Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
Bullshit and Misinformation in Healthcare: talking with Peter West-Oram
**Below is AI generated**
Is solidarity in healthcare a double-edged sword? That’s the intriguing question we explore with our returning guest, Pete West-Oram. In this episode, we dissect how solidarity can both unite and divide, especially when misinformation—what Pete candidly refers to as "bullshit"—pervades public discourse. With a focus on healthcare ethics, we discuss the destabilizing power of dishonest communication and its impact on societal issues like the genocide in Gaza, where language is often wielded to distort reality.
The conversation broadens to consider global solidarity in times of geopolitical conflict, spotlighting the contrasting international reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine versus the ongoing situation in Palestine. We question the biases in media narratives and political responses, illustrating how they can obscure true solidarity efforts. Despite media noise and leadership failures, Pete and I champion the grassroots movements and community solidarity that emerged during crises like COVID-19, urging for more substantial support from authorities to sustain these efforts.
We then turn to the essential role of transparent communication in healthcare, drawing insights from Harry Frankfurt’s "On Bullshit." With emphasis on the importance of clarity, we consider how misinformation and epistemic injustices, as discussed by Miranda Fricker, can lead to issues like vaccine hesitancy. By highlighting examples such as the UK's NHS and the impactful work of the Patient Information Forum, we stress the necessity of accessible health information. Whether it’s through multilingual resources or straightforward language, the goal is to empower individuals with the knowledge needed to make informed health decisions, fostering trust and combating confusion.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadawurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present.
Speaker 2:The world's first high-strung plant has been performed. Medical history has been made in South Africa.
Speaker 3:Reports of systemic racism in the healthcare system and COVID-19 has made the issue even more urgent. Characterised as a pandemic.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams.
Speaker 2:I'd like to welcome you all to Undisciplined Reach. This is part two of a conversation, a long conversation, that we had with Pete Westoram, and you should listen to part one before you listen to this one, so you can find out who Pete is and the kind of work that he does, out who Pete is and the kind of work that he does.
Speaker 1:But we're here just to give you a little intro to part two, which is about bullshit and it feels timely, yeah, and maybe we should have a language warning, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that a bad word? So one thing that's interesting that as you continue to listen that Pete talks about, is that bullshit's actually a technical term yes.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we're not using it in just this general derogatory way.
Speaker 2:Depressing news out of the world, though, which feels relevant to what Pete's talking about, and I'm going to give a little intro, which I will admit that I don't recall if I said in part one or not, but I met Pete for the first time in 2018 or 2019, when he was giving a really interesting talk about solidarity. Solidarity at that point was having like a real moment, possibly continues to in public health ethics in a way that I never could quite get my head around, because, like, solidarity is great, but also like what about solidarity around all of those things that are really horrible, you know, which is what I'm thinking about now, for example, when we might say that Trump's re-election, say, doesn't necessarily affect those of us living in Australia, but I think it encourages a certain type of kind of solidaristic emboldened behavior, um, certainly by by certain types of men. That's kind of like anti-social solidarity yes um, and so it was.
Speaker 2:It's. It's that kind of concern that I've always just been a little bit like troubled about, and it's used in public health ethics, and the fact that it's not, you know, there's the implication that we're only talking about good kinds of solidarity, but solidarity isn't necessarily a good, you know. Or, or it might be good to feel in solidarity with people who are like you, but, but the ends aren't necessarily good, perhaps. So, um, that was my first. Pete was talking about something similar six years ago five years ago, however many and it all feels very relevant today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in this conversation Pete does touch on towards the end, some of those distinctions between sort of pro-social and anti-social forms of solidarity and anti-social forms of solidarity, and so the conversation kicks off with so this is coming out of our conversation that we had about solidarity and moving into then a conversation about bullshit in the technical term.
Speaker 1:But there's, this initial part of this is about still continuing on about solidarity, but I guess the way that bullshit can undermine or erode the sort of epistemic conditions, the what can we know, what do we know, and sense of truth required to have meaningful relationships of solidarity, and I guess as well, I thought, before going into it, we should give you know, maybe not a definition, because Pete does that towards the end of this section, but you know what we're talking about, or what the technical indicate or the technical use of bullshit is that it is, in some ways it's not concerned with truth or falsity that somebody who is a liar, for instance, they, they have a concern for the truth a liar wants, knows that there is a truth out there and they want to make sure that they're not caught out and they're trying to deceive, whereas a bullshitter um, you know, as pete, I think says later on you on, you know, is never wrong, because they will just say I didn't mean that, I didn't mean it like that or you're misinterpreting things or that's just, and they'll just move on with another and it really sort of muddies the water.
