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0 pointscthalupa4mo ago0 comments

The lead "researcher" on that paper is a climate change denier who also claims covid didn't exist. He also used racial slurs against a former colleague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Rancourt

He's not a credible source. HAL is not a peer reviewed journal, it is an open archive where you can upload papers regardless of publication status.

Meanwhile, we have excellent actual research done by credible researchers in peer reviewed journals like https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... that directly dispute this nonsense.

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youarentrightjr4mo ago

> The lead "researcher" on that paper is a climate change denier who also claims covid didn't exist. He also used racial slurs against a former colleague.

I invite you to read another important Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

No doubt Denis Rancourt holds false and reprehensible beliefs. But you can defeat his claims without attacking his person.

cthalupaOP4mo ago

I would argue that his general stance on COVID is HIGHLY relevant and not poisoning the well, as is his general stance on other science-related topics, which climate change definitely is. If someone claims that COVID doesn't even exist then I think it is quite fair to immediately discard anything they have to say on this topic.

Mentioning his racism is perhaps poisoning the well, but the other stuff I think is relevant.

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