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THE COMPLEXICITY OF MID

As we explained on the page ‘Why is it a problem?’, false medical information is an issue that affects and influences many aspects in our society. Now that almost everybody has access to the internet and with the rise of social media, many people research their own health problems and more easily share their own beliefs with others. Additionally, research is more widely accessible. Even though this has very important advantages, it brings dangers as well: the emergence or creation and eventually the spread of medical misinformation. This can have severe consequences for an individual’s health, the functioning of a system, or healthcare costs. You might be thinking now: if medical information disorder is such a big problem that has many negative consequences, why isn’t it not yet solved? Well, that is because it is a very complex problem, one might even say it is a wicked problem. Experts from all over the world, from different disciplines and backgrounds, have been trying to find a solution to ‘solve’ medical information disorder. Unfortunately, they have not succeeded in this yet. But what exactly makes this problem so complex?

What makes this problem so complex?: Tekst
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The short answer is: this problem occurs all over the world in different countries within different cultures. It also does not have one simple cause and thus solution. Besides, the spreading and popularity of a theory depends on many different factors within the believer (so called intrinsic factors) and factors around the believer (the environmental factors). Examples of intrinsic factors are naivety and intelligence whereas environmental factors could be access to education and the perspective of people in your direct environment. For these reasons, this requires out of the system thinking and an interdisciplinary approach in which all different types of experts work together in tackling medical information disorder. Only in this way, the problem can fully be understood so that a solution could be created that effectively tackles this problem.

What makes this problem so complex?: Tekst

The diagram below shows the different stakeholders that are involved in the problem of medical information disorder and how they influence each other. Beneath the diagram, the influence on these stakeholders is explained.

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What makes this problem so complex?: Afbeelding

As can be seen in the diagram, many stakeholders are involved and all these different domains are influencing each other. It obviously starts with the creation of false medical information. That could happen intentionally or unintentionally by different people such as scientific journalists, famous people or just anybody really. How all these stakeholders are involved is as follows:

What makes this problem so complex?: Tekst
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SOCIETAL

This false information can reach the society via newspapers, social media or other platforms. Whenever you read this false medical information, two things could happen. You have either heard before about this subject and you are able to judge whether the article is reliable or not. It could also happen that you have not read about that topic before, or just not enough to be able to judge whether it is reliable or not. This could happen to anyone who has not read about that specific topic before, even a doctor could experience that. In the last scenario, it can be hard to judge if you can trust the information and person who writes it. If you do trust it, you could even share the information to others. If the information is wrong, the person who reads it and all people to whom it is spread could potentially be harmed by believing it. Besides, the algorithms on which social media are formed are complex adaptive systems. The algorithm learns from sharing and liking posts and probably many other activities. Whenever you like a post that includes invalid news, that algorithm would then show you more posts with similar statements because it 'knows' that you agree with it. This is very much linked to the psychological phenomenon confirmation bias which is explained below under 'PSYCHOLOGICAL' but also on the page about the psychology behind MID.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons
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MEDICAL

Believing the false information can have great consequences for someone’s health. It could for instance result in health risks or extra healthcare costs. What makes MID difficult, is that some information could actually be partly true. This is mainly the case when someone can subjectively interpret the medical information. That makes it harder to tell someone to stop believing it: even if it is actually damaging that person, their point of view could be partly right. Another aspect of the medical domain of influence is public health. This can best be illustrated with the anti-vax movement. Anti-vaxxers believe that vaccination is not good for one’s health and some might even say that you could get autism because of vaccinations. More and more people do believe this and do not want to be vaccinated, while this has actually been scientifically proven wrong. This has now resulted in outbreaks of contagious diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons
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PSYCHOLOGICAL

The psychological part of this problem consists of the following questions: Why are some medical information disorders attractive to believe? Which medical information disorder is believable and which is not? Also, psychological influences can be at play for the person who believes the medical information disorder. They could be believing it because they want to believe it instead of believing it because it is scientifically right. In psychology, this phenomenon is called confirmation bias. Anti-vaxxers tend to turn a blind eye to all the scientific evidence and research showing the importance of vaccinations and instead only look at evidence supporting what they think.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons
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JUDICIAL

From a judicial perspective, the following question could be posed: is it possible to make laws to reduce medical information disorders? You could think about stopping people to go to public meetings where some medical information disorder is discussed. Another example is obliging people to get vaccinated. Another judicial question on this topic could be: is censoring medical information disorder from social media and other platforms possible? If that is possible, false medical information would reach far less people which could result in less damage to people who would believe it after reading.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons
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POLITICAL

From a political perspective, you could think about the possibility to enforce laws to reduce medical information disorders. In the judicial point of view, one would think about if such a law is realizable, whereas in the political point of view one would think how the law is implemented so that the society is enforced to abide by the law. Another aspect is: could there be a correlation between the political system and people who believe in medical information disorder? 

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons
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ETHICAL

Many ethical questions may rise when talking about medical information disorders. Examples are: is it ethical to oblige people to follow science? People are free to believe in God and it would be unethical to prohibit religion. On the other hand, could it be ethical to oblige people to follow science if it would seriously harm or even kill people if they did not follow science? Is it ethical to expose nonbelievers to the risks created by the believers? In the case of anti-vaxxers, old people that got vaccinated when they were young and childs that did not yet get vaccinated are more likely to become ill when the group of anti-vaxxers rises. The older you get, the weaker your immune system becomes and thus the more likely you could become ill. When the great majority of the society is vaccinated, all weak people and young, not-yet vaccinated childs are protected from becoming sick. This phenomenon is called herd-immunity. Lastly, is censoring false medical information ethical? This could conflict with the freedom of expression.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons

INFLUENCES

All these above mentioned stakeholders are not only by itself involved in medical information disorder, but also influence each other in many ways. As you have seen, some false or misleading information are more attractive to others and therefore more likely to be believed. These articles are consequently more likely to be shared on, for instance, social media. Social media platforms use adaptive algorithms that are able to show you content similar to what you have liked or reacted to. This could negatively influence what you are reading since you would unknowingly be reading more and more invalid posts. That could have a major impact on your individual health, but also on the society as a whole (think about the anti-vaxx movement). Politically it might be good to implement laws that make the spread of invalid news criminal, but that would be very hard to do and maybe even impossible. Regulation of all internet pages and social media platforms is just not easily done. Moreover, ethically there are many questions to consider because enforcing laws that prohibit the spread of fake news could potentially contradict with the freedom of expression








Click the button below to learn 'The psychology behind MID'.

What makes this problem so complex?: Over ons

FACT CHECKING!

All the peer-reviewed scientific articles we have used to write this web page are listed below:

Workspace
Researching and Writing

PROMOTING VACCINE CONFIDENCE

Smith, 2015

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VACCINE REFUSAL AND VACCINE-PREVENTABLE DISEASES IN THE UNITED STATES

Phadke, Bednarczyk, Salmon & Omer, 2016

What makes this problem so complex?: Nieuws
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