Science Friday - How Health Misinformation Spreads | A Play About Ben Franklin And His Son

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

The Basics Of How Health Misinformation SpreadsHealth misinformation can circulate quickly on social media: false claims about vaccines, ads pushing suspicious-looking supplements, politicians making claims about contraception or abortion that don’t match the science.As November nears, Science Friday is spotlighting the science that’s shaping the election with a short series about health misinformation.Ira is joined by Irving Washington, senior vice president and executive director of the Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization to provide a primer on the basics of health misinformation; how to identify it, emerging trends and the role of artificial intelligence.We want to hear from you! Is there a piece of health information that you’ve seen recently that you’re skeptical about? Fill out this form, email us a voice memo to [e-mail], or leave us a voicemail at 1-646-767-6532.In the coming weeks we’ll select a couple of topics from our listeners to investigate with the help of a subject matter expert.Benjamin Franklin And The American Experiment Collide On StageWhen you think of famous scientists of the early United States, you likely think of Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and even the glass harmonica.He and his son are the subject of the play “Franklinland.” It explores their sometimes contentious relationship, Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments as a scientist, and how the scientific method can be used to understand the ongoing experiment of the United States. It’s running now until November 3 at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City.Ira Flatow is joined by the playwright of “Franklinland,” Lloyd Suh, to learn how he joined all of these elements for the stage.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

How easily do you think you could spot health misinformation? When we talk about misinformation, I think you hear people mostly focus on the extremes. But the model middle is a group that is really open to new information from this uncertainty. It's Thursday, October 17th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Buxbell. You've probably seen some, well, dubious health claims popping up on your feed recently. there is, of course, the false claims about vaccines that continue to circulate, or maybe you've seen ads pushing suspicious-looking supplements, or heard politicians make claims about contraception

or abortion that just don't match the science. As November nears, we're continuing our spotlight on the science that's shaping the election. And we're kicking off a short series about health misinformation. We'll be looking into some of the health claims that you, our listener, are curious about. More details on how to contact us in a bit. But first, here's Ira Flito with a conversation about the basics of health misinformation. Joining me now to give us a primer on health misinformation is my guest, Irving Washington, senior vice president and executive director of the Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative at KFF. That's a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization based in Washington, D.C. Welcome to Science for

Hi there, Ira. Glad to be here. Thank you very much. All right, let's begin with the basics. What is health misinformation? What actually are we talking about here? Yeah, health misinformation is trickier than a lot of people might think. I often hear people get mixed up in terminology, so sometimes they'll hear misinformation, disinformation, misleading claims, and it all blurs together. But no matter what terminology you might have heard, essentially health misinformation, I look at it as anything that misrepresents health claim, a fact, a narrative, whether it's intentional or not. And in most cases, it's usually just an outright lie. But not in all cases. Sometimes it's more subtle, and they may use like a smid of the truth. I'd like to think about if you've ever seen a post that pulls one specific

data from a study to sell something like a miracle cure. The single data point is true, but it's misleading because it leaves out a broader context. You know, I think most people think, oh, well, I can spot health misinformation. I won't fall for that, but your research points to something called the muddled middle. Tell me about that. Yeah, we did an interesting poll last year, and we found a group that we're calling the muddle middle, as you said, and it's a pretty big group of people across all demographics who, when they encounter misinformation, they don't quite know what to believe. They might think when they see a false health claim that it probably could be true or it probably could be false. And I think this is something that we all can relate to just from the sheer amount of overwhelming data and information we're processing every day.

But the model middle is probably more interesting in the fact that when we talk about misinformation, I think you hear people mostly focus on the extreme. So either people who are buying into extreme conspiracy theories or people who are just skeptical of and will reject almost anything. But the model middle is a group that is really open to new information from the. this uncertainty. So there's ways to possibly engage and help inform them. Do you find that they actually will then take action to find out if those claims are true or not? I think they will. This is why they're sort of in the model middle, because it can go either direction. So it's mostly centered around uncertainty. So there's the possibility that they will look for more information. But there's also the downside of this where because of that uncertainty, there might

just be decision paralysis, where because you're confused or uncertain, you may just not make any decision at all, which is a decision, and it's not good for a lot of health outcomes. Analysis, paralysis. Are there any groups who are more susceptible to believing health misinformation versus other groups? Yes, susceptibility to health misinformation isn't as straightforward as it might seem. I think it's sometimes easy to think that some groups might likely believe false claims more than the other, but it's really, really influenced by a range of factors beyond demographics alone. But that's it, we do see some trends, though it doesn't mean everybody in these groups are susceptible. One example is younger adults. They tend to encounter more

misinformation on social media and possibly because they're online more. They just are more exposed to it. There's also certain communities of color, rural residents, people with lower levels of education. They report encountering health misinformation more. And then there's just also just partisan divides with people who lean more. conservative showing kind of greater belief around misinformation around vaccines and public health. But I do just want to remind that the underlying factors that may contribute to this are ranging, including mistrust in institutions or limited access to reliable information. But I like to remind folks that the muddle middle is the largest group across all demographics.

