Author: adamgdunn

On the value of deplatforming, and seeing online misinformation as an opportunity to counter misinformed beliefs in front of a key audience

Adam Dunn, University of Sydney The government is rolling out a new public information campaign this week to reassure the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, which one expert has said “couldn’t be more crucial” to people actually getting the jabs when they are available. Access to vaccines is the most important barrier to … Continue reading On the value of deplatforming, and seeing online misinformation as an opportunity to counter misinformed beliefs in front of a key audience →

Do Twitter bots spread vaccine misinformation?

Discussion of online misinformation in politics and public health often focuses on the role of bots, organised disinformation campaigns and “fake news”. A closer look at what typical users see and engage with about vaccines reveals that for most Twitter users, bots and anti-vaccine content make up a tiny proportion of their information diet. Having … Continue reading Do Twitter bots spread vaccine misinformation? →

trial2rev: seeing the forest for the trees in the systematic review ecosystem

tl;dr: we have a new web-based system called trial2rev that links published systematic reviews to included and relevant trials based on their registrations in ClinicalTrials.gov. Our report on this system has been published today in JAMIA Open. The first aim is to make it easy for systematic reviewers to monitor the status of ongoing and … Continue reading trial2rev: seeing the forest for the trees in the systematic review ecosystem →

How articles from financially conflicted authors are amplified, why it matters, and how to fix it.

tl;dr: we have a new article on conflicts of interest, published today in JAMA. Imagine you are attempting to answer a question about your health or the health of someone in your care. The answer isn't immediately obvious so you search online and find two relevant articles from reputable journals, print them out, and put … Continue reading How articles from financially conflicted authors are amplified, why it matters, and how to fix it. →

Thinking outside the cylinder: on the use of clinical trial registries in evidence synthesis communities

Clinical trials take a long time to be published, if they are at all. And when they are published, most of them are either missing critical information or have changed the way they describe the outcomes to suit the results they found (or wanted). Despite these problems, the vast majority of the new methods and … Continue reading Thinking outside the cylinder: on the use of clinical trial registries in evidence synthesis communities →

Differences in exposure to negative news media are associated with lower levels of HPV vaccine coverage

Over the weekend, our new article in Vaccine was published. It describes how we found links between human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine coverage in the United States and information exposure measures derived from Twitter data. Our research demonstrates—for the first time—that locations with Twitter users who saw more negative news media had lower levels of HPV vaccine coverage. What we are talking … Continue reading Differences in exposure to negative news media are associated with lower levels of HPV vaccine coverage →