Corona misinformation: Spotify’s problem with Joe Rogan

vaccines being gene therapy; Vaccines that developed mutations and claims of a planned pandemic: Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan has spread misinformation. He defends the statements as opinions.

The music streaming service Spotify has announced steps to clarify following a protest by singer Neil Young and others over the spread of false information about the coronavirus. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said podcast warnings related to the coronavirus link to Spotify’s fact-based collection of information. This is to counteract false information.

Neil Young had arranged on Wednesday that his music is no longer available on Spotify. The reason for this was that the streaming service did not want to remove episodes of the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation.

Successful podcaster with a wide reach

Rogan is a comedian and martial arts host and has been running a successful podcast for over a decade, which Spotify signed in 2020. Rogan cannot be clearly assigned to a political spectrum; he advocates for the legalization of cannabis, supports the “eat-what-you-kill” movement, which campaigns against factory farming, and invites both left-wing politicians and right-wing conspiracy supporters to his podcast. On his huge podcast stage with many millions of listeners, he complains about an alleged “cancel culture” and that white, heterosexual men should be silenced.

During the pandemic, Rogan increasingly became an anti-vaccination star. This is how he treated his corona infection with the horse dewormer Ivermectin – which stands in a row with other alleged miracle cures, before which experts warn urgently.

Rogan speaks of gene therapy

The podcaster does not appear as a general opponent of vaccination, but spreads false claims about the mRNA vaccine. So he said in the summer of 2021 that these are real gene therapy. That is “absolutely wrong” explained Cindy Prins, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Florida. “Vaccines don’t make changes to their own DNA, so they don’t change their own DNA like gene therapy does. They also don’t replace mutated genes in their bodies.”

The vaccines work by directing cells to make versions of a harmless spike protein found on the surface of the coronavirus, allowing the immune system to recognize the protein and mount an antibody response against the virus in the event of a future infection. However, it does not change any genes, as is often claimed.

Not entirely new technology

mRNA technology has been researched for years, especially for cancer therapies. Experts believe that the current intensive research on vaccines opens up completely new possibilities – especially in the fight against cancer.

With the mRNA vaccines, there is “preliminary work for 20 to 30 years, so we were lucky that we were able to use it now,” explains immunologist Carsten Watzl. “People already knew how efficient vaccines can be developed. It was relatively easy to adapt them for Corona.”

Wanted at the request of Politifact themselves in August 2021 neither Spotify nor Rogan comment on the false claim. So the streaming service was well aware of the problematic content.

study misinterpreted

This also included the claim that vaccinated people would produce corona variants. A statement on misinterpretation of a study from 2015 based.

The author of the study publicly dismissed the allegation back. The study director also spoke clearly against it the unacceptable conclusions of the study.

“Joe Rogan gets this completely wrong,” said Andrew Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Pennsylvania State. “He takes a very careful paper on evolutionary futures and wrongly concludes that humans shouldn’t be vaccinated now.” Rogan just took a line from the summary of the work out of context and interpreted it his way.

In December, a doctor suggested on Rogan’s podcast among other things, the pandemic was planned and treatment methods were suppressed in order to enforce the corona vaccinations. The medic had previously already various misleading statements spread.

Rogan speaks of opinions

Rogan spoke up on Instagram now to the allegations. In it he defended two controversial interviews and described his interviewees as respected experts who merely expressed different opinions. However, the relevant statements are not opinions, but factual claims, some of which were unsupported or incorrect.

Rogan said he’s just doing conversations on the podcast and doing his best to get the truth out. It was never his goal to spread misinformation, but to have interesting conversations.