So this is where everyone falls and we're all susceptible to this. How can people vet health information that they come across? Yeah, this is challenging, but it's doable. And I know, you know, particularly in social media, we look at that as maybe like fun and relaxation. And it definitely can be that. But I also remind people in today's environment, think of yourself as a detective as well, too, where you're trying to figure out what's true and what's not while you're consuming all this content. First thing you can do is like, look at who's posting. Is it coming from a reputable source, verified expert, a well-known organization, trusted sources provide more credibility. The other thing to do is look at language.

Reliable information tends to be straightforward, not sensational. So if you see dramatic phrases like miracle cure or the secret they don't want you to know, that might be a clue that something's off. And then, again, just do cross checks with other sources and other people to see if you can verify this information elsewhere. And sometimes they'll have a little fine. print at the bottom of an ad, for example. It says this has not been verified by anybody. Exactly. And that's where that detective work goes in. Again, it makes it harder these days as you're processing things. You may just want to have fun and relax, but you really do have to have that detective mindset. And it's not always necessarily obvious who is a trustworthy source.

I mean, what about doctors that make claims on TikTok, right? They aren't always what they appear to be. This is true. And, you know, we often want to and really should trust people with credentials, but it's smart to think about kind of what level of expertise you're seeing this advice or where you're seeing this information. One thing you want to do is definitely consider the specific expertise. Think about it in a way. Would you want your cardiologist to perform brain surgery on you, even though they're both doctors? Likely not. So when someone's talking outside of their specialty, it's okay to double check that. I also think you want to pay attention to how people are talking, do they say things like this always works or that never happens? Reliable health

information is usually, again, straightforward, but there's some nuance there as well that you need to talk about. So make sure you pay attention for that. And then just simply look, are other experts saying these same things or not? And can you verify it from other places? Why is it that health misinformation spreads so quickly and so easily? You know, one thing I remind people is that health misinformation, has been around for a while. I'm sure you and others have heard, think of those old myths or cures you might have heard

when you were younger. So we've had it for a while. What's changed is the reach and speed. Social media certainly accelerated things, and it's designed to push content that gets a greater reaction. Sensational misinformation also spreads faster because of that. And then another reason is just the emotional appeal. A lot of misinformation targets are hopes and fears.

And so that is what really draws into how misinformation spread. I tend to look at it as this is the perfect storm of technology, human psychology, and the complexity of health information. Yeah, well, you bring up a really interesting point speaking about technology. We now have AI, right? We never had that concern before. Maybe folks are waiting to see a doctor or just have medical questions and then they turn to an AI chatbot dispensing health information. Not such a great idea, is it? Well, AI is so fascinating.

So what we're saying is more people are turning to AI, including chat GPT for health advice. Our polling found that around 70% of adults use these chatbots at least once a month, and then that number jumps up 25% for younger adults. But the thing is, part of the question is when it comes to actually trusting it, that confidence is mixed. A lot of people reported being unsure if the information they were getting was accurate or even safe to act on for regular users. And the other thing, one of my colleagues,

we did an interesting experiment where we took 10 false health claims and we asked all the AI models about them over an eighth month period. And what we saw was fascinating. In some instances, they would cite specific institutions to verify their facts and others they wouldn't.

Other times, they'd be vague and non-committal. And there were even claims where one time they would say something is false, and then over the course of the eighth month, they would say that it's evolving discussion. So AI is a good starting point, but you just want to verify with your doctors and other health professionals. So how much trust should people put into AI? Any at all? Is it a good screening source? You know, the cliche is true trust but verify, and AI is a good starting point. So

think about how you would also do a search prior to what AI is. It's a good starting point, but you want to verify the information. You also have to keep in mind just in our experiment, the answers change according to users and updates. So it can be a good ground basis, but you should never fully rely on it. All right. Let's talk finally about this election that's coming up. What are some health misinformation trends that you are following? One that's probably not surprising for most people is that there's a big area around vaccine misinformation as we gear up for the election. We're still seeing claims that vaccines cause serious health issues, And that fuels vaccine hesitancy and it's even discouraging some parents from getting their kids vaccinated.

