[1] their manipulative and deceptive attempts at defending their PhDs and scientific papers in early 2000's. After that they doubled down on the intelligent design bullshit, used any opportunity to promote their books (fair enough), while attacking the few journalists that actually tried to expose the fraud.
They should have sticked to sci-fi, but even in their early days they couldn't help but try to vulgarize proper science, even though they weren't really qualified. Good intentions don't make up for peddling pseudoscience, plagiarism, and the constant smoke and mirrors. And it seems they were also facing some pretty serious legal issues in their personal life.
[1] https://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Discussions/Sciences/topikunik...
To my children they are just a fascinating case of botched cosmetic surgery
That's just my social bubble, no idea about the wider public.
Their books are generally intended to popularize the scientific work of real researchers. They are well written. Their public appearances on TV are not without humor and self-mockery. They have deserved the sympathy of many french people.
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/
If this summary is correct, they seem to have deserved their PhD in the sense that they managed to bluff their way through it. A bit like getting the gold medal for a marathon as a consolation price when you've managed to do just 10 metres of it (on a unicycle, for reasons unclear to anyone observing).
It was utter nonsense, and a quick read of any page in any of the papers supporting their PhD thesis from someone with working knowledge of the area will show it to be word salads.
Others linked to John Baez's analysis of the case, which stands correct 20 years later.
I always think that there must be a component of drug addiction in people that undergoes so much extreme transformations, and still go back for more. Maybe Painkillers applied in those surgeries have something to do with that. Is a trap for rich people affected from personal insecurities
What the data suggests is that in aggregate we're largely moving death around. From who to whom is the question.
That's not the old cohort that typically dies from Covid anymore.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insuran...
Their friends said they were convinced their healthy lifestyle would protect them and they were admitted to hospital in mid-December."
Imagine being over 70 thinking you aren't at risk.
It's really a shame.
I do (just the one thankfully, whose 'intuition' tells them that it will be quite alright, despite having frequent contacts with other people), and it's really not great knowing that there is very real risk of seeing them on the ICU at some point.
"die of Covid"
"the brothers had not been vaccinated against Covid-19."
"Their friends said they were convinced their healthy lifestyle would protect them"
"Asked why they had chosen not to have the Covid vaccines if they were not themselves anti-vaxxers, Luc Ferry said on Monday: "Like Igor, Grichka wasn't antivax, he was just antivax for himself. "They were both athletic, with not an inch of fat, and they thought the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus.""
https://www.lamontagne.fr/paris-75000/actualites/covid-19-qu...
From 31 may to 14 november 2021 a total of 2854 unvaccinated people died of COVID19 in France and 2179 died while having at least one shot of vaccine.
About 77% of the population has at least one shot in France.
It seems like they were actually antivax but did not want the social stigma associated with the term. "I'm not antivax but however yadda yadda"
It reminds me of the classical "Racism is pretty fun because it does not exists, just ask around you'll see nobody is"
In the U. S., it would have been a sentence ripped right out of the jackass playbook: “I’m not a racist, but…”, <says blatantly racist statement>.
One of my friends says he is not vegetarian or vegan, he just doesn't eat meat and tells everyone they should not eat meat.
In more general terms, outside of covid for a moment, do you think so? If you have been vaccinated for X, Y, and Z, but think the risks of vaccinating for R out weigh the benefits, does that make you antivax?
Being "fit" certainly helps your immune system. But as we see here, it doesn't make you invincible.