Speaker 1:And an example I guess I was thinking of is the immigrants Donald Trump saying immigrants eating cats and dogs. Is the immigrants Donald Trump saying immigrants eating cats and dogs? You know, that's, I think, an example of that kind of bullshit sort of statement. It's kind of how would you verify that anyway, but it sort of it has this discursive effect in a community that it really sort of changes the way, the terms on which things are debated.
Speaker 1:So you know, people can spend a long time trying to verify whether there are instances of this, but in a way you've already lost the debate and the conversation if you get bogged down into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, because the initial statement is so provocative, it does the work that it's intended to do, which is just sort of destabilise reasonable communications.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yes, even though this conversation was recorded before the election of Donald Trump, it is quite a, I guess, timely to bring it out. Part two and yeah, there's also plenty of examples that Pete discusses about the bullshit going on in the reporting around the genocide in Gaza and the way that we can, you know, use words to change realities or hide realities as well. So, enjoy, Enjoy, let's fast forward, because I want to get to. We're running out of time and I really want to get to this bullshit talk, so maybe I'll just reframe some questions and statements. So you wrote like there's another paper which we won't be able to talk about in detail, the From Self-Interest to Solidarity One Path Towards Delivering Refugee Health, which we will link to because it's a very interesting paper, particularly at a time with the ongoing refugee crisis that has continued further.
Speaker 1:And I guess you know I'd be interested in your reflections on these two papers you know, which were written in 2017, published 2018, and everything that's happened since or is happening now. And yeah, as I think I mentioned, this is sort of a bit of a bleak question, but you know, since you've alluded to this already, you know, covid has happened since then. Um, the west's, you know, lack of uh response to israeli sort of genocidal violence that's going on, the sort of erosion of international law around that, and then the continued demonisation of migrants and refugees and displaced people, which are only growing in number. Have they kind of revealed this sort of lack of the conditions for sort of global solidarity? Lack of the conditions for sort of global solidarity, um, and you know, are they sort of virtually non-existent and at a at a very low point, whether it's an all-time low, but at this very low point? This um, uh, yet sense of a kind of global solidarity to people who are very similar to us, going through awful things, but a resistant, a resistance to uh assisting them?
Speaker 3:I, I don't know, I I think whether it's a low point is a question I'm I I wouldn't know how to begin to answer, but I I think I think certainly since, since those papers came out, there's certainly been a kind of for me it's a lot of like, well, that was optimistic but um, and not necessarily totally uh on the money. But I think it's very interesting think how we might go. There's just no global solidarity and I think in some cases that's kind of an accurate comment, like a perception of what's going on at the moment, and certainly the kind of cases that you mentioned I mean the other, I think one of the other things as well is what. What it reveals is partly the kind of solidarities that do exist, if that makes sense, so with, like the, the national or the regional or the linguistic or political solidarities that exist, that are cohabiting or sharing the global space, if that makes makes sense. And I think what's highlighted, what has been highlighted particularly, is the sort of the extent to which there was solidarity extended to Ukraine when Russia invaded, and you know it's huge. Oh, this is terrible, this is absolutely disgraceful. Russia's doing this, which it is and was and continues to be.
