Martin L. Whitehead, BSc, PhD, BVSc, CertSAM, MRCVS: No financial relationships to disclose
Presentation Description / Summary: Much of the research done to produce the evidence on which veterinary practitioners can base their clinical-decision making is poorly designed and/or performed and/or reported, yielding unreliable and often erroneous results. Yet most veterinarians are not trained to accurately assess the reliability of research findings, i.e., to assess the quality of published research. Some of the common flaws in published veterinary research will be described. Moreover, the various pathways by which research findings reach the majority of general practitioners (part of the process of ‘knowledge translation’) vary greatly in reliability, further degrading the overall quality of evidence reaching practitioners. In addition, false information can be created, some of which influences the public’s views of healthcare, and so the care that practitioners can provide to some patients (as exemplified by conspiracy theories and anti-vax propaganda during the Covid pandemic), and some of which is more directly targeted at practitioners – e.g., vested interests, such as drug companies, can (mis)use science to produce false information about medical products, thereby misleading doctors and veterinarians.
This talk covers the various ways in which the evidence used by veterinarians as the basis of many of their clinical decisions can be unreliable or even false, with an emphasis on misinformation and disinformation.
Learning Objectives:
Understand what misinformation and disinformation are within (veterinary) science and medicine, and some of the reasons they occur and spread.
Understand some of the methods used by vested interests to create disinformation and disseminate misinformation within (veterinary) medical science.
Understand why misinformation and disinformation within science and medicine are often difficult to identify and counter.
