Thread by @normative

Here’s an interesting case study of how “do your own research” misinfo works. Last month, CDC announced that at the end of 2021 it would withdraw its request for Emergency Use Authorizarion of a PCR test for COVID. cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs…

The CDC announcement included this:
“CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.”

Fox News published this astonishingly misleading story reporting on the CDC announcement with little explanation, but juxtaposed it with references to declining flu reports in 2020. foxnews.com/health/cdc-lab…

This prompted a flood of of false stories, circulated by plenty of prominent people, claiming that the widely-used PCR test “couldn’t tell COVID from flu.” Leading to the further false claim that flu had been massively misdiagnosed as COVID. usatoday.com/story/news/fac…

The PCR test, of course, does NOT confuse COVID with flu. CDC was saying: “There are now better tests that can tell you if you have COVID, but ALSO tell you if instead you have the flu. They can diagnose more than one thing. Use those instead.”

I see people online repeating the false claim about PCR tests CONSTANTLY. Here’s why I think it spread so effectively. CDC wrote a notice aimed at labs & clinicians. That audience understands the terminology and is at little risk of being confused about what CDC is saying.

But if you send that link to someone with no medical background, it’s a little opaque. And if you prime them with the false claim that it means PCR tests can’t tell COVID from influenza, even a reasonably smart person unfamiliar with medical jargon could misread it that way.

Having “done their own research” they now believe the misinformation has been confirmed by a document on CDC’s own website! And yet (they think) the mainstream media —excepting that wildly irresponsible & misleading Fox story — isn’t even reporting it!

Posts & bogus articles I saw sharing this misinformation almost always linked back to that CDC document, clearly aimed at medical professionals, as proof of the false claim. And now the false belief is hard to dislodge…

Because people think they went and looked at a primary source document with their own eyes. In fact, they did! But they didn’t understand it, because it wasn’t written with the general public in mind. So they read it primed by the misinfo gloss & find “confirmation.”

This is now a huge uphill battle for a fact checker or debunker. “I saw it with my own eyes! I did the due diligence!” Now you don’t just have to convince folks they’ve repeated a false report (mild ego hit there) but that they fooled themselves by “doing the research.” (Ouch!)

In effect, you’re getting people not just casually or lazily believing & repeating misinformation, but INVESTED in it, because now they’re proud they did the work of checking this semi-technical document.

This is interactive misinformation — misinformation that makes people complicit in misinforming themselves by flattering their self-perception as independent & critical thinkers who won’t just trust what a news report says. That makes it psychologically way harder to uproot.

As several game designers have noted, QAnon works the same way. Q drops are riddles, gnomic hints inviting you to figure out the secret meaning. Your guard is down because you feel like you partly puzzled it out for yourself. medium.com/curiouserinsti…