When Facts Lose: Health Misinformation, Identity, and the Algorithm (with Tim Caulfield)
Episode description
Health misinformation crops up in everyday decision-making, and it’s reshaping our trust in medicine.
In Episode 3 of Sick Society, Dr. Alexis Paton and Sir Andrew Goddard are joined by Tim Caulfield, a leading researcher on health misinformation and science communication, to examine why today’s misinformation landscape feels harder to challenge than ever before, and why simply “correcting the facts” no longer works.
As Tim puts it, we’re moving from fact-speaking to belief-speaking, where shared identity and emotion matter more than evidence alone.
In this conversation, you’ll hear:
- Why modern health misinformation isn’t just louder — it’s more resilient
- How medical beliefs become social and political identities
- Why false balance makes scientific consensus look divided
- How wellness, supplements, and optimisation culture evade scrutiny
- What actually reduces harm: pre-bunking, debunking, and slowing emotional sharing
- Where AI accelerates misinformation — and where it might help contain it
Sick Society explores how culture, power, technology, and policy shape health long before anyone enters a clinic.
🎧 A podcast by Haunted Mouse Productions
About our guest
Tim Caulfield is a professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta and a leading researcher studying how misinformation shapes public trust, behaviour, and policy. Drawing on decades of research, he explains why today’s misinformation environment is fundamentally different — and how social media, political identity, wellness culture, and now AI accelerate the problem.