GLP podcast: Break out of your echo chamber—an ER physician explains how to win over vaccine skeptics

Dr. Liza Dunn has an impressive resume. She’s cared for malnourished children in developing countries, treated drug overdoses in the emergency department and trained toxicologists at a major medical school. While doing relief work in Haiti following the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, she even delivered a baby in the back of car on the way to the hospital.

All these experiences helped Dr. Dunn fine tune her science communication ability. “You had to figure out how to take complex ideas and explain them to a whole variety of people,” she notes. “It’s one of the beauties of emergency medicine.” As the co-host of this podcast and the proprietor of a weekly science-themed space on Twitter, Dunn utilizes the same skill set to educate the public about pesticide safety and clear up confusion about vaccines.

Her time on social media got off to a rough start. “I got a whole bunch of trolls right away. People would accuse me of poisoning the world,” she says of her initial exchanges with some anonymous accounts on X. Over time, though, they came to see her as a trusted source of medical information as she answered their questions and took their concerns seriously. “It’s kind of refreshing listening to doctor Liza,” one of them eventually acknowledged, “she sees some of the stuff we’re seeing.”

Join hosts Dr. Liza Dunn and GLP contributor Cameron English on episode 292 of Science Facts and Fallacies as they discuss the basics of science communication.

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Dr. Liza Dunn is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Visit his website and follow him on X @camjenglish