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The Dangers of Misinformation
The most valuable tool that we have against misinformation—and those that seek to actively misinform—is a critically thinking population.
As I lay in bed a few weeks ago wondering how bad the COVID-19 booster side effects would be, I involuntarily did exactly what doctors tell you not to do: I googled it. As I scrolled through a Reddit thread, I came across a curious comment that linked to an article by a certain Robert Malone that supposedly exposed the “real facts” about the Pfizer vaccine. That set off my “spidey senses”—Spiderman’s superpower to sense danger before it can be perceived by other senses. As a physicist, my research has taught me to critically examine any and every claim and assumption. I decided to proceed with caution.
A cursory look at Malone’s bio indicated that he was a well-qualified medical professional. Reading his article, I was taken aback. I am used to hearing false claims about the vaccines that are easy for even a non-medical expert such as myself to debunk, but what surprised me about the article was that it came across as a scientifically legitimate argument against Pfizer’s vaccine safety data. While reasonably fluent in discussions of legitimacy and biases of data sets in general, I’m no expert in medical sciences, and so it was hard for me to argue with what was a well-crafted and seemingly professional critique. What do I know?
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