Chapter 14 Further Reading: Health Misinformation

Foundational Historical Works

1. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the development of the American medical profession and its regulatory environment. Starr traces the evolution of medical authority from the patent medicine era through the establishment of the AMA's power and the creation of modern medical licensing and drug regulation. Essential context for understanding why contemporary health misinformation occupies the regulatory and epistemological spaces it does. Particularly relevant are the chapters on the Progressive Era reforms and the role of investigative journalism in driving regulatory change.

2. Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

The definitive historical study of the American patent medicine industry before the Pure Food and Drug Act. Young documents the extraordinary range of claims, ingredients, and marketing techniques of the patent medicine era, showing in detail how extravagant health promises were marketed to vulnerable consumers. Reading Young alongside contemporary health misinformation marketing reveals the striking continuity of technique across more than a century.

Vaccine Hesitancy

3. Goldenberg, Maya J. Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

The most philosophically sophisticated treatment of vaccine hesitancy, examining it as a problem of epistemic trust rather than scientific ignorance. Goldenberg argues that dismissing vaccine-hesitant individuals as irrational overlooks the genuine social and political dimensions of trust in expertise. She develops a nuanced account of when deference to expertise is rational and when it is not, with direct implications for health communication strategy. Essential for healthcare communicators who want to understand the epistemological dimensions of hesitancy.

4. WHO SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy. "Report of the SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy." Geneva: World Health Organization, 2014.

The foundational policy document from which the three Cs model (complacency, convenience, confidence) and the vaccine hesitancy spectrum derive. Available freely from the WHO website. Essential primary source for understanding the WHO's framework for conceptualizing and addressing vaccine hesitancy. Particularly valuable for the sections on determinants of hesitancy and the evidence review on interventions.

5. Nyhan, Brendan, and Jason Reifler. "Does Correcting Myths About the Flu Vaccine Work? An Experimental Evaluation of the Effects of Corrective Information." Vaccine 33, no. 3 (2015): 459–464.

A pivotal study that examined whether providing accurate information about flu vaccine safety reduced hesitancy among hesitant parents. The finding — that accurate information sometimes increased concerns rather than reducing them, particularly among already-hesitant parents — was widely interpreted as evidence of a "backfire effect" (the finding was subsequently complicated and partially retracted). The paper is important both for its findings and for the subsequent debate it generated about when fact-correction works and when it backfires.

The Wakefield Fraud

6. Deer, Brian. The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

The definitive account of the Wakefield fraud by the investigative journalist who exposed it. Deer spent more than fifteen years investigating Wakefield, and this book synthesizes his findings into a comprehensive narrative account of the fraud's genesis, execution, and consequences. Particularly valuable for its account of the press conference, the role of solicitor Richard Barr, and the complex institutional failures that allowed the fraud to persist for twelve years before full retraction.

7. Godlee, Fiona, Jane Smith, and Harvey Marcovitch. "Wakefield's Article Linking MMR Vaccine and Autism Was Fraudulent." British Medical Journal 342 (2011): c7452.

The BMJ editorial accompanying Brian Deer's systematic exposure of the Wakefield fraud. Godlee and colleagues document the evidence for deliberate falsification of clinical data and place the fraud in the context of scientific integrity. This editorial — the work of the Lancet's main competitor — was the most authoritative statement of the fraud's nature and extent at the time of its publication. Readable and accessible to non-specialists.

COVID-19 Infodemic

8. Roozenbeek, Jon, Claudia R. Schneider, Sarah Dryhurst, John Kerr, Alexandra L.J. Freeman, Gabriel Recchia, Anne Marthe van der Bles, and Sander van der Linden. "Susceptibility to Misinformation About COVID-19 Across 26 Countries." Royal Society Open Science 7, no. 10 (2020): 201199.

