6 ms·

> We're having serious conversations right now about whether this ought to be a special initiative at NIH to put more research into health communications and ho

by bko 5y ago

> We're having serious conversations right now about whether this ought to be a special initiative at NIH to put more research into health communications and how best to frame those [messages] so that they reach people who may otherwise be influenced by information that's simply not based on evidence. Because I don't think you could look at the current circumstance now and say it's gone very well. If people are presented with accurate medical information and they choose to ignore it, at some point you have to accept their autonomy. At some point "framing" becomes propaganda and if ends justify the means, the authorities would be willing to lie in order to get their message across, making the problem of trust even worse.

nightowl_games 5y ago
Exactly. I am pro vaccine and am vaccinated, but I still don't trust a lot of the messaging that comes through the media pipeline. I feel as though I have no idea what's going on with myocarditis and with the 'athletes are collapsing' stuff. The "Joe Rogan takes horse dewormer" was ridiculous and really made me distrust the institutions. The Dazsak Lancet letter saying the virus was zoonotic with no conflicts of interest declared. As a parent it feels impossible to really understand the risk profile of vaccinating your child. The _real_ data is so hard to find. When the medical community says "these side effects are rare", that is a meaningless subjective statement. How rare!? I think the 'medical community' is not getting uptake on their scientific credentials because they've destroyed their own credibility. The absolute refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the destruction of their own credibility is abhorrent. It's very similar to how Democratic political strategists are resorting to blaming the voters for Dem's losing. There's a couple vaccine scientists in my own city who have become active on Twitter during the pandemic, and every once in a while they say something inaccurate or in my opinion unethical. I dont comment, as they have an army of people who praise everything they say. I just silently file it into 'more BS said by person X', which then influences my opinion of everything they say, forever. When you are in a position of power, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard of communication. One drop of deception in a sea of science will ruin the whole batch. It is baffling that these people pretend to not know why people don't trust them. It shows a complete lack of empathy, understanding and a refusal to take ownership over something that is their responsibility.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Exactly. I am pro vaccine and am vaccinated, but I still don't trust a lot of the messaging that comes through the media pipeline. What purpose is there to get information from the “media pipeline”? CDC.gov , NHS.uk , WHO , Harvard medical, Johns Hopkins, etc.
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    I’ve seen PDF files hosted on these websites that include an abstract and discussion entirely divergent from the numbers in the results table. They often publish “studies” without any peer review, and then broadcast their “conclusions” through loyal political messengers who never question them.
- kooshball 5y ago
  literally no one is telling you to get medical advice from the media or Twitter. ask your Dr for medical advice.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    I think you missed the point: the OP problem is that trusted source of information, even highly credentialled and respected, have shown some disturbing sign that they may not be fully honest or reliable. That's the great tragedy of this pandemic: it has destroyed trust in institutions, by showcasing a few disturbing things.
  - m3047 5y ago
    It's really not that easy to get a doctor any random place in America. I live in a city in a larger metropolitan area; it is in the county which has the worst medical care in the state: we pay more (federal study), we are underserved (state study) and the medical conglomerates which control care delivery extract more profit... in absolute dollars... from this county than the richer, younger, whiter, more populous adjacent county (union study). The epidemic of nonreproducible scientific studies is... an epidemic and it's astounding nobody pays attention. Ten years ago I was misdiagnosed with a condition, at least in part because the closet Stalist "doctors" thought my body should fight off the infection... didn't wanna cause any antibiotic resistance, ya know. When my wife suffered a detached retina, they opened the surgical wing of a regional hospital on a Saturday to fix it. (They did a great job.) For years I got the PSA as part of my yearly physical. This test has a lot of false positives. Eventually it was positive two years in a row so I was "ok doc, guess you gotta start feeling my prostate". He looked definitely uncomfortable and found an excuse not to do it until the next year. He told me to go research it on the internet. I don't get the PSA any more, it's not the answer to any question: "do you want to know more?" Let me pause to point out that we're really good at heroic measures which cost a lot of money and not so good at, you know, health. We see this in Covid, where if people are hospitalized we're willing to take all kinds of heroic measures, even if it kills them... but I don't see a lot of interest by the medical establishment in prophylactics or early mitigations (I know it's out there). Moving on, the "doctor" doesn't want to give me a professional opinion, notwithstanding that he doesn't understand Bayes. "Do you want to know more?": That might be an ok manipulation on a web site, but it has no place in medical care. We're supposed to be enabled to purchase medical care, but we're not supposed to do it based on price or quality. So I suppose the first thing we're supposed to buy is more information so we can make the right decision because it's "your own fault" if you're ignorant: "do you want to know more?" Well, I worked at biotechs I at least have NBC safety training. Crunching data from different sources concerning all things COVID doesn't reach the same conclusions. Stuff is reported and defined differently. Obvious questions from an epidemiologic standpoint aren't answered. Stuff seems to be omitted for curious reasons. Contact tracers can't contact 1/3rd of positives for followup? We don't know the race of 45% of the patients in hospitals? What kind of living and working conditions does it spread in? As for the vaccine, it is leaky and most definitely not sterilizing. Funny that doctors understand how slathering yourself in antibiotics (mayonnaise optional) leads to resistant bac and it's most def not ok to give them to livestock, but "antibiotics ok"... until the science... the actual science, catches up: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m... It's as obvious that the powers that be have no interest in actual public health as it is that they lack the intellect and public trust to do so. As a student of human nature it is also obvious that belief and science are orthogonal, as quite evidently people can have faith in science without ever exercising the testing and critical evaluation required. It's impossible to understand medical care without understanding the conditions under which it is delivered.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tayo42 5y ago
Isn't the reverse true? Misinformation is being framed as more trustworthy then accurate information. Are people willingly ignoring the correct information, or do they have the illusion of making their own decision, but its really been manipulated by other propaganda, lack of critical thinking skills, and like this interview suggests, tribalism.

