Dr. Mark Gordon & Andrew Marr on the Joe Rogan Experience #1589, fact-checked

What the evidence shows: Gordon appears to be referencing the type of retrospective analysis published by Kaufman et al. (2020) in PLOS ONE, which examined over 190,000 US patients and found SARS-CoV-2 test positivity was inversely associated with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. However, the actual figures in that study are far smaller than Gordon's stated 85%-vs-90% split: positivity was 12.5% among patients with deficient levels (below 20 ng/mL), 8.1% among those with adequate levels (30-34 ng/mL), and 5.9% among those with levels of 55 ng/mL or higher. No published study shows 85% of people with vitamin D below 30 ng/mL testing positive for or contracting COVID-19, nor 90% of people above 60 ng/mL being asymptomatic or unaffected. The vitamin D-COVID literature broadly shows a modest, observational, dose-dependent inverse association between vitamin D status and infection risk, not a threshold effect of the magnitude described. Because these are observational data, the association could partly reflect confounding (age, obesity, comorbidities, indoor lifestyle) rather than a direct causal effect of vitamin D itself, and no large randomized controlled trial has confirmed that vitamin D supplementation prevents COVID-19 infection at the rate implied. The specific 85%/90% figures as stated do not match any known published dataset and substantially overstate the strength of the real association.

What the evidence shows: The speaker claimed that a Special Operations Command study, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, found special operators commit suicide at the highest rate in the military and 30% higher than the rest of the force. No public SOCOM report or peer-reviewed study corroborating that specific FOIA'd "30% higher" figure could be located. The most rigorous available research, a 2025 retrospective cohort study in JAMA Network Open covering U.S. Army special operations forces (SOF) from 2004-2012 (not the full multi-service SOCOM population), found the opposite pattern for most measures: Army SOF operators had 70-90% lower rates of nonfatal suicide attempts and suicide ideation than support personnel and the broader regular Army, while completed suicide death rates did not differ significantly between operators and the rest of the force; attempts by operators were, however, more likely to prove fatal when they occurred. This evidence does not support a claim that SOF suicide rates are the highest in the military or 30% above the rest of the force, though it covers a different service population and time period than the internal SOCOM document the speaker described, so it does not rule out that document's existence or figures. Given the absence of a verifiable primary source for the specific 30% figure and the best available peer-reviewed data pointing the opposite direction on attempts and ideation, the claim as stated is unsupported by public evidence.

What the evidence shows: Marr claimed veteran suicide rates rose only about 6% since 2005, versus nearly 50% for civilians. VA's own 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report shows a far larger and more sustained increase: the unadjusted veteran suicide rate rose from 23.3 per 100,000 in 2001 to 33.9 per 100,000 in 2021, an increase of roughly 45%, comparable in magnitude to the civilian rise Marr cites, not a modest 6%. Over the same period the non-veteran adult unadjusted rate rose from 12.6 to 16.7 per 100,000 (about 33%). Veteran rates also remained well above non-veteran rates throughout, with the age- and sex-adjusted veteran suicide rate 71.8% higher than the non-veteran adult rate in 2021, the largest gap in the 2001-2021 series. The claim's framing, that veterans have seen only a marginal increase while civilians have seen a dramatically larger one, is not supported by VA's own published data, which shows veteran rates rising by a comparable or greater percentage and staying persistently higher than civilian rates.

What the evidence shows: Dr. Mark Gordon described a single patient with Parkinson's disease who reportedly improved "70% better" within 90 days of an unspecified treatment he provides, with resolution of tremor (pill-rolling) and shuffling gait. This is a single-patient anecdote recounted by the treating physician himself, not data from a controlled study, and no peer-reviewed publication, clinical trial registry entry, or case report corroborating this specific outcome could be located. Major medical authorities state that Parkinson's disease currently has no cure; approved treatments (levodopa, dopamine agonists, deep brain stimulation) can reduce symptom severity but do not produce disease reversal quantified as a percentage, and symptom fluctuation, placebo response, and misdiagnosis are well-documented confounders in uncontrolled anecdotal reports. Because the claim rests solely on the speaker's unverified account of one patient with no independent clinical documentation, objective severity scale (e.g., UPDRS) score, or peer-reviewed publication, it cannot be assessed as reliable evidence of treatment efficacy. Current status: unsupported anecdote inconsistent with the broader clinical consensus that no treatment reverses Parkinson's symptoms by a defined percentage within 90 days.