Writing content that corrects health misinformation

Correcting health misinformation calls for accurate content that readers can understand, trust and find.

Accuracy and trust

Content should not itself create misinformation: writers should resist pressure to fabricate or exaggerate product efficacy, uphold scientific principles, avoid editorialising data and turn down or steer away from work that spreads misinformation. ¹

Fact-checking includes examining bias in study design or funding and screening out poor or deceitful sources. ¹ Transparency and honesty matter in developing content for audiences weary of fake news. ²

Communication should also include listening to the audience and can include planning direct engagement through replies and messages and working with medical, legal and regulatory reviewers. ¹

Limits of fact-checking

Evidence from political communication and social psychology discussed in 2021 suggested that fact-checking had limited effectiveness and could worsen matters by prompting people to defend existing beliefs. ³ Wider and faster reach, unreliable demographic information and conversation at enormous scale can exacerbate misinformation’s effects on social media. ³ Continued reliance on misinformation despite accessible accurate information may reflect misunderstanding, distrust of information providers or fundamentally different beliefs. ³

Health communication can apply social media marketing with different strategies for different audiences. ⁴ Studies discussed in 2021 of social media education about human papillomavirus vaccination reported no increase in vaccination rates, although they and other studies recognised potential and emphasised appealing to logic and emotion to build trust. ⁴ Accurate information can be carried through people the audience already trusts, including doctors, nurses, reputable scientists, science teachers, celebrities and influencers, using the platforms that audience already uses. ⁴

Usable explanations

Lay readers can struggle to judge reliability when journalism sensationalises breakthroughs and researchers write in dense jargon. ⁵ A public explanation can follow Anthony Fauci’s pandemic interview structure: what we know, what we do not know and what we should do, keeping the message from being lost in data. ⁶

Misinformation can spread when abbreviated social media formats lose important nuance or when people speak about subjects they do not fully understand. ⁷ Writers can use their own accounts to publish accurate scientific information or share verified sources, or bring concise wording, the practical “so what?” and formats such as video into their work. ⁷

Discoverability

Medical writers can collaborate with online content creators who know how to attract engagement and make plain-language materials free, available and easy to discover for those creators to use. ⁷

Neutral clinical-trial information may rarely go viral amid competition from flashy or controversial headlines, but it can still be made easy to find for people actively seeking it. ⁷ Success can be measured by whether those people actually access it. ⁷