A week ago I shared a news article with my mum about a measles outbreak in Los Angeles, for which the University of California Los Angeles impose a quarantine on a few hundred students. I shared it, because I had been to UCLA only two years ago, and I told her I was happy not to have to be there now (even though obviously this would not really have affected me). She wondered what could have happened and so I told her about the concept of anti-vaxxers, and that was it. A few days later she sent me an article about vaccination through Facebook, saying it was an "interesting read". When I read it, I was shocked, not only because, quelle surprise, it was anti-vaccination propaganda, but how could my mum have stumbled onto this, send this to me, and call it an interesting read?!
Wake-up call
My first reaction was to not respond. I needed some time to process this and I did not know how to react. When I responded I started by pointing out that just because it’s on the Internet, that does not mean you should believe what you read. The first sentence in the article talked about ‘the unproven hypothesis’, which to me was a trigger that this was never going to be an objective article about vaccination. When I explained this, she obviously understood. She knows how easy it is to find fake news in this days. But she also pointed out that how as a lay person was she to know what is fact and fiction, and more importantly, who to trust?
To me this was a serious wake-up call. We all want to believe that we are immune (forgive the pun) to misinformation and fake news. Particularly as a researcher I pride myself on my ability to find relevant, factual, reliable, and credible information online: my entire career—the start of one at least—is built on that skill. And while my mum does not have a PhD, she is well-educated, smart, and thinks critically. If even someone like her can so easily fall prey to lies and propaganda, how could we possibly expect the rest of the world to distinguish between truth and falsehood?
To me this was a serious wake-up call. We all want to believe that we are immune (forgive the pun) to misinformation and fake news. Particularly as a researcher I pride myself on my ability to find relevant, factual, reliable, and credible information online: my entire career—the start of one at least—is built on that skill. And while my mum does not have a PhD, she is well-educated, smart, and thinks critically. If even someone like her can so easily fall prey to lies and propaganda, how could we possibly expect the rest of the world to distinguish between truth and falsehood?
Searching for facts
But the problem goes deeper than that. I did not want to go through the entire article and explain point by point why it was either a lie or a misrepresentation of the facts, but I did want to illustrate that with at least one point. So I entered into Google “Polio vaccine Gates Africa” (it’s Dutch translation actually), and the result was nothing less than shocking. Despite years of me using Google to find scientific papers, seven of the first ten results, including the top 3, were clearly propaganda sites, and none of the other three were medical sites. The Gates foundation fortunately was there as well, but who’s going to believe the people that make the vaccine if they are sceptical about vaccination?
As a follow-up test I used a different search engine, DuckDuckGo. First I used the same Dutch terminology, and the first hit was again a conspiracy website, although weirdly it was an article on the “nonsense” of climate change. (The link between the two is unsurprising, but that’s a story for a different time.) The second was another major anti-vaccination propaganda site (of which DuckDuckGo was not allowed to show a description!) and the rest was more conspiracy blogs, some in Swedish. When I then used the English terminology—“polio vaccine Gates Africa”—I finally found a website that actually debunks the anti-vaxxer propaganda, but it was the second hit and it was surrounded by propaganda and conspiracies, including my personal favourite InfoWars.
Ponder that. Even if you’ve never searched for any conspiracy theory before, even if you use a search engine that does not track your movements and so does not return hits relevant to your interests, you will still be overwhelmed by lies and misinformation. It’s no wonder that anti-vaccination is increasing in popularity: it is just hard if not impossible to find the facts between all the conspiracies. And if you’re not a medical expert on vaccination, it will be hard to figure out what to believe.
Now one might point out that I clearly was not searching for just vaccination information. Since we’re dealing with conspiracy theories, the results of my search were obviously going to be conspiracy websites. That is a fair point, but here’s the thing: if we want to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases, then we have to make sure that the truth is easily accessible. If someone stumbles onto a conspiracy website and decides to factcheck, and all they find is more propaganda, they will likely be inclined to believe those lies, or at least become sceptical about vaccination. So not only does correct information has to be the first line of defence when people start to google vaccination, it should be the second and third line of defence. The first ten hits on a Google or DuckDuckGo search should always be factual websites that are designed to take away people’s fears. If there is a lie out there, there should be ten websites that show why it’s a lie. It might not be the whole solution, in fact it likely won’t be, but it will help prevent innocent people like my mum getting caught in a paranoid web of lies, half-truths, and conspiracies.
As a follow-up test I used a different search engine, DuckDuckGo. First I used the same Dutch terminology, and the first hit was again a conspiracy website, although weirdly it was an article on the “nonsense” of climate change. (The link between the two is unsurprising, but that’s a story for a different time.) The second was another major anti-vaccination propaganda site (of which DuckDuckGo was not allowed to show a description!) and the rest was more conspiracy blogs, some in Swedish. When I then used the English terminology—“polio vaccine Gates Africa”—I finally found a website that actually debunks the anti-vaxxer propaganda, but it was the second hit and it was surrounded by propaganda and conspiracies, including my personal favourite InfoWars.
Ponder that. Even if you’ve never searched for any conspiracy theory before, even if you use a search engine that does not track your movements and so does not return hits relevant to your interests, you will still be overwhelmed by lies and misinformation. It’s no wonder that anti-vaccination is increasing in popularity: it is just hard if not impossible to find the facts between all the conspiracies. And if you’re not a medical expert on vaccination, it will be hard to figure out what to believe.
Now one might point out that I clearly was not searching for just vaccination information. Since we’re dealing with conspiracy theories, the results of my search were obviously going to be conspiracy websites. That is a fair point, but here’s the thing: if we want to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases, then we have to make sure that the truth is easily accessible. If someone stumbles onto a conspiracy website and decides to factcheck, and all they find is more propaganda, they will likely be inclined to believe those lies, or at least become sceptical about vaccination. So not only does correct information has to be the first line of defence when people start to google vaccination, it should be the second and third line of defence. The first ten hits on a Google or DuckDuckGo search should always be factual websites that are designed to take away people’s fears. If there is a lie out there, there should be ten websites that show why it’s a lie. It might not be the whole solution, in fact it likely won’t be, but it will help prevent innocent people like my mum getting caught in a paranoid web of lies, half-truths, and conspiracies.
Who to trust?
The other problem my mum pointed out will for now remain: who do you trust? If one website claims that a “medical expert” has stopped vaccinating his children, when another says that vaccination is good, how does a lay person distinguish between the two? To my trained eye it is easier to distinguish between actual experts and fake experts (something that tends to be useful for me as a vegan, because there are “vegan doctors” who also spew lies and half-truths about the risks non-vegan diets), but I have been trained for years in figuring out what is trustworthy information. And even I will inherently get it wrong on occasion, because like every other person, I am prone to the bias of believing what I want to believe; the information that fits my established world view.
We cannot possibly expect lay people to understand when someone is an actual expert and when information is trustworthy, particularly in the age of fake news. But clearly we should try, because if smart, critical, and well-educated people can so easily fall prey to propaganda and conspiracy theories about vaccination, then the risks of preventable, deadly diseases making a major comeback will only increase the coming years.
We cannot possibly expect lay people to understand when someone is an actual expert and when information is trustworthy, particularly in the age of fake news. But clearly we should try, because if smart, critical, and well-educated people can so easily fall prey to propaganda and conspiracy theories about vaccination, then the risks of preventable, deadly diseases making a major comeback will only increase the coming years.
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