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Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a marked rise in medical disinformation across social media. A variety of claims have garnered considerable traction, including the assertion that COVID is a hoax or deliberately manufactured, that 5G frequency radiation causes coronavirus, and that the pandemic is...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Grimes, David Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7954317/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33711025
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245900
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author Grimes, David Robert
author_facet Grimes, David Robert
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description The coronavirus pandemic has seen a marked rise in medical disinformation across social media. A variety of claims have garnered considerable traction, including the assertion that COVID is a hoax or deliberately manufactured, that 5G frequency radiation causes coronavirus, and that the pandemic is a ruse by big pharmaceutical companies to profiteer off a vaccine. An estimated 30% of some populations subscribe some form of COVID medico-scientific conspiracy narratives, with detrimental impacts for themselves and others. Consequently, exposing the lack of veracity of these claims is of considerable importance. Previous work has demonstrated that historical medical and scientific conspiracies are highly unlikely to be sustainable. In this article, an expanded model for a hypothetical en masse COVID conspiracy is derived. Analysis suggests that even under ideal circumstances for conspirators, commonly encountered conspiratorial claims are highly unlikely to endure, and would quickly be exposed. This work also explores the spectrum of medico-scientific acceptance, motivations behind propagation of falsehoods, and the urgent need for the medical and scientific community to anticipate and counter the emergence of falsehoods.
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spelling pubmed-79543172021-03-22 Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories Grimes, David Robert PLoS One Research Article The coronavirus pandemic has seen a marked rise in medical disinformation across social media. A variety of claims have garnered considerable traction, including the assertion that COVID is a hoax or deliberately manufactured, that 5G frequency radiation causes coronavirus, and that the pandemic is a ruse by big pharmaceutical companies to profiteer off a vaccine. An estimated 30% of some populations subscribe some form of COVID medico-scientific conspiracy narratives, with detrimental impacts for themselves and others. Consequently, exposing the lack of veracity of these claims is of considerable importance. Previous work has demonstrated that historical medical and scientific conspiracies are highly unlikely to be sustainable. In this article, an expanded model for a hypothetical en masse COVID conspiracy is derived. Analysis suggests that even under ideal circumstances for conspirators, commonly encountered conspiratorial claims are highly unlikely to endure, and would quickly be exposed. This work also explores the spectrum of medico-scientific acceptance, motivations behind propagation of falsehoods, and the urgent need for the medical and scientific community to anticipate and counter the emergence of falsehoods. Public Library of Science 2021-03-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7954317/ /pubmed/33711025 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245900 Text en © 2021 David Robert Grimes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Grimes, David Robert
Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title_full Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title_fullStr Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title_full_unstemmed Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title_short Medical disinformation and the unviable nature of COVID-19 conspiracy theories
title_sort medical disinformation and the unviable nature of covid-19 conspiracy theories
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7954317/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33711025
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245900
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