Something “interesting” happened today. Dr John Campbell, proprietor of a YouTube channel I frequent (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg), had published a 36-minute interview with Andrew Bridgen MP about his criticisms of COVID vaccine safety. I watched it this morning.
When, later today, I went to Dr Campbell’s website to check for updates, I found that the interview with Mr Bridgen was no longer there. I made a comment to that effect on Dr Campbell’s latest thread, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4fn2QFO_A&t=670s. Here is the start of the conversation:
Neil Lock
1 hour ago
Where did the Andrew Bridgen interview go? It was still there about ten minutes ago. It isn’t now.
1 reply
Aturi
40 minutes ago
Removed by YouTube for violating their community guidelines. Campbell has been given his first strike and banned for a week.
I don’t know who “Aturi” is, but I have no reason to disbelieve her/him/hesh. No more reason, indeed, than I have to disbelieve the films made by the Russians when they “liberated” Auschwitz and similar camps. Or to think that the establishment have any right at all to silence either Mr Bridgen or Dr Campbell over this matter, unless and until Mr Bridgen’s case is proved to have been false.
We do indeed live in “interesting” times.
Bigger fool him for putting it on Youtube! There are alternative channels out there. I am harassing my MP for an explanation of Bridgen’s expulsion. The Chief Whip said he had “crossed a line”. I don’t know what that means. I am also trying to find out who ordered the boycott of Bridgen’s speech on 17 March – not a single soul on the opposition benches; Sir Christopher Chope and A.N. Other on the Conservative benches.
If they are trying to maintain a pretence that our government is functioning normally, they are not doing a very good job of it. Or perhaps they just don’t care any more? After all, what are we going to do about it?
Dr. John Campbell (a nurse with a PhD in nursing education) was a zealous advocate of the Establishment narrative before performing this radical volte-face. While motive does not go to the validity or truth-value of an argument, I am suspicious of his motives. It may be that he is guided by a wish to attract income from YouTube by being deliberately contrarian. Admittedly, there may also be an element to his motives of realising that he was wrong before and wishing to back-track, and I’ve noticed that many of the worst people behind the whole disgraceful affair, such as Dr. Campbell, have started changing their positions. I should add that Dr. Campbell has not so much gone into reverse, it’s more that he is attempting to water down the narrative. He still buys into the idea that there could be a mass deadly pandemic at any moment and I’m afraid my impression of him is that he is a silly little man and not very bright.
During 2020, he deleted comments by myself and others that were critical of his hysterical, uninformed stance in support of medical authoritarianism. He now claims to be against it all, which is too late for those who foolishly followed the ‘expert’ advice of him and others.
In fact, Dr. Campbell is talking outside his own expertise and has no more claim to be an expert on this subject than you or I. Furthermore, just as he was wrong in 2020, I am of the view that he is wrong now. I think he is espousing some sort of conspiracy theory but I haven’t paid too much attention to it, as I think it’s silly. More relevant is that he claims that the official data of the time justified his stance then and when the ‘evidence’ changed, he then changed stance. This makes him sound reasonable, but as I have pointed out all along, and as I told Dr. Campbell at the time, the government’s own data showed that the government’s own policies were wrong and that the reaction to Covid-19 was hysterical and mad, there was no need to lockdown society and no need for instructions to wear mandatory face coverings and all the other measures. It was all in front of him, in black and white, in plain sight. There has never been any need for conspiracy theories. This was the case even if we completely accepted Dr. Campbell’s mad ravings back in 2020 and his own interpretation of the data of the time. Even if there was a virus, it was simply got out of all proportion. Dr. Campbell deleted my comments to that effect from his channel, even though they were polite, civil and reasoned.
I think Dr. Campbell’s use of the ‘Doctor’ title in the context of Covid-19 is extremely misleading and disingenuous. People who hold doctoral degrees and professional credentials should always be careful when venturing outside their expertise that they do not give the impression that their credentials lend weight to what they say.
In fact, this post will be the last time I refer to this character as Dr. Campbell, as I do not believe it is clinically warranted in the context of discourse about Covid-19. I will instead refer to him as Mr John Campbell, Ph.D., R.N. His doctorate may as well be in Tudor political history for what relevance it has to the subject at hand.
As you can see, Neil, I am not easily taken in. That is because, a very long time ago, in another life, I was taken in and I was thereby immunised against charlatans like Mister Campbell, Ph.D., R.N.
Tom, I only discovered John Campbell’s channel about six months ago. Yes, I hear that two or three years ago he was agreeing with the establishment narrative, but that is no longer so. Perhaps I’m over-charitable, but my best guess is that he has understood the errors in the narrative, changed his viewpoint, and is trying to make up for his earlier errors as best he can.
What I do know is that, where his subject matter overlaps things I have a fair degree of knowledge about (e.g. the differences between COVID statistics from different places), he talks a lot of sense. And internationally, he has 2.75 million subscribers. I don’t think they can all be wrong.
He doesn’t in any way hide the fact that his doctorate is a Ph.D, not an MD. In fact, it’s on his About page. So I don’t think it is disingenuous for him to call himself “Dr.” But you can call him what you want.
@Neil Lock
Come along, let’s not pretend. He is misleading people about his credentials by presenting himself as “Dr John Campbell”.
I know this isn’t very nice, and I don’t derive any satisfaction from it – I feel bad about it, actually – but this person supported one of the most outrageous infringements on ordinary civil liberties ever seen, he lent what reputation and credentials he had to it, and made money out of it, enriching himself and probably deriving narcissistic joy out of it. He was wrong, he deleted perfectly reasonable comments telling him he was wrong, acted arrogant and smarmy and ridiculed people who told him he was wrong, ignored data and arguments that told him he was wrong, and misinterpreted data and arguments that he thought told him he was right but in fact told him he was wrong.
He is STILL putting incorrect arguments across, STILL believes in the overarching repressive narrative. I cannot know what his true motives are, as I can’t see inside his head; it could well be he is just pretending because he knows the previous narrative has been found out and also realises he can make money by being contrarian.
If he called himself “John Campbell, Ph.D., R.N.”, I would have no issue with that at all. It would be accurate. You know – or you should know – that people with doctoral degrees should take care in professional situations not to mislead people about their expertise. If it turned out that his PhD was in Tudor political history and his thesis was on the political differences between Henry VII and Richard III, you’d have something to say about it, surely. As it is, his PhD was in nursing education, which doesn’t seem much of an improvement given that we’re essentially discussing epidemiology and mathematics. It may be that he does have relevant experience as a nurse – I think he claims as much – but that’s not the point.
In fact, he’s misleading people in two respects:
(i). many of his viewers will believe or assume that he is a medical doctor, or at worst, a non-medic with a clinical or scientific doctorate, as his video talks are about clinical matters and people assume that someone calling himself a doctor in that context must be a registered medic or something very similar, so he is taking advantage of titular confusion;
(ii). even those viewers who pay close enough attention to notice that he is a nurse will not realise that his doctorate was pedagogical rather than clinical. They will think that his PhD gives him some sort of academic or professional expertise in epidemiology when it appears he has none.
I would be making the same observations, by the way, even if his views fully accorded with my own. I am suspicious of all ‘experts’. I am suspicious of everybody, really.
I agree that, now this particular insanity has subsided – or been replaced by another – we should hold all the panic-mongers to account.
Still up on Rumble
https://rumble.com/v2l3cfk-mr-andrew-bridgen-mp.html
Thanks, Matt. Looks like it was unilateral action by YouTube. I’m told it’s still up on odysee, too.
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