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 Home page in January 2023 | |
| Available in | English |
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| Founder | Toby Young |
| URL | dailysceptic |
| Part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in the United Kingdom |
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The Daily Sceptic is a blog created by British commentatorToby Young. It has publishedmisinformation about COVID-19 vaccines[9] and engaged inclimate change denial.[16]
Young foundedThe Daily Sceptic as a successor to his previous blogLockdown Sceptics, which was set up in April 2020.[17] He serves as the website'seditor-in-chief.[18]
The blog is published by the company Skeptics Ltd;Noah Carl,Luke Oliver Johnson and Toby Young are its directors.[19]
In April 2024, naturalistChris Packham referred to the blog as the "Daily Septic" in an appearance onBBC One and said it was "basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to thefossil fuel industry." Young called Packham's claim "both false anddefamatory".[20]
In October 2021,The Daily Sceptic published an article suggesting thatOffice for National Statistics (ONS) data showing an increase in the number of teenage deaths between June and September 2021 was connected to the rollout ofCOVID-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom. The ONS confirmed that the figures were accurate, but added that there was no evidence to link the increase in deaths to the COVID-19 vaccines.[1]
In November 2021,The Daily Sceptic used data published in aUK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) report to claim that 71% of adults hospitalised with COVID-19 were vaccinated. Thedisinformation analysis organisationLogically noted that the complete UKHSA report cautioned against using the raw data to estimate vaccine effectiveness due to it not taking inherent biases such as "differences in risk, behaviour and testing" into account.[2]
In September 2022,The Daily Sceptic reported on a declaration by a group of scientists and doctors claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines were causing an "international medical crisis". Thefact-checking website Health Feedback noted thatThe Daily Sceptic did not acknowledge that the claims made in the declaration had previously been fact-checked and found to be inaccurate, unsupported or misleading.[3]
Also in September 2022,PayPal shut down the accounts of Young, theFree Speech Union andThe Daily Sceptic. The accounts were closed because of breaches of PayPal's acceptable use policy, thought to be because of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.[21] The accounts were restored later that month after extensive criticism of PayPal's actions by MPs.[22]
In December 2022,The Daily Sceptic claimed that a study published in theClinical Research in Cardiology journal showed that people who had "died suddenly" were probably killed by the COVID-19 vaccines. The article was widely shared on social media, because of the phrase "died suddenly" being associated withan anti-vaccine film of the same name. Experts consulted by Health Feedback found that the claim was not supported by the study's actual findings.[7][8]
In August 2022, aDaily Sceptic article claimed that theWorld Climate Declaration had "dealt a savage blow" to the idea that man-madegreenhouse gas emissions are responsible for climate change, and argued that global warming may instead be a natural event.[23]Climate Feedback andEuronews noted that most of the document's signatories were not climate scientists and included personalities with ties tofossil fuel interests, and that experts in the field ofclimatology had concluded that human greenhouse gas emissions are predominantly responsible for climate change.[11][24][14] A March 2023 report by theInstitute for Strategic Dialogue found thatThe Daily Sceptic article was the fourth most-shared URL from among 32 climate-denying websites onTwitter between 1 January 2022 and 1 March 2023.[14]
In October 2022, aDaily Sceptic article said that studies inGreenland showed that climate change is caused by natural factors rather than carbon emissions. The scientists behind these studies toldAgence France-Presse thatThe Daily Sceptic had misrepresented their findings, and that the impact offossil fuels on global warming was well-documented.[12]
A January 2023Daily Sceptic article cited a sentence from the abstract of a 2020 study published inNature that noted a lack of rising temperatures in Antarctica despite rising levels of carbon dioxide, claiming it proved that human-driven climate change is an "unproven hypothesis". The paper's co-author, Hansi Singh of theUniversity of Victoria in Canada, toldPolitiFact that the abstract had been taken out of context. She noted that the point of the paper was to show that Antarctica experienced significantly less warming than the global average between 1950 and 2014. The article was shared by American political commentatorDinesh D'Souza in April.[25]
A May 2023Daily Sceptic article claimed that underwater volcanoes could cause global warming which is otherwise attributed to human activities, and that climate models do not take volcanic activity into consideration. Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, a professor of geology and climate change atAarhus University in Denmark, calledThe Daily Sceptic's article an example of "alternative facts". She explained that climate models do account for volcanic activity, and that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by human activity is 60 times higher than the amount produced by volcanoes.[15]
The Daily Sceptic article states that the increased number of deaths corresponded with the timing of the roll out of Covid-19 vaccinations among this age group and asks if this is "real-world evidence that over the summer the vaccines killed nine times as many 15-19 year-olds as Covid did?" ... There is also no evidence that this is caused by Covid-19 vaccines.
The Daily Sceptic, a website that often propagates COVID-19 misinformation, has published a misleading article regarding vaccine effectiveness.
Outlets likeOne American News Network (OAN) and Daily Sceptic ... reported on the declaration. Neither outlet acknowledged that the claims made in the declaration were previously fact-checked and found to be inaccurate, unsupported or misleading.
Social media users are sharing an online article that claims the "COVID vaccine destroys natural immunity" and creates "negative immunity" based on misinterpretation of a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The misleading headline and link to an article published by the Daily Sceptic has been viewed more than 20,000 times on Facebook ... and has been shared more than 11,000 times on Twitter.
It's not surprising that the usual suspects are amplifying this "study" as slam-dunk evidence that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous and do more harm than good. I surveyed some of the usual suspects, and here's just a little of what I found: ... The Daily Sceptic (a denialist website): Florida Recommends Against mRNA Vaccination for Males Aged 18-39 Due to 84% Increase in Heart Death Risk
An article written by Will Jones for the website The Daily Sceptic, promoting this claim, also went viral through social media posts... Jones, who holds a PhD in political philosophy, asserted that the study meant it was now a "firmly established" fact that COVID-19 vaccines are responsible for sudden deaths. ... However, experts who weren't involved in the study found that such an interpretation isn't substantiated by the work actually done in the study.