Speaker 3:And then the response to an ongoing genocide in Palestine, which is, if almost as if you kind of mention it immediately, the response is you're an anti-Semite um and the the way that reporting is done. On to go back to the bullshit paper on what is happening in Palestine at the moment, which is, you know, you have headline and this isn't a quote but you have headlines that are kind of like 50 people die in school explosion, you like what caused the school to explode and who were the people and what happened and why were the people in a school? And the response is kind of well, school's not even in session. That's not really the point. Why were there people in a school and, at the same time, the um, while you simultaneously have footage from the idf of people going. Isn't it funny? We've just blown up people's houses and this isn't commented on at all by a lot of mainstream media. Or you have the US and British government. Well, you know, this is a red line. We're not going to accept this anymore. Simultaneously going here's some more money to Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
Speaker 3:The kind of the hypocrisy that exists is a the bullshit eroding the epistemological conditions for people to go. Hang on a minute, because it's just creating all this noise which is very, very difficult to pass and to work through, and it kind of reveals who gets to be in that group of solidaristic concern. In that group of solidaristic concern, whether it's based on ethnicity or religion and the sort of other boundaries of who gets to count and who doesn't, according to various powerful actors like the British government, like the US government, like the Australian government as well. I think the one thing with and again this is and I'll come back to that in a second, if that's okay but one thing we saw in COVID. We saw an awful lot of cases of truly dreadful behaviour people deliberately stockpiling alcohol, gel like hand sanitiser and wipes and masks and stuff to deliberately profiteer off the crisis. I wrote a paper more recently on the failures of the British government in response to COVID-19, which is effectively kind of devolving responsibility, what we've kind of talked about already as the well, what about my mum? Question of like, well, the government's doing this and we've told you this, but it's your responsibility to do the right thing which is totally unfair, totally unreasonable and create circumstances for resentment and risk and danger for everyone.
Speaker 3:At the same time, you do see people acting very strongly in solidarity at an individual level with one another. Of you know, neighborhood whatsapp groups or what have you who, people who've never spoken to each other before suddenly going. Oh yeah, actually I'm going to make sure that my, my neighbor two goes down is okay, because I know that it's a bit harder. I've never spoken to them other than say hello. But you do see lots of solidarity happening, but in a slightly different kind of way. So you do see, in response to crisis, the kind of solidarity that we would I would hope would, would would emerge and I think we would all hope would emerge. But I think we also see failures from leadership to capitalize on it and create conditions or or maximize conditions, in which that kind of solidarity can thrive.
Speaker 3:And I think the same is true in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Loads of universities there was an encampment at my university for weeks, for months, of students demonstrating as to, partly in protest of the genocide, but also in protest of the senior management's failure to make any meaningful statement about it. And you saw this worldwide, with marches and solidarity protests and encampments at university. I mean, I went on numerous marches in London and with hundreds of thousands of people there, of all faiths. We regularly see huge banners from Jewish communities. This is not acceptable. This is showing the lie of any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
Speaker 3:But again, the narrative from people in even internationally, even in very difficult circumstances, where people may feel, I don't know anything about that or I'm worried about, you know, losing my job because someone's going to see me and go, you're an anti-semite or or something along those lines.
Speaker 3:And obviously it's very, very, very important that there is some really nasty coalitions that, like, suddenly really care about palest, about Palestinian people, because it's an excuse to tar all Jewish people with this brush, which needs to be avoided and people have to be very aware of. But I think you do see solidarity emerging, but not necessarily given support and empowerment by the authorities that should have it. So in the uk, for example, there was while there was hoarding of toilet paper and bread and pasta and all the rest of it. That's not an entirely unreasonable position when the government is telling you you might not be able to leave your house for a month. It's just. The government also needs to support that solidarity that does exist, which did exist. People wore face masks for an incredibly long time People did social distance. People, by and large, did obey the rules, even when the rules were unclear or badly delivered or were being broken, by the prime minister, for example. People largely did engage in solidarity with other people. So in that regard I'm hopeful.
Speaker 1:What I'm what makes me?
Speaker 3:less hopeful is the fact that a lot of the narrative gets controlled by a very small number of people who, one of whom owns Twitter and is very enthusiastic about spreading misinformation and bullshit and promoting some really hideous and dangerous perspectives. There were recently riots in the uk, far-right riots in the uk, which was sort of amplified on twitter, um by by the person who owns it, um, while there were massive counter protests against those which got less attention, um, I mean just mentioning the rights in the uk. I I was up a mountain in scotland at the time while it was happening, so I couldn't really go anywhere to counter protest. But in brighton, where I live, there was a far right protest of about seven or eight people that were massive and about several thousand people counter-protesting them. So that is kind of hopeful in a sense. But I think that we are in a quite worrying situation with the proliferation of bullshit and misinformation and far-right narratives which are shared prominently by people who control the public square. I mean, you look at the impact of the murdoch news media empire on public discourse and how that has shaped attitudes about an awful lot of stuff, because one person with terrible opinions which are dangerous and, um factually inaccurate and can shape how people view things, but I do think that in a lot of cases, many, many more people oppose that perspective, are willing to engage in solidarity or, at the very least, are willing to go shut up.
