Medical misinformation makes Americans live shorter: U.S. media

People walk past Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago in Chicago, the United States, on Dec. 12, 2022. (Photo by Joel Lerner/Xinhua)

There is a real danger when misinformed people skip lifesaving vaccines or buy into risky, untested treatments. Yet policing misinformation is tricky.

NEW YORK, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Misinformation is killing Americans, contributing to the fact that their life expectancy is three to five years worse than that of people in comparably wealthy countries, said an article published by The Seattle Times on Sunday, quoting U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf.

Califf called for better regulation to crack down on misinformation, said the opinion article. "But would such rules help?"

"There is a real danger when misinformed people skip lifesaving vaccines or buy into risky, untested treatments. Yet policing misinformation is tricky," it said.

"The fact-checking industry may even make the problem worse by confusing value judgments with facts, and by portraying science as a set of immutable facts, rather than a system of inquiry that constructs provisional theories based on imperfect data," it noted.

The advent of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT will only magnify the confusion -- the latest version, with GPT-4, is slick, articulate, lightning-witted and some experts worry it could be used as a turbocharged misinformation machine that floods people with AI-generated fake news and fake images, said the article.

"A lot of people are upset, even outraged about rampant misinformation online, but not especially worried about falling for it. The real problem is all those more gullible people," it added.