FEATURED Medical education topic: When False Beliefs Undermine Healthcare: Medical Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning in 2025 and Beyond

What is the problem? 
From anti-vaccine claims to anti-psychiatry rhetoric, fringe beliefs risk becoming official dogma in the current political and social climate. This lecture provides an overview of how medical mistrust, disinformation, and motivated reasoning (as opposed to intelligence or information deficits) can help us better understand our patients’ misbeliefs about medicine that undermine health behavior and health policy, and what we, as healthcare providers, can do about it. It will address how these three factors can create vulnerability to medical misbelief within specific patient populations.

Proposed Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this activity, the learners will be able to:

• Identify three widely held misbeliefs about medicine
• Describe how mistrust, misinformation, and motivational reasoning can explain false beliefs about medicine
• Integrate at least one key practice strategy to minimize the harmful effects of medical misbelief

If your medical staff needs an update on misbeliefs in medicine, consider contacting our office to book a speaker at 877-505-4777 or info@speakersnetwork.com.

REFERENCES
Pierre J. False: How Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning Make Us Believe Things That Aren’t True. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025.
https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/10/4/154