Q&A: Battling mistrust in medicine

Access to medical information — and misinformation — is so easy now that many experts are grappling with the best way to preserve trust in physicians and the medical field. I spoke with Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at MIT and the co-author of a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, to learn more. 

How is misinformation and an erosion of trust in medicine a political science issue? 

This is a real public policy issue. And it has huge implications for the structure of the health care system. When can the government say it's OK or not OK to do something that has important public health consequences?

So what’s the fix? 

I don't really have happy stories. There's no one solution. The basis of the facts is not enough. You also need to think about the most effective voice to say that. When it comes to vaccines and autism, maybe it's the mother of a kid with autism [who is the voice], as doctors could be dismissed as being in the pocket of Big Pharma.