Establishing a taxonomy of potential hazards associated with communicating medical science in the age of disinformation

Abstract

Objectives: Disinformation on medical matters has become an increasing public health concern. Public engagement by scientists, clinicians and patient advocates can contribute towards public understanding of medicine. However, depth of feeling on many issues (notably vaccination and cancer) can lead to adverse reactions for those communicating medical science, including vexatious interactions and targeted campaigns. Our objective in this work is to establish a taxonomy of common negative experiences encountered by those communicating medical science, and suggest guidelines so that they may be circumvented.

Design: We establish a taxonomy of the common negative experiences reported by those communicating medical science, informed by surveying medical science communicators with public platforms.

Participants: 142 prominent medical science communicators (defined as having >1000 Twitter followers and experience communicating medical science on social and traditional media platforms) were invited to take part in a survey, with 101 responses.

Results: 101 responses were analysed. Most participants experienced abusive behaviour (91.9%), including persistent harassment (69.3%) and physical violence and intimidation (5.9%). A substantial number (38.6%) received vexatious complaints to their employers, professional bodies or legal intimidation. The majority (62.4%) reported negative mental health sequelae due to public outreach, including depression, anxiety and stress. A significant minority (19.8%) were obligated to seek police advice or legal counsel due to actions associated with their outreach work. While the majority targeted with vexatious complaints felt supported by their employer/professional body, 32.4% reported neutral, poor or non-existent support.

Conclusions: Those engaging in public outreach of medical science are vulnerable to negative repercussions, and we suggest guidelines for professional bodies and organisations to remedy some of these impacts on front-line members.

Keywords: infectious diseases; medical education & training; medical journalism; oncology; public health.