Why Are Conspiracy Theorists Beating Doctors On Social Media?

Written by: ChristianView Network
Article source: www.facebook.com

1. Doctors are accountable to the SA Health Professions Council. Tim Noakes spent years defending himself for a post on social media to avoid losing his profession. Most doctors will never risk that. They will not post medical advice or engage in debate on social media.
2. Your doctors time is expensive. Conspiracy theorists offer advice for free.
3. Good doctors are too busy doing real medicine to debate on social media.
4. Most people want PERSONAL relationship medical advice from people they trust (not just generic medical advice) and interaction to answer their questions and fears. Government health web sites don’t offer personal interaction. Conspiracy theorist forums and facebook threads do – and thus gain peoples trust. We are by nature relational creatures. Social media democratises medicine and takes away the dominance of doctors.
5. Conspiracy theorist tell people what their itching ears want to hear. E.g. The virus isn’t that bad. “Other” e.g. China or Bill Gates is to blame.
6. Conspiracy theory is much more exciting and thus goes viral, while mainstream advice is boring and does not. The algorithms of social media are designed to give exponentially more exposure to the few stories that get traction. Boring health advice doesn’t make it into most people’s news feeds to even see before they might even share.
7. Conspiracy theory attracts debate. Thus those who rebut it often unintentionally spread it, by attracting attention on threads and by raising fears (e.g. the Covid19 vaccine will alter my DNA) that people didn’t have before.
8. Social media will amplify the tiny fraction doctors who do support fringe theories conspiracy theories or those pretending to be doctors or medical scientists but are actually not.
9. Conspiracy theorists completely outnumber doctors on the internet. It takes 6 years to train as a doctor. You can become a conspiracy theorist medical advisor as fast as you can click on ‘Share’ and ‘Forward’
10. Because social media is so flooded with fake medical advice and because doctors are real human beings under stress with hopes and fears like us, some have in haste actually shared fake news without checking it from reputable sources and only realised their mistake too late, thus adding to the confusion.
11. Most people don’t understand statistics and if they do, don’t relate to them personally. This is why for example the one video and story of police killing of George Floyd had much more impact than the statistics not supporting racial bias. The personal trumps statistics:
12. When people do web searches and read other news, they will find conspiracy theory news.
13. Scientific reporting requires an unemotional monotone alien to normal conversation. Those familiar with reading scientific journals know how to ‘read in’ understated, significant features or tentative claims for what they are. Most people including journalists don’t, so when they relay them they interject degrees of certainty or emotion that the scientists didn’t intend. In Chinese whispers, the message often gets distorted. The most fantastic claims go viral.
14. Ironically, because of Covid19 few people are visiting their doctors and thus personal contact with real doctors is reduced – giving a gap conspiracy quacks are filling.
15. Social media consists of echo chambers of similar people. Once a community is captured by conspiracy theorists, all inside think that’s normal and fall in line. Sadly Christian and conservative social media communities fall prey to false prophets.
16. Conspiracy theories can be stated in one line, while debunking them requires twenty times the words and each point can be questioned again.
17. The WHO, many governments and social media platforms have lost credibility with Christians and conservatives by promoting abortion and sexual immorality and infringing freedoms, and thus are not trusted on Covid19. They view find themselves alienated and marginalised with the conspiracy theorists.

For all the above reasons, all Social Media algorithms are fundamentally loaded in favour of conspiracy theory and against science. It is impossible for doctors to win. I have attempted to summarise and amplify the voices of real medical scientists and doctors from real credible sources – but its a losing battle – I’ve realised now why social media will always benefit nonsense. Take it with a pinch of salt.

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Date published: 21/04/2021
Feature image: Image for illustrative purposes only. pixabay.com

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