The most geographically comprehensive study of COVID-19 misinformation susceptibility, examining 26 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia. Roozenbeek and colleagues find consistent predictors of misinformation susceptibility across countries (analytical thinking protects; digital media literacy moderates) while identifying country-level variation. The paper also documents the effectiveness of prebunking as an intervention across diverse national contexts, providing the first large-scale cross-national evidence for inoculation approaches.

9. Kitta, Andrea. Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception. New York: Routledge, 2012.

An anthropological and folkloristic study of vaccine rumors and public concern across history. Kitta shows that vaccine hesitancy and fear-driven rumors have accompanied vaccination programs since their inception in the late eighteenth century. This historical perspective is essential for understanding that vaccine hesitancy is not a product of the social media era but a persistent feature of how communities respond to novel public health interventions. The analysis of the role of narrative, legend, and rumor in shaping vaccine perception is particularly valuable.

Alternative Medicine and Quackery

10. Ernst, Edzard. A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2015.

Edzard Ernst was the world's first professor of complementary medicine, a position he held at the University of Exeter, and spent his career applying rigorous scientific methods to the evaluation of alternative medicine claims. This memoir traces his intellectual journey from a practitioner of some alternative modalities to a committed scientific skeptic, documenting the personal and professional costs of applying evidential standards to a field that resisted them. Provides both intellectual framework and personal narrative for understanding the alternative medicine landscape.

11. Goldacre, Ben. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. London: Fourth Estate, 2012.

A rigorous critique of the pharmaceutical industry's influence on clinical research, regulatory approval, and medical education. Goldacre documents systematic problems: selective publication of favorable trial results; suppression of negative results; industry funding biases in published research; inadequate conflict of interest disclosure; and the limitations of current regulatory frameworks. Important for understanding why public distrust of pharmaceutical companies is not purely irrational, and why health communicators must engage with legitimate concerns about industry influence rather than dismissing them as conspiracy thinking.

Health Communication

12. Gigerenzer, Gerd. Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions. New York: Viking, 2014.

A behavioral economist's guide to understanding and communicating statistical risk, directly relevant to health misinformation contexts. Gigerenzer demonstrates the systematic failure of risk communication in medical contexts — that most patients and many physicians cannot correctly interpret relative risk statistics, confidence intervals, or test accuracy data — and provides practical frameworks for communicating risk in ways that support genuine informed decision-making. His advocacy for "natural frequencies" (absolute rather than relative risk) and icon arrays has been adopted in evidence-based health communication guidelines.

13. Miller, William R., and Stephen Rollnick. Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change. 4th ed. New York: Guilford Press, 2023.

The foundational clinical text on motivational interviewing, updated to reflect the most recent research on its application and effectiveness. While developed primarily for addiction treatment, MI has been extensively applied to vaccine hesitancy, chronic disease management, and health behavior change. The fourth edition includes updated chapters on applying MI across health contexts and a more explicit discussion of the research evidence. Essential reading for healthcare providers, health communicators, and anyone designing engagement programs for health misinformation.

14. Lewandowsky, Stephan, and John Cook. The Debunking Handbook 2020. Skeptical Science, 2020.

The most practically important and empirically grounded guide to health misinformation correction available. The 2020 edition comprehensively updates the original 2011 handbook, integrating subsequent research on the backfire effect (and its qualification), inoculation theory, the gap hypothesis, and context-sensitive debunking strategies. Available freely online and suitable for practitioners across health communication, journalism, and policy contexts. Should be considered essential reading alongside this chapter.

15. Benedetti, Fabrizio. Placebo Effects: Understanding the Mechanisms in Health and Disease. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

A comprehensive scientific treatment of placebo effects and their mechanisms — directly relevant to understanding why alternative medicine claims are so persistent despite lack of efficacy. Benedetti's research demonstrates that placebo effects are real, measurable, and mediated by identifiable neurobiological mechanisms. Understanding placebo effects is essential for health communicators because it explains why people report genuine benefit from ineffective treatments, without requiring fraud or delusion on the part of the believer.