The Daily Sceptic
The Daily Sceptic is a British online publication founded by journalist Toby Young in April 2020 as Lockdown Sceptics, serving as a hub for skeptical articles, academic papers, and interviews challenging government COVID-19 policies and the influence of public health officials.[1] Evolving after the UK's July 2021 "Freedom Day," the site rebranded and expanded its scope beyond lockdowns to critique broader orthodoxies in public health, scientific censorship, and climate narratives, emphasizing evidence-based analysis over consensus-driven "the Science."[1][2] It maintains an irreverent tone while adhering to a "cock-up theory of history," attributing policy failures to incompetence rather than deliberate conspiracies, and campaigns against institutional intolerance toward dissenting views.[1] Edited by Toby Young, with contributions from specialists like Will Jones on epidemiology and Chris Morrison on environment, the publication delivers daily news round-ups of stories questioning prevailing narratives on topics such as vaccine efficacy, excess deaths, and energy policies.[1] It has achieved notable readership, averaging 1.5 million monthly page views and 15,000 email subscribers, with peaks exceeding 2 million views in high-traffic months, reflecting its role in amplifying data-driven skepticism during and after the pandemic.[1][3] While praised for fostering debate and highlighting suppressed evidence, The Daily Sceptic has faced criticism from mainstream institutions for questioning official accounts, though its focus on empirical discrepancies underscores a commitment to causal scrutiny amid systemic biases in media and academia toward consensus enforcement.[1][2]