Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare's Misinformation Illness

by Geeta Nayyar

Save lives and improve public health by countering misinformation   In Dead Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness , a team of health misinformation experts delivers a first-hand account of the dangers posed by false narratives and snake oil in the face of deadly healthcare crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic. In the book, you’ll explore the challenges facing those who fight to restore truth to a place of primacy in the United States healthcare system, the strategies they use, and the lessons you can draw from their real-world stories.  Through interviews with healthcare leaders on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic and an intuitive discussion of contemporary academic research, the authors highlight issues of critical importance in the quest to bring accurate information to the American public. You’ll also   Perfect for clinicians, public health leaders, health-tech leaders, and health marketers, Dead Wrong will also earn a place in the libraries of media professionals and community leaders with an interest in keeping the American public healthy and vibrant. 

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr. Geeta Nayyar is a medical doctor whose post-training career has largely been a non-traditional one -- she's currently the chief medical officer of customer relations management (CRM) powerhouse Salesforce, has earned a business degree, and has built a platform on public speaking and media appearances. In Dead Wrong, which oddly features copious illustrations by her young daughter, she discusses the issue of medical misinformation and shares many supporting anecdotes from her colleagues and her parents (both of her parents are also medical doctors who came to the US from India). Nayyar doesn't have many personal anecdotes on this topic to share, besides a handful from her residency training, as she doesn't perform patient care as part of her current role. Thus, it seems an unconventional choice for Dr. Nayyar to get a book deal to write this particular book, though likely it's an effort to expand her platform.

Further reading: physicians writing about misinformation, mistakes and uncertainty in medicine
Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information by Paul Offit, MD
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande, MD
Snowball in a Blizzard: A Physician's Notes on Uncertainty in Medicine by Stephen Hatch, MD
Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health by Anupam Jena, MD, PhD and Christopher Worsham, MD
When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error by Danielle Ofri, MD
How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy by F. Perry Wilson, MD
The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age by Robert Wachter, MD
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, MD
Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health by H. Gilbert Welch, MD, Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin

My statistics:
Book 286 for 2024
Book 1889 cumulatively

[Effy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A break from my normal posting of fiction/fantasy/thriller books because this was an incredibly interesting and timely read, especially if you work in healthcare. The book covers the impact of technology/social media on the spread of misinformation that can have detrimental impacts on our health and quality of life. And consider a call to action - what can we do? Well for one thing, doing our own research, and second guess the first post that comes up with an opinion that either confirms our own view or goes against it. The most alarming takeaway from the book - “false news stories travel six times faster and are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories.” I see so many of us so worried about engagement lately on this platform, but as we all know, and as Dr. Nayyar notes in the book - “the platform ‘rewards’ people for habitually sharing content that engages other uses and thus earns them social recognition”. I think she and her co-authors did such a wonderful job of weaving anecdotes with their quantitative and qualitative research and share it in an easily digestible read, even if you don’t work in this field. They connect the dots, uncover the working mechanisms of mis- and disinformation and offering evidence-based solutions for questions surrounding this societal hurdle.

I can go on all day, just give my little public health heart a platform. But if you’re looking for a quick, informational read, even just to inform yourself of someone else’s take, I’d highly recommend.

[Lily Lindemann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives me an insight into all the other sides of patient care other than simply treating the patient. Nervous but looking forward to being a physician! Hopefully, things begin to improve over the next decade. Dr. G wrote a beautiful book that faces the problem head-on and gives solutions.