Speaker 3:We don't. That's nonsense. I mean, a project that I'm starting on at the moment is looking at sort of unconventional solidarity. So the way that solidarity can emerge between people who've never met and through Game of Thrones fan groups or people who play the same online video games, for example, like these communities are really meaningful to people who may never meet one another, but are essential to someone's community, and that can emerge even in the absence of shared language. It's just well, we play this, we support the same football team, we live 5 000 miles away from each other. We're never going to meet, but if I, you know, people will see hey, that's my shirt as well, you know. So these things really matter. People do engage in sort of positive solidarity. The thing to remember is that people can also engage in very, very dangerous, hostile, vicious, anti-social solidarity as well, and I think that is the. The challenge is to find ways that will motivate engagement with more pro-social solidalities and this demotivate engagement with those hostile, dangerous, anti-social solidarities as well.
Speaker 1:So, just before we sort of finish up because it would be good to hear some definitions about bullshit rather than just sort of slandering the good name of Elon Musk as a progenitor of bullshit, like because I think this is an interesting idea. So you gave a talk in oxford where you talk about bullshit, and what do you mean by bullshit?
Speaker 3:uh, so bullshit is, I think, a term that lots of people are familiar, like intuitively familiar with, like it's like, oh yeah, no, that's meaning nonsense or that's not true or inaccurate or an exaggeration or whatever.
Speaker 3:And I started thinking about it partly in response to, um, the sort of the epistemic conditions for making good health choices, and how, if you don't have access to information, you're in a very constrained position to be able to make those three choices which are so important to so many people. Bullshit is defined, it has is the subject of it. I mean, harry Frankfurt wrote a book called On Bullshit, which delights me because the opportunity to curse in Oxford College is just too appealing not to do it. But in it he sort of distinguishes the difference between bullshit and lying and he argues that bullshit is inherently more destabilizing than lies, because a liar has to kind of pilot themselves in accordance with the truth so that they can avoid the truth. So they have to at least know what the truth is and stick to a coherent narrative so that they can avoid it whereas a bullshitter doesn't care what the truth is at all, doesn't matter, and it can change moment to moment.
Speaker 3:All that matters is it serves their purpose, and so the lie has. A liar has to like. Their lie has to serve a purpose, but the bullshit it doesn't really matter. They can exaggerate, they can. Oh no, that's not what I meant. I didn't say that. And and so it.
Speaker 3:It erodes the conditions for truthfulness and truthful communication by making it um, make, perhaps making us care less about what the truth is. Even so, even a liar has to care what the truth is so that they can avoid it. The bullshitter doesn't have to care what the truth is at all, and so this is inherently destabilizing, and you see it in things like the communication, the communication of donald trump in various different speakers in in the public sphere. Um, who will say stuff and it's clearly obviously not true, like it just doesn't reflect reality in any sense of the word. But you have to sort of. You then find yourself in a situation, if you're going to try and communicate accurate information, this prove what they have said, and because it doesn't have to adhere to the truth or relate to the truth in any way, that's really difficult because at least a lie you can go. You said that x is the case and here is evidence that y is the case or that x is not the case.
Speaker 3:With bullshit it's much more ephemeral, so it's much harder to combat. It's really easy to disperse because it doesn't have to be consistent over time, so it doesn't matter if someone repeats it slightly differently, as long as it's you know, it still may serve the purpose. It may. Obviously it may loop background and evolve into actually a true statement or an accurate statement. But it creates these circumstances for people where, in conjunction with misinformation, with misreporting, with bad reporting so the the reporting on uh, israeli genocide in Palestine this 50 people die in a school explosion is kind of technically got a kernel of truth to it, but it's not remotely accurate as to what happened and you know. Or the refusal to talk about what happened prior to the 7th of October. Everything started on the 7th of October and that's Cassius Belli for everything that follows afterwards, ignoring all the war crimes and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3:That's bullshit. It's just kind of quietly, or not so quietly, avoiding stuff that you don't want to talk about and emphasising talking points that might technically be true in a very stretchy definition, because none of the words are inaccurate, but they convey a particular kind of message. But what this does is it makes it harder for people to know what the truth is because it's obscured by this sort of fog, and it makes it hard and it contributes to an environment where it's harder for people to know what to do for themselves to promote their own well-being or gen not just for health but generally or how they can act. So it so frickers. So it contributes to the sort of world of epistemic injustice which we live, which affects how we live. So, miranda, fricker um differentiates the sort of testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, testimonial being the sort of denial of a person's credibility about their experiences or their testimony, um, and so this happens a lot in health, um, where people who are seen as um less reliable narrators get ignored about their treatment, and typically this happens along gender and ethnicity grounds, because of the persistence of systemic racism and sexism.
