discredit

One sign of the fictional nature of this line of thinking is the way prophecies of the end of the world are routinely, in Kermode’s words, “disconfirmed without being discredited.”

That hasn’t stopped Health and Human Services from recently appointing a discredited vaccine skeptic to investigate this link.

In a statement released on Saturday, the RSF said it was not responsible for attacks on civilians and that scenes of killing in Zamzam were staged to discredit its forces.

They can be penalised for alleged transgressions such as spreading "false information", "discrediting" the Russian army or supporting "extremism".

The discredited idea that childhood vaccines are linked to autism first gained mainstream attention after a paper published in 1998 in the medical journal The Lancet by British doctor Andrew Wakefield.