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Kennedy’s previous work for the magazine was sometimes problematic. “He would turn in these manuscripts, and it’s barely exaggerating to say, like, eighty to ninety per cent of the facts would be incorrect, even the simple ones,” Dana said. “It’s because he’s not a journalist. He’s a lawyer. He’s more about making arguments than about trying to communicate the truth.” The former friend remembered attending a dinner party with Kennedy and finding his case against vaccines persuasive and nimble, even though the former friend knew that the facts were wrong. “People think he’s an idiot —he’s not an idiot,” the person said. But the vaccine story for Rolling Stone was riddled with errors. Eric Bates, an editor at the magazine, tried to slow-roll the piece, but Wenner pushed it through. (Wenner said that, if he had known that the piece was “flawed that deeply,” he wouldn't have published it.)