In a recent article, we looked at Deborah Blum’s The Poison Squad and the crusade of chemist Harvey Wiley against the food industry that insisted it was their divine right to kill babies and kittens. It wasn’t until 1906 until Congress would finally begin to pass the beginning of essential food safety regulations, but the fight did not stop there. Wiley & the Department of Agriculture would continue to be besieged by industry with countless bad faith attacks throughout the early 1900s.
Enter H. H. Langdon, a self-described “public health advocate” with impressive scientific credentials. Writing countless letters to the editor, extensive essays, book reviews, and other features in all sorts of publications big and small across the nation, Langdon was a fierce critic of Wiley. Langdon would suggest Wiley was “happiest when looking complacently into the horrorstricken eyes of women he has just scared half to death.”
Major news outlets that are still household names today considered Langdon a credible and trustworthy source. The New York Times gave real-estate to “public health advocate” H. H. Langdon so he could brand Harvey Wiley as a dishonest political radical. Taking to Scientific American, Langdon insisted that eating borax-laced meals would in fact improve your health!
There was one small problem.
H. H. Langdon never existed. He’s not a real person. In reality, H. H. Langdon was actually...H. L. Harris, chief publicist for the Pacific Coast Borax Company. Yes, that’s right. A rich jerk invented a fictional scientist solely to sabotage food safety regulations, and The New York Times published this propaganda uncritically.
Thankfully, The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets quickly learned their lesson, and certainly would never, ever fall for such antics again...rrright?
A Peek at The New York Times’ Frauds Gallery
While we here in the 21st century with the COVID-19 weren’t subjected to a completely imaginary person, industry was more than happy to prop up completely unqualified charlatans as supposed experts on the pandemic. Long time readers will know precisely who I’m talking about, but for those not in the know, let’s review just who got the stamp of approval from The New York Times and other mainstream outlets:
Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who was already dead wrong on Hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS, and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, made a pretty penny for herself peddling dangerous disinformation about COVID-19 on behalf of MAGA-aligned tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg & Peter Thiel. She repeatedly insisted that being an economist meant that she knew better than experienced doctors & scientists on their fields of expertise. The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and other pundits endorsed her unscientific falsehoods and allowed her to publish garbage editorials, as did The Atlantic.
Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, another economist graduated medical school to go right into conservative policymaking. He started 2020 producing a fraudulent seroprevalence study on behalf of an airline CEO. Later that year, he would be one of the first signers of a useless online petition championing a new SARS virus, propped up by a conservative think-tank bankrolled by fossil fuel billionaires pissy that people were working from home.
Jay would later repeatedly misrepresent himself as an epidemiologist. Numerous New York Times pundits have endorsed Bhattacharya as a legitimate and critical thinker worth listening to, repeating the lie that Jay is an epidemiologist. In reality, he is little more than a social media troll bankrolled by reactionary billionaires such as Peter Thiel.
Monica Gandhi of UCSF certainly has much more legitimate credentials than the economists, but her track record on all things COVID-19 is utterly horrific. The New York Times would never inform their readers of Gandhi’s many failings. Instead, they let her take out an entire opinion editorial blaming liberals who wanted to protect their children from a new SARS virus for the current war on American science & modern medicine.
Alasdair Munro from the United Kingdom was quoted by David Leonhardt, who uncritically endorsed the fictional concept of “immunity debt” in 2022 to suggest that children were constantly ill because of non-pharmaceutical interventions instead of the SARS-CoV-2 virus - which is now well-documented as negatively impacting the immune system. Immunity debt could have been debunked by asking any number of immunologists here in the United States. Leonhardt & The New York Times have never acknowledged this critical error.
These are just a few of the many fraudulent “experts” that The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have platformed uncritically. It’s clear that well over a century later, The New York Times has failed their readership time and time again. Just as doctors have an obligation to provide the public with legitimate medical advice, journalism has an obligation to provide the public with the full picture, not a selective misrepresentation that aligns with the policy preferences of wealthy interests.
In this day and age of social media, in which dangerous medical myths can spread like wildfire, our nation’s most trusted outlets for news have an obligation to ensure they aren’t giving a spotlight to dishonest frauds serving on behalf of nefarious agendas. They have to issue redactions & apologies when they give a platform to someone who is proven to be constantly wrong. Otherwise, you have a general public which believes absurdities that simply aren’t true.
On the other hand, perhaps that’s the point of all this. If I can make you believe something that’s completely false, then I wield great power over you. History is chock full of examples of horrible things done by people who sought that sort of power.
Has anyone else finally had enough of this crap?
Gawd yes. I've had a gutful of these people and their absurdities and grift. Shared to Bluesky. Thanks again for your work.