This weekend on YOUR HEALTH® Adam and guest co-host Dr. Jamila Battle talk with Dr. Brian Southwell—director of the Science in the Public Sphere Program at RTI International, a UNC professor in both the School of Media and Journalism and the Gillings School of Global Public Health, and editor of the new book Misinformation and Mass Audiences—about a different sort of plague…the spread of health misinformation
We are actually biased towards acceptance of information at face value … [Philosopher Spinoza] suggested that we actually take in information, accept it and then later tag it as being true or false. And that slight step – that subtlety – actually makes all the difference … And it suggests that there’s this complication because we actually accept information, and if we have the energy or the time or the effort, we can label that as being true or false. But it leaves the door open for the spread of misinformation.