Abstract
It is a common desire of scientists, once they begin communicating publicly about their work or science more broadly, to correct misinformation.
This chapter provides a framework for thinking about this task. First, we provide an exploration of how and why misinformation spreads, looking at the problem from a range of scholarly lenses. We then propose a diagnostic frame for thinking about when misinformation matters and when it does not. Finally, we propose strategic and tactical steps that can be taken in cases where it does matter.
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Notes
- 1.
Meanwhile, the era represents perhaps a golden era for traditional forms of misinformational snake oil, with countless charlatans diving in with fake cures. These include the wonderfully named “Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets”, “Dr. Bell’s Pine Tar Honey”, “Schenck’s Mandrake Pills”, “Beecham’s Pills” and “Miller’s Antiseptic Snake Oil” (Zeitz 2020). Meanwhile Professor Bordier of the faculty of medicine at the Université de Lyon, France, claimed to have invented a cold-curing apparatus, which used tiny heat conducting plates attached to the nose, to supposedly kills the germs causing the cold. Perhaps the most dangerous piece of misinformation during the pandemic was the recommendation (including by the US Surgeon General and the Journal of the American Medical Association) that those suffering from the Spanish Flu take what is now known to be toxic dosages of aspirin, perhaps enough to cause some of the deaths (Starko 2009).
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- 3.
John R. Brinkley’s masterful use of the new technology of broadcast radio to advertise his charlatan medicine (including the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans) has been wonderfully documented by the podcast Reply All (2017).
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Dishearteningly, their argument seems to be that though things were bad in the past, we have not attained some radically different modern immunity to misinformation.
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Of course, once believed as real and shared as if real, disinformation becomes misinformation.
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Further Reading/Resources
Beyond the sources directly cited in this chapter, you might also like to listen to The Wholesome Show podcast episodes ‘Documenting the Infodemic’ (https://soundcloud.com/wholesomeshow/documenting-the-infodemic), and ‘The Spanish Flu!’ (https://soundcloud.com/wholesomeshow/the-spanish-flu).
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Grant, W.J., Nurse, M.S., Leach, J. (2023). The Truth Force Instinct: Misinformation and How to Respond. In: Rowland, S., Kuchel, L. (eds) Teaching Science Students to Communicate: A Practical Guide. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91628-2_10
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