by bko 5y ago

nightowl_games 5y ago

Exactly. I am pro vaccine and am vaccinated, but I still don't trust a lot of the messaging that comes through the media pipeline. I feel as though I have no idea what's going on with myocarditis and with the 'athletes are collapsing' stuff. The "Joe Rogan takes horse dewormer" was ridiculous and really made me distrust the institutions. The Dazsak Lancet letter saying the virus was zoonotic with no conflicts of interest declared. As a parent it feels impossible to really understand the risk profile of vaccinating your child. The _real_ data is so hard to find. When the medical community says "these side effects are rare", that is a meaningless subjective statement. How rare!? I think the 'medical community' is not getting uptake on their scientific credentials because they've destroyed their own credibility. The absolute refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the destruction of their own credibility is abhorrent. It's very similar to how Democratic political strategists are resorting to blaming the voters for Dem's losing. There's a couple vaccine scientists in my own city who have become active on Twitter during the pandemic, and every once in a while they say something inaccurate or in my opinion unethical. I dont comment, as they have an army of people who praise everything they say. I just silently file it into 'more BS said by person X', which then influences my opinion of everything they say, forever. When you are in a position of power, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard of communication. One drop of deception in a sea of science will ruin the whole batch. It is baffling that these people pretend to not know why people don't trust them. It shows a complete lack of empathy, understanding and a refusal to take ownership over something that is their responsibility.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Exactly. I am pro vaccine and am vaccinated, but I still don't trust a lot of the messaging that comes through the media pipeline. What purpose is there to get information from the “media pipeline”? CDC.gov , NHS.uk , WHO , Harvard medical, Johns Hopkins, etc.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  I’ve seen PDF files hosted on these websites that include an abstract and discussion entirely divergent from the numbers in the results table. They often publish “studies” without any peer review, and then broadcast their “conclusions” through loyal political messengers who never question them.
kooshball 5y ago
literally no one is telling you to get medical advice from the media or Twitter. ask your Dr for medical advice.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  I think you missed the point: the OP problem is that trusted source of information, even highly credentialled and respected, have shown some disturbing sign that they may not be fully honest or reliable. That's the great tragedy of this pandemic: it has destroyed trust in institutions, by showcasing a few disturbing things.
- m3047 5y ago
  It's really not that easy to get a doctor any random place in America. I live in a city in a larger metropolitan area; it is in the county which has the worst medical care in the state: we pay more (federal study), we are underserved (state study) and the medical conglomerates which control care delivery extract more profit... in absolute dollars... from this county than the richer, younger, whiter, more populous adjacent county (union study). The epidemic of nonreproducible scientific studies is... an epidemic and it's astounding nobody pays attention. Ten years ago I was misdiagnosed with a condition, at least in part because the closet Stalist "doctors" thought my body should fight off the infection... didn't wanna cause any antibiotic resistance, ya know. When my wife suffered a detached retina, they opened the surgical wing of a regional hospital on a Saturday to fix it. (They did a great job.) For years I got the PSA as part of my yearly physical. This test has a lot of false positives. Eventually it was positive two years in a row so I was "ok doc, guess you gotta start feeling my prostate". He looked definitely uncomfortable and found an excuse not to do it until the next year. He told me to go research it on the internet. I don't get the PSA any more, it's not the answer to any question: "do you want to know more?" Let me pause to point out that we're really good at heroic measures which cost a lot of money and not so good at, you know, health. We see this in Covid, where if people are hospitalized we're willing to take all kinds of heroic measures, even if it kills them... but I don't see a lot of interest by the medical establishment in prophylactics or early mitigations (I know it's out there). Moving on, the "doctor" doesn't want to give me a professional opinion, notwithstanding that he doesn't understand Bayes. "Do you want to know more?": That might be an ok manipulation on a web site, but it has no place in medical care. We're supposed to be enabled to purchase medical care, but we're not supposed to do it based on price or quality. So I suppose the first thing we're supposed to buy is more information so we can make the right decision because it's "your own fault" if you're ignorant: "do you want to know more?" Well, I worked at biotechs I at least have NBC safety training. Crunching data from different sources concerning all things COVID doesn't reach the same conclusions. Stuff is reported and defined differently. Obvious questions from an epidemiologic standpoint aren't answered. Stuff seems to be omitted for curious reasons. Contact tracers can't contact 1/3rd of positives for followup? We don't know the race of 45% of the patients in hospitals? What kind of living and working conditions does it spread in? As for the vaccine, it is leaky and most definitely not sterilizing. Funny that doctors understand how slathering yourself in antibiotics (mayonnaise optional) leads to resistant bac and it's most def not ok to give them to livestock, but "antibiotics ok"... until the science... the actual science, catches up: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m... It's as obvious that the powers that be have no interest in actual public health as it is that they lack the intellect and public trust to do so. As a student of human nature it is also obvious that belief and science are orthogonal, as quite evidently people can have faith in science without ever exercising the testing and critical evaluation required. It's impossible to understand medical care without understanding the conditions under which it is delivered.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tayo42 5y ago

Isn't the reverse true? Misinformation is being framed as more trustworthy then accurate information. Are people willingly ignoring the correct information, or do they have the illusion of making their own decision, but its really been manipulated by other propaganda, lack of critical thinking skills, and like this interview suggests, tribalism.