As a rule of thumb, any popsci book hyped up by techbro/Joe Rogan/Lex Friedman/etc. types is going to be riddled with factual errors and "creative" interpretations, especially if it's about longevity, nutrition, health, etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/books/review/snooze-micha...
I mean, this Mathew Walker guy has been thoroughly vetted for accuracy by the diligent fact checkers from places known for integrity, like CNN
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/tv/2020/10/15/matthew-walker-...
or NPR
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558152847/why-we-sleep
More seriously, though, of course it’s true that smart and confident sounding people are going to dupe Joe Rogan. He doesn’t even pretend to be any sort of intellectual or rational truth-seeker. It is more concerning that such lousy kind of “expertise” as exhibited by Dr. Matthew Walker is more than good enough to dupe mainstream media organizations as well, but to anyone paying attention, this should not come as any sort of surprise: public trust in experts has been in free fall for more than a decade, and really accelerated in last 3 years. The thing you should ponder about, which you won’t, is that your first instinct here is to slander your ideological opponents, using slurs like “tech bros”.
I generally go out of my way to say this whenever given the chance, especially in contexts where this is unlikely to be the majority opinion.
I'm sick of cynical folks who don't understand that Lex, Joe, etc. are putting themselves out there and are willing to be wrong, but sincerely and genuinely believe that it's better to move the conversation forward than to sit idly by. Their sincerity is not paper thin, in fact it's thicc af. Youngin language aside, there's so much cynicism and echo chambers out there and these people are actually trying to fight that. It's commendable what they do.
There are some that want to ban the spread of misinformation. There's value to this. Some misinformation is harmful, like what we've seen about vaccines. People have died from COVID needlessly as a result of vaccine scare-mongering, and this is terrible! If there are people out there who are knowingly spreading misinformation they should be prosecuted under some sort of "you-cant-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre" statute.
IN ADDITION to that, there needs to be good faith discussion of the issues. Sticking to the vaccine example, people have legitimate questions. What's a vaccine? How does it work? How is it tested for safety? Are there any side effects? What's mRNA?
People like Fridman and Huberman attempt to have these discussions, and get into details, and explore the alternative arguments and reasons for supporting and rejecting them. Rogan I'm not sure about, I don't watch him much and what I've seen looks more like casual "shooting the shit" than a directed exploration of an issue, but as far as I can tell he seems to be acting in good faith and isn't one of those people covered by the second paragraph above.
The point I'm making is that when people are acting in bad faith and spreading misinformation, we should absolutely take action and, in your words, make it easier for the populace to reject a malicious actor outright, but the people we're talking about generally acting in good faith.
https://hubermanlab.com/dr-matthew-walker-the-science-and-pr...
Huberman has always been kind of interesting to me; his list of topics immediately makes him look like a bro-science peddler, but the guy kicks off all of his podcasts by talking about how he's a Stanford Neuroscience professor, and he reads all the journals himself - not exactly daring someone to oppose him, but you have to admit he's willing to risk some really high credentials by putting himself out there like that.
Of course, like nearly everyone else, I don't go read the studies myself and go hunting for math mistakes and misrepresentation, so it's still all a big appeal to authority.
In general the media has very low science literacy and loves someone credentialed, self-assured, and with an erudite accent and story to tell that can easily fill airtime.
Acknowledging that junk science has managed to platform itself on some of the podcasts you mentioned, for myself I'd say that the long-form format at least allows for a greater possibility that the b.s. will out itself over 1.5-2 hours, versus a show like TED Radio Hour that is happy to bundle up a few nice sounding stories into something they can slip a Blackrock ad into.
And for every border line irresponsible "left wing" guest they have, they have 10 "right wing" ones. Ye, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson, Bari, Taibbi, etc. etc. Perhaps right wing isn't the right label for this new emerging ideology. It seems to be a mix of cynical grifting (ironic given Taibbi's last book) and the politics of grievance and rejection by elites (therefore war must be raged against them) mixed with culture war BS (these days mostly anti-trans rhetoric). This cocktail of mystery seems to mostly live on the right of the political spectrum.
But when you dig a little deeper, most of these individuals were always right wing, they just played along with left wing dogma to be able to succeed in their media roles. Not unlike Trump, knowing that if he wanted to succeed in Hollywood and Manhattan real estate he'd have to vote democrat visibly. But that was never who he was.
> We're talking about a guy who spearheaded the "masks 4 all" push back at the beginning of COVID.
Also, what is left wing about the idea that masks help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses? I also thought that fell into the category of basic science literacy.