Tuesday, 5 September 2017

How to fix the mistakes that celebrity scientists and charismatic doctors make

The facts don’t speak for themselves. Someone always speaks for them.

From the opioid crisis to vaccines, vitamin and health supplements to climate change — even the widespread use of lobotomies to quiet problem mental patients — celebrity scientists and charismatic doctors have made tremendous mistakes. Thanks to their fame, they escaped the corrective mechanisms of science itself and spread their wrongness far and wide. Science always deals the problem. The truth wins. But before it does, many people can be harmed, and society can suffer.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Paul Offit to discuss how we can get better at catching those mistakes before they happen, and mitigating the harm once Pandora’s Lab has been opened.

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Links and Sources

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Previous Episodes

Boing Boing Podcasts

Cookie Recipes

Paul Offit’s Website

Paul Offit on Twitter

Pandora’s Lab

The Opioid Epidemic

PBS: The Lobotomist

BBC: The Lobotomist

An Actual Transorbital Lobotomy