What are the best ways to debunk COVID vaccine misinformation?
Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine have tested types of messages that debunked vaccine misinformation with people considering getting vaccinated or boosted.
2 min. read
People hesitant about getting a COVID vaccine are more likely to consider getting the shot after hearing a myth explained and corrected with facts, according to new research from Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM). Science has continually proven the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, including the mRNA technology behind their development. However, vaccine hesitancy remains common.
“Vaccines are only effective if people take them,” says lead author Jessica Fishman, director of the Message Effects Lab at PSOM. “Part of ensuring broader distribution of vaccines is having a proven way to deliver factual information about them.” The Message Effects Lab was created during the pandemic by John L. Jackson Jr., now University of Pennsylvania Provost.
The three commonly used strategies to debunk false information: telling people an untruth followed by a fact; telling people a fact, then a lie, then another fact; and simply presenting the fact.
The first strategy has earned a bad reputation, and some experts have advised against its use.
“There have been concerns that the first method could ‘backfire’ by repeating the myth and making it more salient and possibly more believable,” says Fishman, who is also an assistant professor in psychiatry and a director of behavioral vaccination research at the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation. In fact, according to the research, none of the debunking strategies reduced people’s intention to get the vaccine booster, and the first approach strengthened their intentions to get the shot, as published in Vaccine.
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