Disinformation is a big problem in our world today, but it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a deliberate attempt to deceive a person or people for personal or political gain, and there are lots of big organizations working to address and correct the problem. Believe it or not, we may have a role, as health-care providers, in making the slope a little less slippery when it comes to supporting untruths.
It’s easier than you might think to be a purveyor of misinformation, which is distinct from disinformation because it is not
necessarily a deliberate act meant to deceive. As massage therapists, we are often in the position of sharing what we might consider “common knowledge.” The problem is that common knowledge is just that—common. It’s something that enough people believe (spoiler alert: belief and knowledge are not the same) to have given it traction and unearned credence as factual. We don’t check it because it “makes sense” to us and because we don’t usually experience pushback when we share it.
Click here to read the full column and to see a short video about filling in the gaps for clients.