Opinion: Medical misinformation often isn’t outright lies. It’s more subtle than that

The most powerful forms of deception rely more on emotional manipulation and misdirection than outright lies. That’s what I’ve observed in nearly a year of research into the murky world of medical misinformation.
Take the episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that prompted music legends like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to remove their music from Spotify, where Rogan is the platform’s most popular podcaster. The guest on that episode, medical researcher Robert Malone, created a distorted picture of alleged vaccination dangers with a combination of anecdote, cherry-picking, innuendo, and wildly improbable speculation — not deliberate lies. Read the rest…