Thread by @usnehal

@sinanaral on false news

#tweetiatrician peeps, @AmerAcadPeds, @AmerMedicalAssn and @PublicHealth @DrTomFrieden @DrPaulOffit @SaadOmer3 @ASlavitt this is a must watch and Prof Aral’s work is so critical.

People>bots are source of misinformation spread

Must watch @TEDTalks by @sinanaral of @MIT & @MITSloan

Fake news spreads as it invokes surprise & disgust. It is also tied to novelty.

Being negative & relying on creating anger & disgust “wins” over positivity. *sigh*

@AmerAcadPeds #tweetiatrician

I’ve long had a concern over the doctors & #Scicomm who “review” “fake news” out there. Yes content may generate anger & disgust among pro-science followers but how often do you boost the stats of the original fake content?

Have also seen sharing of false info about #STEM peers

I still fall in this trap - happened this year - but recall a person who would @ me to draw me into convo and leverage my following to amplify himself and to use my credibility to raise his own if I were willing to “debate” him in public. He’d call in a gang to create a circus.

I see this same dynamic play out with #tweetiatrician peeps who are in #VaccinesWork conversations with antivaxx. There, I often don’t engage because I have yet to find that productive. Plus, some get vicious

These two @DrToddWo & @NicoleB_MD are SO effective - instead of simply engaging in the “you are wrong” or worse “you are stupid” (the latter is screenshotted, turned into an anti-scientist meme that triggers anger & disgust at “elitism”) - they engage via fun novelty @sinanaral

https://twitter.com/nicoleb_md/status/1314220811138609152

Then @DrJCoftheDC is phenomenal w/ his engaging content. I would love @sinanaral to looks at #VaccinesWork & #WearAMask content like above. There is also such vast & repeated discrimination & bias vs women & minorities in medicine (not recognized as legit) #BlackMenInMedicine

https://twitter.com/drjcofthedc/status/1312935632289714176

What has frustrated me to no end is the censure #STEM and #MedTwitter colleagues have heaped on all of the above despair their actually representing best practices for viral spread as @sinanaral has studied and gotten published in science.sciencemag.org/content/359/63… @ScienceMagazine

On top of that those w/ positions in “professionalism” who lack any understanding of community or minority health will mislabel above effective social media use as “unprofessional”, which itself is a form of “fake news”
& harm especially given #BlackintheIvory, racism, misogyny

#STEM professionals shaming peers or trainees, especially shaming of BIPOC & women is a common theme

not unlike the Salem witch trials, can be led by women enforcing traditional/outdated rules on women

although #Medbikini was all male freepressjournal.in/world/what-is-…

While male faculty may often be senior authors to define “professionalism”, it is not uncommon to hire women to the operational/enforcement #compliance roles. It is where women seem to find success in careers as compared to in #innovation

law.com/corpcounsel/20…

As an #innovation minded woman

I find that the, albeit, pragmatic choice many women in compliance make

to enforce walls, boundaries
from the past

thus they act as agents of preventing growth, change, advancement

is still sad and frustrating

adds to

forbes.com/sites/randalll…

This is the issue with “lean in”:
get ahead by any means
no ethical framework is offered
only metric is own success

this is the rub:

success BY aligning w/
the system
w/ all its flaws
& -isms (sexism, racism, ableism)

so perpetuating past for own career advancement
within

So when you talk of one option for preventing spread of misinformation as labeling @sinanaral

have deep concerns who labels? have seen examples of wrongly trusted “professionalism” ppl mislabeling, especially mislabeling #blackexcellence, women, LGBTQ, Muslim, disabled peers

The nature of gossip matches fake news & the damage done when a wrong label about a peer is put out first in social media without verification or vetting facts. This is an example I post often but this is how easily #blackexcellence is criminalized cnn.com/2020/04/15/us/…

I spent too many years in compliance myself and the level of hubris, the anger/disgust-driven savior mindset, the kind of “pile on” without careful evaluation of facts among many in compliance is scary. As much as I love standards, even those are flawed and rely on past.

This happens far too often: those at the front lines, specifically, WOC, those willing to take on personal risk & low pay to work in marginalized communities who have knowledge excluded

major conferences like @PASMeeting, on things like #VaccinesWork: zero diversity on panel

https://twitter.com/usnehal/status/1254743180290994176

I get super concerned when I hear about labeling as an option to identify true vs false news. We are visual creatures & the outcome of that panel above is: "authority" looks a certain way - and it is not those who have actual lived experience of direct care & service

Who labels?

I see on @LinkedIn all the time "you don't need a title to lead" yet WOC, in particular #Blackexcellence experiences: nytimes.com/2018/11/02/us/… yet I have heard if different demographic say "I am a doctor" & be Phd type: can treat patients in the air @askdrfatima
Who labels?

Back to the original topic, I have repeatedly seen on #Medtwitter a wrong label applied by "professionalism" faculty as "call out" that then spreads within #STEM to shame a peer or trainee for a best practice in #communityhealth & #engagement in literature
aappublications.org/news/2020/03/3…

Sources of labels are often institutions and institutional leadership and/or those trained by institutions and therefore shaped by the past, essentially. Example of labeling of diversity as not patriotic and "propaganda"
govexec.com/management/202…

Two things I find dangerous

1-is the way "#empathy" is used as an opportunistic shortcut to justify not having the right people at the table

with the hubris of "I am here, I have empathy thus I represent you therefore (when I define labels & rules about you, enforced on you)."

2- is whole "anti-leader leader" at @MIT @MITSloan - in theory I like many parts of - in reality, how often are men called "professor" but women not? If not using titles + do not have "look" of authority (see above) then does implicit bias factor in more? insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/1…

On anti-leader leadership which, in theory, I love. In reality, I am skeptical it can play out given what we know about biases & the way images and messages from society constantly tell us who is a leader and/or is given a pass for error versus not

problemledleadership.mit.edu/wp-content/upl…