And also... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
I never said "Doctor Mike" is a bad doctor. I have no idea if he is a good or bad doctor.
Further, an ad hominem is when a person attacks someone's character without any base.
I wrote specifically about him not being at the forefront and questioning his values, as displayed by his actions during the pandemic. His actions were literally not in line with Covid guidelines. Those are guidelines that were formulated by hundreds (thousands?) of doctors, all of whom sought to be at the forefront of medical science during a pandemic.
As another user said, MRI scans not corresponding to brain activity is not really news, and in at least the part of the US I live in, MRI scans are not so easily recommended, especially since they're not covered by health insurance.
Dr. Amen should be called out, of course, but it doesn't mean a doctor is at the forefront for doing so.
Missing the forest for the trees.
The point isn’t that neglecting to mask is exactly the same as smoking. Obviously these are different. The point is that in both cases the person in question is advising one thing and doing another. The fact that a doctor smokes or doesn’t mask up in a pandemic does not mean that their advice to not smoke or to wear a mask is not good advice.
If a person regularly snacks on lead paint but tells you not to eat paint, the advice is still good even if it’s coming from an idiot.
> it is not ad-hominem to try to understand a person's motivations
Sure, but claims of hypocrisy are still not a rebuttal.
No doubt it was hypocritical for Dr Mike to tell others to social distance and then hop on a boat with a dozen people unmasked, just as it was hypocritical for Gavin Newsom to attend a dinner at The French Laundry while telling others to stay home.
This isn’t actually relevant to whether the advice to socially distance was sound, though.
Yet here you are trying to convince folks why this doesn't lead to poor morals, low self-awareness, and a lack of trust in doctors. We are talking about a doctor, of course, not just an average nobody. And we are talking about a doctor with 6 million subscribers. His influence is wide.
Last I checked, a doctor is not the same as a politician.