The health secretary has made many inaccurate statements about vaccines. But the science is clear that vaccines have dramatically reduced childhood illness, disability and death.
Articles on Health misinformation
Displaying 1 - 20 of 25 articles
Vaccine hesitancy isn’t a moral failure – it’s a property of a system in which people must balance personal and collective interests.
Health influencers – perhaps including Health Secretary RFK Jr. – are promoting the chemical as an elixir that improves memory and focus. But evidence for these claims is thin.
Brazilian disinformation experts Ergon Cugler and Igor Sacramento talk to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
Trump’s nominee for the top CDC role would join the agency at a time of great turmoil and uncertainty for medical research.
Strategies to combat misinformation often focus on written materials and fact-checking. Identifying deepfakes requires different skills.
87% of posts mentioned the benefits of the tests, while only 15% mentioned potential harms.
The story of Belle Gibson, ex-wellness influencer and convicted fraudster, is only the tip of the iceberg of content creators profiting from harmful health advice.
While there are plenty of patient perspectives on social media , resources from healthcare professionals are far fewer – and are often lower quality.
Raw milk has always carried the risk of serious illness, and this risk has only risen with bird flu spreading across dairy farms in the US.
Studies show that health misinformation on social media has led to fewer people getting vaccinated and more lives lost to COVID-19 and other life-threatening diseases.
How can fake news be managed without government overreach? Under the draft bill, platforms continue to be responsible for the content on their services – not governments.
Generative AIs may make up information they serve you, meaning they may potentially spread science misinformation. Here’s how to check the accuracy of what you read in an AI-enhanced media landscape.
The intersection of content management, misinformation, aggregated data about human behavior and crowdsourcing shows how fragile Twitter is and what would be lost with the platform’s demise.
A wealth of research on social media shows that COVID-19 misinformation is damaging to public health.
The spread of misinformation in many pandemics, including the smallpox and 1918 influenza outbreaks, have undermined efforts to contain infections and prevent deaths.
Tech giants such as Spotify like to claim they are platforms, not publishers, and aren’t editorially responsible for the content they host. But with COVID threatening lives, they have to do better.
Skeptics may make demands for absolute certainty to undermine science and delay action. Critiques may not be in the interest of advancing science and public health, but by someone with an agenda.
Not knowing how many posts people see on social media overall or where specific types of content get concentrated is keeping researchers in the dark about misinformation.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others all had their own cures for the Spanish flu. But some of these may have made things worse.
Top contributors
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Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University
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Reader (Associate Professor) in Sociology, City St George's, University of London
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Assistant Clinical Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, Mississippi State University
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Professor and Associate Dean for Research, College of Pharmacy, University of South Carolina
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Teaching Professor of Public Health, Arizona State University
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Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University
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David Schindler Professor of Aquatic Science, Trent University
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Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation
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Mestre em Administração Pública e Governo, e pesquisador para a estratégia nacional contra a desinformação, Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (Ibict)
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Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
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Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University
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Professor of Psychology Emerita, Middlebury
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Clinical Psychologist and Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Calgary
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Professor of Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion, Mississippi State University
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NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of Sydney
