Should Scientists, Governments and Media Lie about COVID-19?
If given the option, would you prefer that governments and health agencies tell you the truth about a particular health threat, or engage in manipulation for your benefit? For example, would you be comfortable if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exaggerated the risk of colon cancer if it led to an improvement in your health (ex: their message made you and others improve diet and exercise)?
I had always assumed that most people would prefer the truth, but that belief was challenged in 2005 while teaching a university course in Social Psychology. We were covering social psychological factors that impact health messaging and I engaged the class in an exercise that I presumed would reveal young adults’ preference for autonomy and truth.
We were reviewing public health messaging that had been used regularly during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The typical message from government health agencies and many others was that everyone was at risk of contracting the virus if they didn’t practice safe sex. I then showed the class articles from reputable medical journals (ex: Journal of the American Medical Association; JAMA; see news article here) showing that the transmission of HIV in heterosexuals who did not use injection drugs was significantly lower than among men who have sex with men and those who share needles. Everyone was at risk of HIV through unprotected sex, but that risk could vary considerably by group.
My question to the class was this — should the general public receive all information about HIV/AIDS or only information that made people feel their risk was heightened? In other words, should we emphasize truth or fear? My expectation was that university students would prefer the truth, but I was wrong.
The students argued that the general public should be given information to make them fearful, to motivate engagement in safe sex. Many students expressed that revealing the truth would only lead to risky sexual behaviour. I asked them: now that they had this “risky” information, were they more likely to engage in high risk sex? The class grew uncomfortably silent until someone had the nerve to state what everyone seemed to be thinking — they weren’t at risk because they were educated students, whereas the general public just couldn’t be given the same level of trust.
This approach to public health messaging assumes that the truth can be too risky for a certain percentage of society, and that one could ethically justify manipulating the truth “for their own good”. Intervening in someone’s life without their consent, but for their benefit is paternalism. For example, it is illegal in Canada to drive without wearing a seat belt. This is state paternalism and is meant to protect you from harm and death (and presumably society from unwanted costs to health, economy, etc.).
During the COVID-19 outbreak, I could ask the same question posed at the start of this article — should citizens be given all information, or should information be manipulated to some extent to maximize fear and — presumably — safety?
The empirical research suggests that using fear through health messaging is effective. The existing science convincingly shows that that health information can scare people, and that fear will impact their behaviour in the desired direction. For example, if you want people to engage in safe sex, then scaring them with ads intended to make them afraid will be somewhat effective.
We know that scaring people works, so would it be ethical to manipulate COVID-19 data to protect people? Keep in mind that this is not the same as exercising caution. For instance, we do not have definitive evidence that locking society down or wearing masks is definitely the best option, but it seems reasonable to use such strategies to conserve risk.
Manipulating data or access to data could mean introducing bias in the language used to communicate advice to the public. For example, even if masks or a particular vaccine are not strongly supported by the data, one could argue that counter evidence could be ethically manipulated to meet the goal of maximizing community benefit. If, for example, masks are found to reduce transmission of COVID-19 by only 5–10%, which would be still be better than 0, should scientists and policy makers craft messages that skew the meaning of these results? An example of a biased message would be communicating only the upper end of the estimated range of deaths if masks are not used.
If you’re a strict pragmatist, the answer has already been provided — yes, if it keeps even some people safe, then it is ethical. And I will admit that I’m typically someone who leans toward pragmatism, as opposed to absolutist moral reasoning. As such, my initial intuition would be to use paternalistic messaging if needed.
However, I think it’s become clear that there’s been a growing segment of society whose mistrust of institutions like government, media, and corporations has been growing. Some of this is certainly due to fake news and extreme conspiratorial fear mongering online. But I doubt that this explanation completely explains the widespread mistrust.
I suspect that the public has been exposed to enough evidence of paternalism, bias and the occurrence of actual conspiracies that they now contemplate much information through a skeptical lens. We know that pharmaceutical and other corporations have repeatedly conspired to commit fraud and endanger the public. We know that governments can be self-serving and corrupt. And more germane to the present article, we know that media and science are capable of communicating information that is not only wrong, but is perhaps even used to manipulate behaviour at the expense of the whole truth.
Oprah Winfrey famously claimed in 1987 that 1 in 5 heterosexual people would be dead from AIDS within three years. Many news outlets in the eighties and nineties communicated predictions from epidemiologists that were proven to be wildly inaccurate. One could argue that making these predictions increased fear that produced safer sex and kept people safe — thereby proving these predictions false!
Regardless, it leaves open the question of whether inaccurate scientific predictions change behaviour and prevent harm in the short term, but at the expense of trust in institutions in the long term. I don’t have the answer, but I believe that such negative effects warrant greater discussion. Indeed, I am unaware of much scientific inquiry into such effects.
As we grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, a cursory review of social media will show that society has seemingly broken into polarized groups — those that support strong caution and government intervention, and those that argue that this coronavirus is a hoax and an excuse for the government to grab power. I have no qualms admitting that I identify more with the former for reasons that need not be reviewed here. I am very concerned that the latter group’s cynicism is at least partly supported by the issues I note above — namely, that societal institutions do engage in conspiracy and unethical manipulation of people. As such, they likely believe they’re acting as watch dogs to prevent harm from major institutions. While I believe their general skepticism is justified, most of the COVID-19 hoax theories have serious flaws in logic.
All of this leads us to a critical fork in the road — do institutions like governments and media put their faith and trust in the public and present scientific data unfiltered or do they try to maximize safety by increasing fear and presenting biased public health policy?
I personally believe that the former approach is required and people should be given unfiltered information. While I acknowledge that fear and paternalistic messaging can prove effective, there are at least two overlapping reasons to not adopt such policies.
First, many governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) already made infamous errors that have eroded public trust in pandemic management. Advice on masks, transmissibility and incoherent policies (ex: those that punished or discouraged outdoor activity where transmission is lowest) have loaded a powder keg of cynicism that could explode if institutions are caught trying to bend the truth or even make genuine mistakes. Public tolerance is very low and our leaders are on a shorter leash than they may realize.
Second, as mentioned earlier, there is ubiquitous and growing mistrust and anger toward major institutions. One might be tempted to blame much of this on the Trump presidency, and while he has certainly acted in ways that exacerbated problems, these issues existed before that election. Indeed, his electoral victory likely reflected the cynicism and anger that was present prior to 2016. Furthermore, the US is certainly not the only country where social unrest and displeasure with media and government exist.
If we reflect on just the past 10 years, society has been witness to evidence of mass illegal surveillance as revealed by Edward Snowden, the growing efforts of major corporations to collect and sell personal data to maximize profit, US electoral interference from Russia and now China and Iran, repeated evidence of serious problems in science (ex: replication crises affecting multiple disciplines), and regular news of corporate fraud. Add to this the fact that most news channels and podcasts bend and filter information to present a singular worldview. Indeed, discovering simple facts separate from opinion can be a challenge.
I would also add that media regularly bombard us with news of threat, such that it feels as though everything around us is a hazard to our health (food, air, sunshine), the future of humanity (climate change) or our sense of morality (eating meat or even consuming coffee that is not fair trade). People are emotionally exhausted and perceived lies by those in power will likely push some to rage and many others to malaise.
It may seem risky to be transparent and wholly truthful during such an unprecedented period, but I’m afraid we have no other option.
