How easily do you think you could spot health misinformation?

When we talk about misinformation, I think you hear people mostly focus on the extremes.

But the model middle is a group that is really open to new information from this uncertainty.

It's Thursday, October 17th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Buxbell.

You've probably seen some, well, dubious health claims popping up on your feed recently.

There's, of course, the false claims about vaccines that continue to circulate, or maybe you've seen ads

pushing suspicious-looking supplements, or heard politicians make claims about contraception

or abortion that just don't match the science. As November nears, we're continuing our spotlight

on the science that's shaping the election. And we're kicking

off a short series about health misinformation. We'll be looking into some of the health claims

that you, our listeners, are curious about. More details on how to contact us in a bit. But first,

here's Ira Flato with a conversation about the basics of health misinformation.

Joining me now to give us a primer on health misinformation is my guest, Irving Washington,

senior vice president and executive director of the Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative at KFF.

That's a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization based in

Washington, D.C. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi there, Ira. Glad to be here. Thank you very much.

All right, let's begin with the basics. What is health misinformation? What actually are we

talking about here? Yeah, health misinformation is trickier than a lot of people might think. I often

hear people get mixed up in terminology, so sometimes they'll hear misinformation, disinformation,

misleading claims, and it all blurs together. But no matter what terminology you might have heard,

essentially health misinformation, I look at it as anything that misrepresents

...