And it's also extending to things beyond COVID-19 like Impox. There's also been a resurgence of miracle cures. Think about remedies that claim to fix everything from something that's, you know, innocent as a minor element to something more serious like cancer as well, too. They usually are offering these simple solutions. And then the last thing I'll mention is we're also seeing a lot. of misinformation around reproductive health. With women's health and reproductive rights front and center right now, there's misleading claims circulating about abortion and contraception. Right, right. Yeah, we're all familiar with that. Thank you very much. This is very helpful.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Irving Washington, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative at KFF, that's a nonprofit health policy research polling and news organization. And now what you want to hear from you folks out there, is there a piece of health information that you've seen recently that makes you skeptical about its accuracy? Well, you can email us a voice memo to SciFri at ScienceFriety.com or leave us a voicemail at 1646-7676532 or go to ScienceFriiday.com slash health info to submit a topic. And in a couple of weeks, we'll select a couple of topics to investigate

with the help of a subject matter expert. And to close out the hour, we're going to take a look at one of the U.S.'s most famous scientists. I'm talking about Benjamin Franklin, of course, inventor of the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the musical instrument, the glass harmonica. He and his son are the subject of a new staging of a play called Franklin Land. It explores their contentious relationship,

Franklin's accomplishments as a scientist, and how the scientific method can be used to understand the ongoing experiment of this country. Full disclosure was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which also helps support Science Friday. It's running now until November 3rd at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York. And here to tell us more is the playwright of Franklin Land. Lloyd Saugh, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. It's a thrill to be on. Nice to have you.

Okay, why a play about Ben Franklin and his son? That's a great question. It happened kind of randomly. Graham Gillis at Ensemble Studio Theater had asked me if I had any ideas about plays about science. And I'd been doing some reading, casual reading, about Benjamin Franklin. I'd just been very fascinated with him, in particular with, like, how does a guy do as much as he did? Like, how are there possibly enough hours in a day? And so with that prompt from Graham, I just started thinking about. oh, maybe there's something there. What would that look like? And that was the springboard that led me to

the relationship with the sun and how science fed into that. Yeah, it's also about the scientific method, too, right? Yes, very much so. Yeah, the whole structure is really rooted in that idea. Because the scientific method was relatively new at that point. Yeah, that's right. The exercise for me was not just about how the scientific method applies to the experiment of America, but also how it applies to the experiment of being a parent in how one makes one's way through the world. Yeah. And actually, not just a parent, but a son as well. So, yeah, the play is really about all kinds of experimenting, as you say,

experimenting with the new country, with fatherhood, with having children. Yeah, for sure. And the more I think about it, the act of writing the play was kind of an experiment in that, too, you know, like starting with this hypothesis that I could somehow tie all those things together. Well, well, you did it. You did in the sense that experimentation is a bumpy ride, right? You have some successes and you have failures. Yeah, and that's the great thing about live performance, you know, especially because this is a play that I'd written some years ago, depending on when it's staged, it feels a little different. You know, like the first iteration of the play was during the Obama administration. The second iteration of the play was happening early in the Trump administration, and now this is happening like right before a very contentious election.

So these are very different data points in terms of how we interpret the way we live. look at America as an experiment. When you were first writing the play and researching Benjamin Franklin, what stood out to you that you hadn't fully realized before? Oh, so many things. I mean, the main thing that just felt like something that I had to really wrestle with was how that relationship with his son deteriorated. They were so close.

And as much as I thought about this idea of Ben as. a scrappy, curious, playful inventor. When I got to that part, it became so much about pain and loss and betrayal and dashed hopes. So, yeah, the emotional part snuck up on me. And it became the heart of the play. Yeah, there were definitely things that I learned about that I otherwise wouldn't have, like the Gulf Stream. The sheer volume of things that he dabbled in, it's mind-boggling. Why did you choose to bring in his musical invention? Oh, it felt fun, you know, and it was like leaving that one scene with the sort of God Save the King moment, and it felt like a great way to transition that into my country, Tizavni.

Yes, yes. You know, that, yeah, that just felt kind of cool. And I have, in each one of those scenes, there is some invention or some different one of Ben's experiments and exploration. is happening from the kite to the catheter to the Gulfstream to the bifocals to the glass harmonica. So in each one of those, except for one, the one where he's at his lowest moment, he's dabbling in something. That's pretty exciting. Yeah.

