The stories that are too good to check

Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news station in which, according to the TV reporter, he’d said hospitals in his state were so swamped with patients who’d overdosed on ivermectin that gunshot victims were struggling to be seen. For context, ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug used for deworming horses that has been touted by vaccine sceptics as an effective prophylactic against Covid-19. For boosters of the Covid vaccines, this story was manna from heaven. Here were a bunch of hicks so dumb they were stuffing themselves with horse pills rather than getting jabbed, with predictably disastrous results.

There was only one problem — it wasn’t true. A hospital in rural Oklahoma that had worked with the ER doctor issued a statement saying it hadn’t treated any patients with complications arising from taking ivermectin. Two days later, Rolling Stone issued a clarification saying it had been ‘unable to independently verify any such cases’.