Speaker 3:We see so. And then we also have hermeneutical injustice, which is not so much about the individual themselves but about their ability to understand themselves as a knower. So epistemic injustice, this overall arching category is injustice done to someone in their capacity as a knower. So if someone is having their testimony ignored or credibility challenged or refused or undermined, that's testimonial injustice, if you, which can happen on the side, interpersonal interaction. So the medic going now I'm going to tell you what the situation is, I'm not going to really listen to your symptoms or what you think as a patient and the patient going well, actually I've been living with this for 10 years or actually I do know about this situation.
Speaker 3:Permanential injustice can happen kind of more broadly, where it isn't necessarily a deliberate or maybe not deliberate is the wrong word, isn't necessarily directed at one specific person, but it's the failure to acknowledge that not everyone is a 40-year-old white man in whom certain symptoms will present in the same way in women or in people who are not Caucasian. So lots of dermatological conditions present differently on people with different skin tones. So if you've never been taught what X or Y or Z looks like on non-white skin, the physician doesn't necessarily have to be going. I don't care about my patients who are black, but they might not know what to look for and so their heart that their hermeneutical injustice is kind of being inflicted there on the patient because the people that they're relying on don't know what they're supposed to be looking for.
Speaker 3:And so what's happening with bullshit? Is this? Create a? It can undermine people's testimonial authority, but it can also make it harder for people to understand their own world as well. So it contributes to vaccine hesitancy by making it harder. Like well, the Lancet said that there's a risk of this and this, so that sounds really bad. I need to be really careful. Maybe I should be careful about engaging with vaccine programmes. If a very, seemingly very reputable authority is telling you that there is a risk of something, it's not unreasonable to believe them, but you are nevertheless endangered and you nevertheless had an injustice inflicted upon you, and you might become much more vulnerable as a result of believing the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when he tells you that actually he's gonna keep shaking hands with people because COVID is just the flu and it's totally fine or whatever it might be. Does that answer the question? Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1:So I guess, just to finish up then, like so, bullshit sort of is this you know problem of undermining the sort of conditions for epistemic justice or creates the conditions for these different kinds of epistemic injustice, and what sort of ways could you see as sort of countering some of the effects of bullshit?
Speaker 1:um, because it seems to be an important and I'm obviously not expecting you to sort of have some you know silver bullets here, but uh, it does seem to be a problem in a range of areas, but health being one of them and ties back to this question that we're talking about earlier between you know libertarian ideologues talking about how Affordable Health Care Act is going to sort of kill your mum, but you know how, yeah, what are some ways that can sort of restore the, the conditions for truth-telling and solidarity I think it's a really difficult problem, in all honesty, because it's very easy for um but trust to be eroded very quickly.
Speaker 3:I think um, partly because lots of things are really scary and we like simple sounding answers are very comforting a lot of the time, so it can be quite easy to go like, oh, I thought it was this really complicated thing, but this person's explained it really clearly and so that is helpful psychologically. But I think that what is valuable but I and again I don't have like here is how we address it. But I think that the things that matter are recognition that it isn't about one individual who is telling the truth, but reliable systems of fact checking and clarity in understanding what those systems are designed to do, in understanding what those systems are designed to do. So being able to communicate, that actually following the science generally yes, a good idea, but the science can present us with new information, so it isn't necessarily the case that it's this one answer forever.
Speaker 3:Recognition, being able to communicate honestly and clearly and transparently so that if mistakes are made, if something has changed, that is, we thought this. For these reasons, that was wrong. For these reasons, now we know this rather than oh, we said this now do this Because that creates, I think, the uncertainty. So, in the same way that you might expect of a clinician, if an error is is made, you want them to tell you, because that creates the trust and an open and honest dialogue, rather than trying to go oh, totally fine, but you know if if there is an error, and with not necessarily just within medicine, but within in any institution.
