I got a chance to talk with Dr. Robert Goldberg PhD about his new book “Tabloid Medicine.” In it he breaks apart the formula for Tabloid Medicine: change the terminology to fit your agenda, create an instant expert, play the little guy against the big guy, proliferate bad information, then find a celebrity to lead the charge. Voila! Your very own epidemic-I make light, but this book doesn't, since it's not really a funny topic. We spoke of how he came to the topic as a parent, when his own daughter struggled with misinformation in the media, but continued, fueled by the tragedy that with so much good the internet could be doing, it was being “hijacked” by the likes of Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, David Healy, Sidney Wolfe MD, and Barbara Loe Fisher. Passionate about the subject, and well-grounded by facts, Dr. Goldberg answered a few questions for me.


This book focuses on a few things including a sort of downfall of science journalism and the public’s thirst for celebrity endorsements of cure and disease. How do we change the way the public gets their science? Do we go to scientists? to the schools of journalism?

I think you have to go after the scientists because they’re more likely to step up and speak out than the journalists are to change the narrative, (which they’re comfortable with). They are more concerned with “That PR firm spoke with this company…and a drug company...is that conflict of interest?”

Isn’t exposing conflicts of interest is a good thing?

But it goes overboard. Private business and government, universities, working together, that’s where we will continue to get great science; not everything is a conspiracy. [This is the journalist's] narrative: Large drug companies use their relationships with doctors and researchers to overstate the benefits and hide the dangers of products which ultimately wind up maiming our kids. It’s really hard for them to not only get off that narrative but they’re so focused on that storyline that they lose, or they ignore, more important, other important biases and agendas.

The solution there is: you cannot rely upon the journalists to communicate science anymore. We have to rely upon each other to come up with a better way of sharing that information to improve health or to help us make health decisions.

Read the full interview here