![]() ![]() It receives a large bulk of its funding from its own investment activities, not least in fossil fuels, energy utilities, tobacco, technology and consumer goods. Indeed the AIER is not just a free-market think-tank. The AIER did not simply host the event which produced the Declaration, but is also the registered domain name owner of the website publishing the Declaration,. It’s not easy to manage a website with millions of views ongoing, plus dealing with trolls.”īut when I asked him exactly how AIER was “checking and vetting signatories” and whether they were contacting people to verify their claimed identities and scientific credentials, he failed to respond.įor a document that is supposed to represent an emerging body of scientific opinion, the lack of vetting is surprising – and indicates that the Great Barrington Declaration is less a genuinely independent scientific enterprise, than a propaganda project. ![]() ![]() Tucker, AIER’s editorial director, responded on Twitter claiming that: “Actually admins have been beating back fraudsters from the beginning. By experimenting with the process myself, I was able to add myself as a signatory under the ‘Medical & Public Health Scientists’ category and received an automated email confirming this. But when I attempted to check how the signatory process works, I discovered that there was no vetting procedure in place for signatories – anybody could become a confirmed signatory of the Declaration and be categorised as a scientist or medic by falsifying entry information and ticking a box. The claim that “thousands of scientists” are supporting the Barrington Declaration was reported far and wide by major media outlets from the BBC to the Daily Mail. The Declaration itself – which calls for only the elderly and vulnerable to be quarantined while encouraging young people to contract the virus – was signed by an initial batch of some 35 scientists.Īs of the time of writing, the Declaration claims to be signed by over 5,000 ‘Medical & Public Health Scientists’ and 11,267 ‘Medical Practitioners’, along with over 155,000 members of the general public. The Great Barrington Declaration, after the town in which it was created, was drafted by Gupta with two other top US scientists, Professor Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University and Stanford Fellow Jay Bhattacharya. Among them was the distinguished Oxford University epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta, among the most vocal proponents of a ‘herd immunity’ strategy. On 3 October 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian free-market think-tank in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, hosted a private gathering of scientists, economists and journalists to discuss responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Documents seen by Byline Times confirm that the Great Barrington Declaration advocating a ‘herd immunity’ approach to the COVID-19 pandemic has been sponsored by an institution embedded in a Koch-funded network that denies climate science while investing in polluting fossil fuel industries. ![]()
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