Author Naomi Wolf Pranked Into Spreading Fake Anti-Vaxxer Quote

Author Naomi Wolf is facing ridicule after falling for a prank that just goes to show how little fact-checking anti-vaxxers do before spreading blatantly false misinformation.

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Over the weekend, Wolf shared an image of a doctor with a quote superimposed over it: 

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“If a vaccine is effective, then why do you need to pressure people to take it? Informed consent means letting patients make their own choices.”

The statement was attributed to Dr. John Sims, MD.

Wolf, who has been rampantly peddling fear and distrust of the vaccine ever since the rollout began, tweeted the image out to her followers, who then reshared it on their own timelines.

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There was only one problem — it wasn’t real.

Ken Klippenstein claims he slid into Wolf’s DMs with the image in the first place, to see if she would share it without checking for a source.

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In reality, the photo is of adult actor Johnny Sins dressed up as a doctor for a porn shoot, and the quote itself appears to just be something random.

Ken got Naomi Wolf — who is an anti-vaxxer and has been spreading misinformation left and right — to post a fake quote from a fake doctor along with a photo of the adult film star Johnny Sins.

This is how top-notch her vetting of information is. https://t.co/MAmsKFAS0F

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) March 21, 2021

Sins even retweeted journalist Yashar Ali’s mocking tweet:

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It didn’t take long after that for Wolf to hear that she’d been pranked and delete the tweet, but not before people started ragging on her for falling so easily.

Poor Dr. Sims being erased like this.

— Gorka Crenshaw Gattai! (@AlphaMaleDrG) March 21, 2021

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The fact that twitter still does not have a team dedicated to moderating this stuff and a button for reporting it is insane. Cost them almost nothing while saving lives. Every time I see an anti-Vax post by someone with a following all I can think: “this will get someone killed”

— Tyler Satchel Orden (@Tyorden) March 21, 2021

I’m laugh-crying at this

and also still angry about the tweet that made me unfollow her that involved her bragging about her and a big group of friends eating dinner at a restaurant and how safe that is. I wanted to flip my desk over. Her anti-science takes are so irresponsible.

— Amanda Jetté Knox (@MavenOfMayhem) March 21, 2021

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If anything, Wolf may have been an easy target, considering her disregard for fact-checking actually got the U.S. publication of one of her books canceled back in 2019, and a book she wrote 30 years ago has also come under scrutiny for its lackadaisical approach to facts.

Still, some people tried to defend her, noting that all sorts of people share random memes on social media every day without fact-checking — but that’s kind of the point. This is how misinformation gets spread, and the more of a reach a person has, the more responsibility they have in regards to what they use their platform to share.

And if people can make up quotes to support an anti-vaxxer stance, they can certainly misinterpret or misrepresent scientific data — always dig around for the real facts.

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*First Published: March 22, 2021, 5:55 am