Will you help sponsor "The Great Autism Debate" for just $5? It likely won't cost you a dime!

Suppose we collected $1M in prize money. The challengers get paid just for showing up, win or lose. I predict even with a $1M pot, they won't be able to assemble a team of qualified challengers.

Executive summary

I just saw this post on X today:

This is a great idea with one modification: the participants split the pot (50% to each team). That way, nobody can “game” the outcome.

The idea is to start with a debate on a hugely important topic “Do vaccines cause autism?” between two highly qualified teams.

I want to use a large donation pool to attract a team of qualified scientific challengers. The good news is that it is almost a certainty that won’t cost you a dime because even with a $1M incentive, I don’t think anyone on their side of the issue will show up.

Our team

Our autism debate team is listed here.

Their team

To qualify for the debate, the accepting scientists must have an h-index of at least 20 and have published one or more papers about autism in the peer-reviewed medical literature. This makes it a meaningful discussion.

The ground rules

1. The debate will be for a mutually agreeable time, but at least 2 hours.

2. Both sides will have equal floor time.

3. No side can hold the floor for more than 3 minutes before yielding the floor.

4. Each side can ask questions of the other side. No ducking answering questions.

5. No ad hominem attacks.

6. No interruptions.

7. There will be a mutually agreeable moderator whose job it is to enforce the rules.

8. All questions and answers will be on topic.

9. The donation pool will be paid evenly between both teams, i.e., 50% to each team. Each team will decide how they split the fund between team members.

Will you donate $5 or more? It’s unlikely anyone will challenge us so this costs you NOTHING.

Use this form to register your intent. You’ll only be asked to commit funds after we have a challenger team of at least 5 qualified scientists and the debate terms have been agreed upon between the parties.

If every person reading this article commits just $5, the pot will be sufficiently large to attract the top scientists in the world. If we can raise a pool of $1M or more, the scientific community will look very silly if they cannot field a team of at least 5 qualified scientists to challenge us.

If this debate happens, it will save lives because it will expose the truth about whether vaccines cause autism.

If they can’t field a team, they will be discredited.

So either way, we win.

Please consider as large a donation as you can afford. It’s for a great cause.

Summary

Here’s the form to register your intent.

Please commit to $5 or more. It’s important for this debate to happen.

And if we can do it with this topic, then we can replicate this model for other topics like the COVID vaccine and vaccines in general.

Thanks!