Doctors' success against medical "fake news"

[lpetrich]

Doctors have decades of experience fighting “fake news.” Here’s how they win. - Vox

Long before Hilda Bastian was a health researcher, she endorsed a practice she believes may have cost lives.

“I think people died because of me,” she said recently. “And I'll spend my whole life trying not to do it again and to make amends.”

In the 1980s, Bastian was skeptical of the medical establishment. As the head of Homebirth Australia, she traveled the country and appeared on TV programs arguing that moms should have their babies outside the cold confines of hospital rooms.

Then she learned babies born at home in Australia faced a higher mortality risk than those born in hospital at that time. The fact disturbs her to this day.

In the decades since, she’s become one of the most prominent thinkers in the world on scientific literacy and evidence-based medicine. She has dedicated her life to figuring out how to reach people with the best available health research and fight back against misinformation.

The article then describes some ways of fighting misconceptions and quackery and "fake news", using Hilda Bastian's experience an an example.

Lesson 1: Take time to explain why you believe something — not just what you believe and why your opponent is wrong

Lesson 2: Make sure your information is reliable and easy to access

Lesson 3: Teach them while they’re young

Lesson 4: Evidence is necessary but not sufficient

Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid to hold misinformation peddlers to account

Something like Richard Carrier's experience: I Was a Big Bang Skeptic

And over the past two years enough evidence has arisen, and two physicists (Victor Stenger and Bjoern Feuerbacher) took enough trouble to patiently persuade me with genuine facts and argument, that I have "seen the light" so to speak, and changed my mind.

Also from him, From Taoist to Infidel

Though called a wise father, there is not a single example in the Old Testament of God sitting down and kindly teaching anyone, and when asked by Job, the best of men, to explain why He went out of His way to hurt a good man by every possible means, including killing his loved ones, this "wise father" spews arrogant rhetorical questions, ultimately implying nothing more than "might makes right" as his only excuse.

[DMB]

It's quite rare for people to say "I was wrong" about something that they used to promote.