Seth Mnookin’s book The Panic Virus delves into this a little bit. People like Mercola are able to get away with claiming everything under the sun because they don’t care if they’re right or wrong and they’ve taken all the teeth out from the FDA and the FTC in terms of regulating ‘supplements’. Jenny McCarthy can say “Vaccines will kill your babies, run up your electricity bill and email your porn folder to your grandmother” because there’s no feedback loop to encourage honesty and adherence to what the data shows. A CDC scientist on the other hand, understands statistics and is loathe to make sweeping statements because generally the data doesn’t show that 100% of the time something happens or something doesn’t happen. They can’t say that vaccines are 100% perfect or 100% effective because it’s not true, but if they say vaccines are safe within a margin of some numbers, they get accused of being wishy-washy and hiding in statistics. I don’t think this is a problem that can be solved with a PR agency. Realistically the answer is to figure out how to cultivate a more scientifically literate public.
What comes out, must go in.
States and provinces.