Doctors want drugmakers to do more than stay quiet when health misinformation spreads, and companies that keep silent may pay for it at the prescription pad, as MM+M’s Lecia Bushak reports. A new report from We. Communications surveying 500 physicians worldwide found that 95% say pharma companies are responsible for addressing misinformation, but only 35% think they’re doing it well.
The report uses the term “narrative distortion” to cover everything from misinformation shared by people who believe it to disinformation crafted by bad actors. More than a third of patients now arrive at appointments carrying it, and 88% of physicians say they’ve had to modify a treatment recommendation as a result.
The problem has spread well beyond vaccine hesitancy. Stephanie Marchesi, president of We. Global Health, cites a heart failure patient who rejected treatment over a pharma conspiracy theory. Clinical trials are suffering too. “It’s making people decide not to participate in clinical trials, because they believe they’re going to be guinea pigs,” she said.
Staying quiet carries what the report calls a “silence penalty.” Fifty-nine percent of physicians read corporate silence as commercial self-interest or even complicity, and 89% say a company’s reputation shapes which treatments they recommend. “Doctors aren’t going to prescribe your products if you don’t take action,” Marchesi said.
Her prescription for companies: invest in sophisticated listening, including tracking how brands show up in AI-generated answers; build internal coalitions so they can respond faster; and “educate, don’t debate” by validating the science rather than rebutting every falsehood. Allied physicians and third parties can help amplify that message.
Related on the SLP
AI raises the stakes. Marchesi points to a common quote — “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” — that will be especially relevant as AI speeds up information dissemination. Drugmakers “tend to sit back, listen, wait, be cautious, talk a lot internally, and they’re still putting on their shoes,” Marchesi says.