Speaker 3:We want to know when errors are made, because we want to know that we'll be told it makes us feel more secure. So I think being able to know that and if institutions do make mistakes, they they will communicate clearly what happened, so there is transparency and we can understand the process by which the current information was reached, if that makes sense, I think a lot of the and again, this is kind of an empirical claim, a bullshitter is never wrong. Oh no, what I meant was you didn't understand is is the, is the narrative there? And that's, I think, a key distinction that open, like an open, honest and reliable institutional communicator might have to tell you that they've got something wrong historically and that can. That should generate trust.
Speaker 3:So I think if we can emphasize the importance of um, not individuals who are the font of all knowledge and we just rely on them to saint elon or whoever it is, but recognize that knowledge is the product of collective cooperation rather than one person who knows everything, and that collective cooperation the process of checking I mean peer review right is is the way that we we within the academia and the sciences and uh, humanity, academic research more generally. We get that error checking and sense checking through cooperation and communication rather than through one person going here's the truth about the thing and then running over the top of the bullshit and hoping that no one ever notices I guess as a final thought from me coming, linking solidarity and not bullshit.
Speaker 2:I'm often struck when I read health communications that come from the UK how incredibly easy to understand and how thoughtful and plain they are and how much thought has gone into communicating information in a way that a lot of people can understand it. Obviously, not everybody can, because it's you know, and I wonder I've always thought of that as being a reflection of the NHS. You know the approach to, I suppose, a solidaristic system of healthcare, thinking really meaningfully about what it is for people to be able to understand this one system and not and not it not being a profitable thing, you know. So that doesn't come into it. You're not trying to sell particular ideas or whatever.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, I'm always struck I'm, I'm I'm so glad you said that actually, because I think that's that's really key is the if, and we talked, we talked about the, the things which create an epistemically unhelpful environment, but the things which, the things which create an epistemically helpful environment, which might be slightly different to the things which challenge the unhelpful one. But if you are in a context where health information is not in, firstly, the your, your, your native language, your, your mother tongue, that's really difficult, that's impossibly difficult. Like if, if no one can communicate with you in a, in a manner that is clear, even to the extent of like, if you don't speak english, if you, if you don't speak english and you're, all the information is in english, then why do you have no reason to think that, like they, they actually care about you, right, because they're not making the, the person responsible is not making enough to communicate. If you are given a leaflet and it's just full of technical language that makes no sense, you're like okay, I could understand this if I had five years of medical school, but I don't. So what on earth are you talking about? I think, if you don't have access to information that is clear, if you don't have access to information that is written in appropriate kind of language, and I think the the reading comprehension age for public facing information is much lower than I think we often we might think it is a lot of the time, and that's not simply in virtue of people are busy, people don't have expertise in this kind of area. People are really stressed out when they're talking about health. There's a wonderful organisation called the Patient Information Forum who specialise in health communication and health accessibility. So looking specifically at what information is provided by charities, by health services, and how it is done. So it isn't.
Speaker 3:Here is this list. Here is a sentence that's technically a sentence, but it's got 15 incredibly complicated words in it. But you know, rather than this will happen. This is a short declarative. This is what this, this is what this means. This is what a language. That is very clear, and they do that.
Speaker 3:So their work is very much on how do you make it as clear as possible, because once you have that, if if you don't have very clear information, it's very tempting to start looking for alternative sources of communication of information. So I mean the kind of running joke is you know various health information websites that are not part of? You know reputable sources, or maybe they are reputable. It's like google is a tool for turning the common cold into. You know xyz, dreadful condition. You know um, and actually what you need is that very clear information, which I'm really. It's really encouraging to hear that the the uk tends to produce that clarity of information, and why it's so important to have it in multiple languages, in large print, in braille or audio or whatever it might be as well well thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Uh, pete, always a source of reliable information um just like this podcast if you have any ailments um sore throat, headache uh send us photos of your rashes send us photos of your rashes, cysts or other lesions and we will provide you with an accurate diagnosis. Small fee, via Patreon, of course, but seriously. Yes, we really could talk about all of these different avenues and angles for a long time, so hopefully, once this work on bullshit is in a shareable published form, it'd be good to have you back on to talk more about it.
Speaker 3:That'd be great. Thanks so much for having me. It's been lots of fun to talk to you. Yes, definitely, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and do that, thank you.