Extracts and comment from me below. Full text here: https://www.aol.com/news/column-disinformation-public-health-crisis-1100...
Disinformation is a public health crisis. Here's how scientists and doctors are fighting it
Los Angeles Times
MICHAEL HILTZIK
February 22, 2024 at 11:00 AM
In recent years, disinformation has seemed to be on an inexorable march across the scientific and medical landscape.
Prominent politicians, up to and including the former president, have promoted useless drugs as supposed cures for COVID-19. Partisan attacks on the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines have expanded into attacks on all vaccines. Established scientific and medical authorities have been vilified on social media and on the airwaves and even been subjected to physical assault.
The sheer volume of lies and misrepresentations injected into the political mainstream has some scientists despairing of ever regaining the public's attention...
Sell's reference is to the "Practical Playbook for Addressing Health Misinformation" just released by her center. The 65-page publication amounts to a road map for identifying misinformation and disinformation and applying the best strategies for counteracting it before it spreads...
One recommendation that most seem to have in common is to take a strategic approach: Disinformation campaigns can't be defeated by ad-hoc measures; they require an organized, proactive and targeted approach mounted by credible defenders of science...
Sell acknowledges that the battle against disinformation has gotten harder. One reason is that more of it emanates from government sources...
At a House hearing just last week, for instance, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) staged an attack on COVID vaccines consisting of misleading statistics presented out of context, unverified claims of side effects and flagrant misstatements about the consequences of COVID infection.
One of the nation's most assiduous dispensers of anti-vaccine claptrap does so from an official perch. He's Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who was inserted into his post by DeSantis, who may be the nation's second-most-dangerous official offender against good sense and sound public health policy...
COMMENT (NPW): This is a good article but it misses one crucial point that is missing in almost all articles about misinformation. As we have argued on HIFA, misinformation cannot be addressed by fighting it alone, as implied by this article and countless others. Just as important, if not more so, is to shift the whole emphasis. The emphasis should be shifted towards a collective effort by all stakeholders to improve the availability and use of *reliable* information, and to provide pointers to help people differentiate between reliable information and misinformation. In our recent global survey, the vast majority of respondents said that WHO should explicitly commit to the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information, and should convene representatives of all stakeholders in the global evidence ecosystem to accelerate progress towards this goal. Piecemeal efforts are not enough.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
