Category: Commentary
Health Narratives on Social Media
Engaging on social media about health issues can be daunting. I know this is not news, but it is important to understand what is happening phenomenologically. I also think it’s a microcosm of what’s happening to our society in general because of social media – we no longer have a shared fact-based reality as people increasingly live in different universes of information....
Senator Hassan Sets Secretary Kennedy Straight
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's reckless insistence on undermining confidence in vaccines and reckless elevation of the wholly unqualified David Geier to a potentially influential role at HHS
Trust Me-I’m a Doctor
Trust is a fragile yet critical resource for any institution. At the end of the day, civilization is mostly built on a handshake and a mutual agreement to follow the rules. This includes trust that designated experts have the expertise they claim, are competent, and are acting appropriately in the interest of others, rather than exploiting their position for self-dealing. A critical...
The Misinformation Wars
The core mission of SBM comes down to a few things – examining the complex relationship between scientific evidence and healthcare, exploring issues of how optimally to regulate health care and health products, and fighting misinformation. Over the years I think we have made some solid strides on the first category. The medical infrastructure has been trending increasing towards higher standards of...
Will AI Save Medicine
Modern medicine is facing many challenges. As the science of medicine advances, it gets harder and harder. We have, in a way, picked all the low hanging fruit. People are living longer, and their medical conditions are getting more challenging to understand and to treat. In order to continue making medical progress we need more advanced technology. This technology – like stem...
On TikTok, Everything Is a Poison or Superfood
We have to face the fact that social media is now the primary way that many people get their information. More than half of people in the US get their “news” from social media at least some of the time. But I don’t think asking people where they get “news” captures the full phenomenon. People who watch TikTok videos might not consider...
BBC Takes On Appeal to Nature Fallacy
It’s always good (and frustratingly rare) to see the mainstream media get it right when it comes to pseudoscience in medicine. Too often the narrative is – scientists are baffled at this alternative “one easy trick” to improve your health. Most mainstream articles on pseudoscience in medicine frame their reporting around a positive anecdote, and at best throw in some token skepticism...
We are not antivaccine, we are pro unattainable vaccine
When it comes to vaccines: “If it exists we resist.”
The Trashing of Science by Robert F Kennedy Jr
If confirmed, Kennedy will keep trashing science and will continue exploiting the trashed science he helps create for his own benefit.
That Trump, RFK, Oz Presser
Yes, we have to talk about that press conference with Trump, RFK Jr and Dr. Oz., which some are characterizing as the absolutely worst firehose of medical misinformation coming from the White House in American history. I think that is fair. This was the presser we knew was coming, and many of us were dreading. It was worse than I anticipated. I wrote a...