There's a scene where we see the lead up to the famous lightning, key, and kite flying experiment. When you were recreating this on stage, it was really interesting. What was important for you? What was the point you were trying to get across there? Well, the first thing that surprised me is I hadn't realized that William was the one who had had the kite, who was holding it. And that fascinated me just about, like, what did that involve, especially knowing where their relationship would go? And so it made me think about apprenticeship. It made me think about discovery.

It made me think about what it is to be a son and, you know, working in service to this idea. And it felt like the perfect way to introduce this idea of all of life. as an experiment and an exploration, and the way in which I can use that scene as an opportunity for Ben to articulate to his son, the goal of all of it, the meaning, the purpose, the why behind it all. You know, because when we see these famous pictures of Franklin holding his kite, we never see William, his son in the photo, doing. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

A recurring theme of the play is how extremely egotistical Franklin is, full of hubris, and then trying to recreate himself in his son. You went out of your way to do that. Yeah. I mean, you know, there are a lot of things in the play that are historically accurate, but there are a lot of things in the play that are kind of fictional fantasy. Hopefully everything is rooted in some sense of truth.

And I became immediately attracted to this idea of greatness, what it is to be a great man. Just thinking about one of the great differences between William and Ben is in how they're remembered. And so it made me, think a lot about what it is to grow up in the shadow of that greatness. And as I started to write, it just became really fun, first of all, to have a character in Benjamin Franklin, who isn't just great, but also knows that he is great, acknowledges, and that that's part of what William has to contend with. And so, yeah, that definitely became something that early on felt like, oh, yeah,

this is a, this is fruitful. And it's amazing how it stands. And it's amazing how it stands. up to time this play, especially in an era we're living in. Yeah, thank you for saying that. That's one of the most important things to me. Like, even as I was writing it, I was aware of the need to make it portable. I've written a lot about history, especially lately. And whenever you're doing that, you have to be mindful of not just depicting that moment in history, but making it relevant to the present. And then when you think about the present tense as a playwright and, you know, working in the theater, you also have to kind of hypothesize about the future.

This is something I especially learned in the pandemic when there were no theaters open, that it felt like, oh, everything I write is going to be future tense. Like, I don't know what the world is going to be like if these things are ever staged. So it became very important to me to think about, oh, could this still make sense and still be relevant in 10 years or beyond? Yes. We've talked about the different ways the scientific method is, explored in the play, do you have any takeaways for scientists and researchers that you discovered

as an artist working on this theme? Oh, you know, I mean, yeah, I guess the biggest thing I would just say is like that this is, it's fun, right? Like, this play was kind of a joy to write and especially a joy to write and work on with people in a room. The great thing about writing something that is explicitly designed as an experiment is to say that when you bring collaborators into the room, you can say, hey, we're all in this together. We're in this same experiment together. And because it's a comedy, it felt like, oh, wow, this is just fun and exciting. And that's the thing that I feel like when I think about Benjamin and Franklin's approach to anything, you know, just through his own writing, through his attitudes, even in those painful moments, he has this sense

of play and enthusiasm and excitement around the sense of discovery. And that felt like the biggest takeaway for me is that whenever we're doing these things, whether you're a scientist or a playwright or an actor, let it be fun. Yeah. How do you think about this connection between the scientific method and the United States at our specific moment in history? Yeah. That's something that when I think about putting this play in front of this audience right now,

And I think it was a very smart thing for Ensemble Studio Theater to give us this slot right in advance of the election is that these things are right on the surface of everyone's mind, right? We're all thinking about these things. What is the nature of our democracy? Where are we? How are we doing? How do we interpret this particular data point in the American experiment? And those questions are ultimately questions that we can answer for today. but given where we are right now and given, you know, how momentous and how different the world will be,

depending on what happens in November, it's a question that we can't answer yet, right? We can only wonder. We can only hope and fear and imagine, which is, in terms of drama, the most exciting place to be. So, yeah, it's pretty exciting to be doing it now. Well, your play was really interesting to watch the many layers that you wove into the characters. I hope you have great success with it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming to see it and for having me on. It's a real pleasure. You're welcome. Lloyd Sa, author of the play Franklin Land. It's running at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York until November 3rd.

That's all the time we have for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen, including Kathleen Davis. Diana Plasker Beth Ramey Danielle Johnson Santiago Flores Tomorrow a roundup of the top science news of the week

I'm SciFry producer Shoshana Bucksbaum catch you next time