Category: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Conspiracy Theories
FDA Head Robert Califf Battles Misinformation — Sometimes With Fuzzy Facts
KFF Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, doesn’t seem to be having fun on the job. “I would describe this year as hand-to-hand combat. Really, every day,” he said at an academic conference at Stanford in April. It’s a sentiment the FDA commissioner has expressed often. What’s been getting Califf’s goat? […]
Jul 25, 2023
How COVID Lawsuits and Media Coverage Keep Misinformation Churning
MedPageToday Public health has had its day in court lately. And another day. And another day. Over the course of the pandemic, lawsuits came from every direction, questioning public health policies and hospitals’ authority. Petitioners argued for care to be provided in a different way, they questioned mandates on mask and vaccine use, and they […]
Jul 18, 2023
The Straw-Man Argument Against California’s COVID Misinfo Law
MedPageToday An article in the South Carolina Post and Courier in early 2022 recounts how a patient levied grave accusations against his physician. The doctor was accused of persistently trivializing the dangers of COVID, recommending hydroxychloroquine as treatment, and purportedly alleging that the vaccines were concocted as a sinister plot to thin the global population. The patient, still […]
Jul 11, 2023
Meta is rolling back its covid-19 misinformation rules in the US
The Verge Meta is rolling back its covid misinformation rules in countries like the US, where the pandemic’s national emergency status has been rescinded as recommended by its independent oversight board in April of this year, The Washington Post reported Friday morning (via Engadget). In an update to the July announcement that it asked the Meta Oversight Board to investigate the safety of doing […]
Jun 20, 2023
New study reveals TikTok’s spread of COVID-19 misinformation
PhysOrg A new study recently published in the International Journal of Communication reveals how TikTok’s unique features have been used to spread COVID-19 misinformation. Unlike Twitter, which uses a text format, the micro-video format of TikTok makes it more difficult to detect deceptive information. That’s why I lean towards qualitative methods for deeply understanding how misinformation is […]
Jun 14, 2023
Health Misinformation And How To Curb It
Forbes The Covid-19 pandemic amplified what has been present for years- medical misinformation on the internet and social media. According to reports from NBC news, examples of fake news that have propagated through the internet include berries being more effective than vaccines in fighting various infections, ginger being more effective at treating cancer than chemotherapy, and […]
Jun 6, 2023
Science Based Medicine What we have seen is the widespread propagation of misinformation and disinformation. And the reason it has taken root is because there was an information vacuum. I come back to our role as physicians. It is critical that we fill that vacuum because if we don’t, others will. This quote is absolutely […]
May 30, 2023
Taiwan is using humor as a tool against coronavirus hoaxes
QZ.com There’s nothing inherently funny about the novel coronavirus. The latest World Health Organization numbers indicate that more than 383,000 people have died from Covid-19, and the number of confirmed cases worldwide has eclipsed the 6 million mark. But Taiwan, which is lauded for its success in containing the spread of coronavirus, has adopted humor as a tool in […]
May 23, 2023
