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Invalid health news comes in many flavors. Some is utterly fake and potentially dangerous: asserting links between vaccines and autism, discrediting the reality of climate change. Other assertions feel somewhat different, like advertising claims that a pill can melt away pounds or a dietary supplement can make you stronger. A long-familiar willingness to dismiss facts in the health arena seems more recently to have infected the political discourse, allowing ideology, assumptions, and dogma to masquerade as reality. If an informed electorate gives way to one that believes all truth is relative, and that only personal opinion matters, reasoned debate and compromise are going to be hard to come by. It may be time for the health field to look hard at the fake news it has tolerated.
- 2017 Health
- Health
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