It is conventional wisdom that misinformation — particularly about COVID and vaccines, and often enabled by social and other media — is worse than it’s ever been. It’s hard to measure misinformation over time. But the premise that there was ever a golden age of accurate information, especially about public health, is suspect.
I just turned 60, so my youth is now fairly distant. Still, I can recall debates about smoking: not so much whether it was bad for you — that science was established, and the federal government had already initiated an anti-smoking campaign — but whether it was really all that bad. And I’m not talking about the occasional cigarette, but one or two packs a day. The scientific knowledge wasn’t nearly as socially salient as it is today, and there were many millions more smokers. That meant social opinion was invariably somewhat split.
Or consider the debate, such as it is, over exercise. With each passing decade, the health benefits of exercise have become better known. In earlier decades this point simply wasn’t stressed. Regardless of whether we in fact exercise, we now obsess over it and boast about it — to the point of becoming annoying. Social media has definitely played a role here, as you can now tweet that you just ran a marathon or climbed some rocks. And if you don’t exercise, you are made to feel guilty about it.
