The naked king in the pandemic: about the production and communication of scientific knowledge at the time of SARS-CoV-2.

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has lifted the veil about how medical knowledge is produced and disseminated. Action Bias, together with economic, academic and media-related interests, has concurred to generate and spread low-value and even unreliable information about some hypothetical therapeutic interventions for CoViD-19. Not only this "infodemic" has weakened people's ability to make informed health choices, but it also has influenced the process of new evidence generation through the violation of the equipoise principle. The CoViD-19 infodemic has further highlighted the need for reliable health information and for people to enter the process of understanding and promoting valuable research. Through a randomized controlled trial, the Informed Health Choices project has shown that it is not impossible neither quixotic to better orient people about health choices since primary school. Similar competencies should be disseminated to everyone through sources that are selected and validated for their capability of reporting evidence based health information about the effects of treatments.