One doctor found herself on the front lines of the battle against misinformation | Opinion – Tennessean

Kathleen Montgomery, Guest columnist Published 8:00 a.m. CT June 19, 2020

There is a lot of misinformation out there about coronavirus. We sort the facts from falsehoods. Wochit

By rebutting a social media conspiracy, I felt I was helping disseminate accurate scientific information and naively shrugged off messages from social media influencers offering words of caution.

Like most people, I use social media mostly for keeping in touch with friends and family. I also happen to be a pathologist with a background in epidemiology. I primarily diagnose cancer and other diseases using a microscope and dont spend much time face to face with patients, but my training is well-suited to understanding the current pandemic.

When a friend sent me a conspiracy theory video about COVID-19, I decided to write a Facebook post pointing out some of its scientific inaccuracies. Five days later, my post had been shared more than 200,000 times.

Almost immediately, hundreds of private messages poured in from everyone from doctors to elephant farmers around the world. I received text messages from friends I hadnt spoken to in years thanking me for the post.

But interestingly, so many of my physician colleagues have abandoned social media altogether that the next morning, almost no one in my department had even heard of the latest conspiracy theory, let alone my post about it.

With increasing clinical demands and ever more misinformation circulating on the internet, I understand why doctors pull away, but the problem with turning our backs is that it creates an information vacuum for conspiracy theories to take root. By writing this rebuttal, I felt I was helping disseminate accurate scientific information and naively shrugged off messages from social media influencers offering words of caution.

Cars line up for coronavirus testing Saturday, April 18, 2020, at the Williamson County Health Department in Franklin, Tenn.(Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean)

I started receiving phone calls and pages at work from people I didnt know. Facebook accounts (whether they were actual people or automated bots, I still do not know) began commenting with photographs of dead bodies and unsettling, cryptic comments.

Others obtained and circulated my personal family photographs. I received hundreds of attacks on my credentials, accusations of being a paid shill sponsored by Big Pharma, and disparagement of my motives, expertise, and even my appearance. That night, I lay in bed with my husband asking if fighting for the truth was worth it. Was I putting our family at risk with my words?

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I dont know the right answer, but in the end, I decided to lean in. This purpose was too important to abandon. I turned off comments but kept the post public and created a separate professional page with the goal of making medical science accessible to everyone.

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With so much information at our fingertips, its easy to feel like anyone can become an expert with enough time and internet research. But this is a dangerous notion. As a physician who diagnoses cancer, I have seen firsthand how medical misinformation can be deadly.

Kathleen Montgomery(Photo: Submitted)

It is not uncommon for a patient with a treatable, early-stage tumor to forego conventional surgery or chemotherapy in favor of an alternative treatment they have read about on the internet, only to return to our hospital to find that their cancer has spread to other organs and they now only have a few months to live.

Because anyone can make a video, post a compelling narrative on a professional-looking website or pay someone to provide a testimonial, any of us can fall prey to false information. This is one reason why peer-reviewed research is so valuable: it requires scientists to provide enough information about their study design and analysis methods that a panel of experts in the field, blinded to the authors of the study, will independently conclude that the research and its conclusions are scientifically valid.

Unfortunately, many peer-reviewed articles are inaccessible to the general public and there is no such review process for most of the content online.

So how can someone outside of medicine tease out truth from fiction? When you read a news story about a new scientific finding, seek out the primary source usually it will be hyperlinked in or immediately following the article, and most of the time the findings are not as conclusive as suggested.

Look out for words like may or could often stories will use phrases like this finding COULD help doctors, when referring to something that is still unproven. Be very skeptical of anyone selling supplements or books and check the credentials of anyone proclaiming to be a doctor. Even better, ask your own doctor about information that seems confusing.

If I learned one thing in medical school, it is that the human body is complex beyond our wildest imagination.

We practice evidence-based medicine, but at the end of the day, we are mere humans, trying to improve the lives of other humans. Sometimes, we make mistakes. There is a lot we have yet to learn.

But, even as we practice an imperfect art, we have a moral obligation to help others, and I believe this responsibility extends beyond the patients under our direct care. None of us can win the war against misinformation alone, but I urge my colleagues in medicine to join me in carrying the torch. Now more than ever, lives depend on it.

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Kathleen Montgomery is a graduate of the Vanderbilt Medical School and has a masters of public health in epidemiology from the University of Michigan.

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One doctor found herself on the front lines of the battle against misinformation | Opinion - Tennessean