It’s true. Most doctors like @ashishkjha labor under the information deficit model of combatting disinformation, the belief that good information will drive out bad. It won’t. 1/https://twitter.com/MarkHoofnagle/status/1331212746738765827 …
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This tactic dates back at least to when Rep. Dan Burton ran the House Oversight Committee. Burton was antivax and believed that mercury in vaccines caused autism. He used his position to hold hearings on this false claim. 3/https://respectfulinsolence.com/2012/11/23/representative-dan-burtons-last-antivaccine-hurrah-is-scheduled-for-november-29/ …
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Burton would stack the hearing with antivax “experts” and parents who believed that vaccines caused their child’s autism, while calling
@CDCgov officials to testify. They were basically there for theater, so that Burton could castigate them for “Ignoring the problem.” 4/Show this thread -
In this particular committee hearing,
@ashishkjha played the role of those poor@CDCgov officials back in Burton’s heyday, that of the token skeptic/scientist there to be the punching bag for conspiracy theorists on the committee. It’s not just antivaxxers, either, who do this.5/Show this thread -
Again, none of this is new. The difference is only that
@ashishkjha had never encountered it before. Nor have most doctors. Only a fairly tiny minority of doctors, scientists, and skeptics who have experience with disinformation, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories, have. 6/Show this thread -
Before the pandemic, for the most part our fellow physicians viewed what we did with a combination of bemusement and disdain, seeing it as, basically, a waste of time and intellectual firepower, as “dunking on a 7’ hoop,” as one famous oncologist put it a year ago. 7/
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If there’s one potential good outcome of the
#COVID19 pandemic, it’s that it’s opened the eyes of a lot of physicians to just how harmful medical disinformation and conspiracy theories are. 8/Show this thread -
Yes, doctors had some vague idea that medical disinformation was a problem, but they didn’t realize that it could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people through the undermining of public health measures during a deadly pandemic. Now they do. 9/
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Just knowing isn’t enough, though. What are they going to do about it? Will those of them who bravely go into the lions’ den unprepared learn from their experience? Will they reach out to people like
@MarkHoofnagle and other skeptics? We can help. 10/Show this thread -
When the
#COVID19 pandemic is finally under control, will they continue to use their new knowledge and skills to combat other forms of harmful pseudoscience? 11/Show this thread -
At least, will they stay out of the way of those of us who were doing this sort of work before COVID and who will continue to do it after
#COVID19? Or will physicians, at least, stop disdainfully viewing what we do as “dunking on a 7’ hoop”? I hope so, but doubt it. 12/12Show this thread
End of conversation
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