The Threat of Misinformation to Public Health

Doug Samuelson and Eva Lee discuss “The threat of misinformation to public health” and what might be done to counter this problem.

Much communication and control have become increasingly driven by images, memes and social media messaging rather than honest research and public policy. This has opened the way for misinformation campaigns that affect economics, policy, and public health. We review the recent updates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a well-known and respected Washington, DC think tank.  This includes Russian economic information warfare, religious messaging and political campaigns.  Samuelson and Lee discuss the use of confusing and disruptive content. They also note that the ways in which the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic diverged from the recommendations of health policy experts, as developed by the Scowcroft Institute at Texas A&M University in 2019. They offer some recommendations for robust and resilient information handling in public health.

Doug Samuelson is President and Chief Scientist at InfoLogix, Inc., in Annandale, Virginia. He has been a Federal policy analyst, consultant, successful high-tech entrepreneur and executive, patented inventor, political campaign professional, and an adjunct and research faculty member at several universities. His consulting and research focus on risk-advised decision-making, machine learning, cybersecurity, wargaming, health care policy, and disaster response and preparedness. He holds a doctorate in Operations Research from The George Washington University.

Eva K. Lee has a doctorate in applied math and medical training in oncology.  She has specialized in large-scale networks and epidemiological modeling.  She is the Director for the Whitaker-NSF Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare and Chief Scientist at the Data and Analytics Innovation Institute. She is a subject matter expert on medical and public health information sharing enterprises, and has been a leading advisor for Homeland Security and other major US federal governmental agencies. 

KEYWORDS: Information security, information tampering, pattern analysis, political tricks, economic meddling, public health, social media messaging.

REFERENCES:

Ken Alibek and Steven Handelman (1999), Biohazard : The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It. Random House.

John M. Barry, 2004, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Viking Penguin; Penguin paperback (2005).

Heather A. Conley, James Mina, Ruslan Stefanov and Martin Vladimirov, 2016, The Kremlin Playbook: Understanding Russian Influence in Central and Eastern Europe, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, October. Also available as a pdf download online from www.csis.org, accessed 2023-04-08.  

Heather A. Conley, Donatienne Ruy, Ruslan Stefanov and Martin Vladimirov, 2019, The Kremlin Playbook 2, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, March. Also available as a pdf download online from www.csis.org, accessed 2023-04-08.

Donatienne Ruy, Heather A. Conley, Marlene Larouelle, Tongiz Pkhaladze, Elizabeth A. Prodromou, and Majda Ruge, 2022, The Kremlin Playbook 3: Keeping the Faith, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, February. Also available as a pdf download online from www.csis.org, accessed 2023-04-08.  

I. W. Fong and Ken Alibek (2005), Bioterrorism and Infectious Agents: A New Dilemma for the 21st Century. Springer.

Laurie Garrett, 1994, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Penguin paperback, 1995.

Global Biodefense (2012) “Controversial H5N1 Bird Flu Study Published“, https://globalbiodefense.com/2012/05/03/controversial-h5n1-bird-flu-study-published/ , retrieved 2023-04-08.

Ali S. Khan and William Patrick, 2016, The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind’s Greatest Dangers. Public Affairs.

David Quammen, 2013, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. W. W. Norton.

Douglas A. Samuelson, “Diagnosing the Real Health Care Villain,” 1995, OR/MS Today, June.

Douglas A. Samuelson, 2008, “Can We Detect the Coming Plague?” OR/MS Today, June.

Douglas A. Samuelson, “The Biohazard Threat,” 2020, Global Peace Services Newsletter, February.

Douglas A. Samuelson, “Preparing for Biological Crises,” 2020, Global Peace Services Newsletter, May.

Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, “Community Resilience, Centralized Leadership and Multi-Sectoral Collaboration in Pandemic Preparedness and Response,” 2019, May. “https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/186945”, accessed 2023-04-08.  

Stanley A. McChrystal and Anna Butrico (2021) RISK: A User’s Guide (Penguin).

Copyright 2023 Doug Samuelson, Eva K. Lee, Spencer Graves Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Share This Episode