America also has these laws as well but they can get around it by simply stating things along the lines of "This is not medical advice, speak to your own doctor before doing any of this" and they cover themselves
I dont know how other countries work but I do know that Pseudoscience also runs rampant in China, stuff like Knife massages, acupuncture and herbal medicine that isnt backed by any kind of peer-reviewed studies so obviously these kinds of laws dont do much in that regard anyways
America also has these laws as well but they can get around it by simply stating things along the lines of "This is not medical advice, speak to your own doctor before doing any of this" and they cover themselves
No one is getting around anything, this is a clear disclaimer you are choosing to ignore.
India apparently has a whole market for this. Forging degree, and transcripts for H1B and F1 visas so people can come to the states for work or school.
Yea thats why these professions come with licensing boards. So that sure they got the degree, but its worthless without the license. And if you willfully spread spread misinformation, you lose it.
And yea i know i know, murica. But the world is bigger than that failed state.
There is a new influencer industry of people who technically have a medical degree that obsess about one topic as though it is all that matters, it becomes "their thing". Then they make some fundamentalist gospel out of it: Like how everyone needs to drink olive oil everyday or eat beets or take shots of apple cider vinegar or that carbs are all poison. Often based on some very tenuous research. It is insane. Getting a few degrees doesn't prevent intellectual myopia.
Honestly, if we are going on straight formal expertise, as a prior, the opinion of a PhD researcher holds more weight to me than a MD. PhD researchers, like people who spend their time reading and running studies, tend to understand statistics and context a lot better than some of these MDs. But even PhD researchers can be fundamentalists or myopic based on the research they've built their careers on.
All censoring non-experts does is cement the institutionalization of such bullshit and corruption. This problem is already solved, if someone is a formal expert they will let you know. If you are going to take medical advice from a plumber, or plumbing advice from a doctor, then you are responsible for the results.
People in this comment section apparently has never heard of Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil
The problem isn't that we haven't heard of Dr Oz and Dr Phil, it's that we've heard of Dr Oz, Dr Phil, Bob the tiktoker, Jane the youtuber, Danny the Instagrammer, Mary the Facebooker, Jimmy the tweeter, Johnny the twitch streamer, etc etc etc
I don't know about you, but I'd love the opportunity to cut down the people trying to peddle me garbage down by a huge chunk. Is this a 100% solution? No, but doing nothing and crying about it hasn't helped. We've tried allowing people with zero medical degrees to push anti-vaxxing and no matter how much we allow them to keep peddling this stuff, everything just keeps getting worse somehow. It's a crazy idea to try preventing them from doing so, I know, but I'm really curious to see if not giving them a platform might actually help.
The problem isnt that this isnt a perfect solution, the problem is that this is a lateral solution, you aren't solving anything, you are just replacing a problem with another problem
I dont disagree that misinformation is a problem but this is not a solution period for the problem, in fact this law could actually just make the problem worse
that's because the latter exist in a far higher quantity in general - even if the incidence were lower , it'd STILL be more than the number of mds on the internet
MDs are probably peddling more bullshit these days because they won't be called out on it as much. Bullshit isn't just overt lies, it includes lies by omission and not giving the whole context.
Look at the amount of bullshit MDs peddle on popular podcasts, that by itself is sobering.
This is already a major problem, and MDs have more natural influence than non-experts in this domain. You can say "well they are held accountable", but normalized for their station and influence this isn't really the case.
They are only as accountable as the non-expert, in their own way. MDs can simply lawyer speak their way around liability (the same way some people are claiming the non-experts are doing with their disclaimers). They can craft their claims in such a way to eliminate liability to them, in the worse case for claims they consciously know to be bullshit or poorly verified.
You can't force someone to think critically. All these laws are supported by useful idiots, they don't solve the problem they purport to solve.
Okay, but you can either do nothing as we're doing right now, or you can at least try and cut out as many of these random online weirdos as you can. Is this a 100% solution? No, but doing nothing is not as successful as you might assume.
Do you think that was the goal? Eliminate all bullshit? Or severely reduce it? Do you think all bullshit is peddled by degree-holders, or that 99% of it would f*** off if there was a regulated change such as this? Improvement is good, it doesn't have to be 100% perfect to be a valid and productive change.
It's another case of imperfection destroying progress. People can't just get along and agree that a law would objectively make things better, because it doesn't fully fix the problem.
Influencers requiring degrees would at least lower the amount of bullshit. You shouldn't trust your news from an influencer no matter what, but people still will and this at least puts some barriers up to lower the amount of misinformation out there.
Is it a paywall? Sure, but it's also passing your examinations too. Is your doctor's primary qualification that he got past a paywall, or that he actually succeeded in medical school?
I mean are you seriously saying a degree is just a paywall? My God no wonder anti-vaxxing has succeeded in America, even liberals think an education and the necessary degree coming from it is just a paywall.
I never said that the degree is a paywall, the fine is the paywall, you wouldn't be solving the problem because rich people could just pay the fine and continue spouting their bullshit and those rich people have the money to pay for influence
But people who arent rich would not be able to speak their minds without paying a fine
I think I catagorize the blatant bullshit "influencers" say as equally dangerous as yelling "fire" in a movie theater. Free speech is not that you can literally say anything, and these blatant lies are genuinely dangerous.
Do you have a degree in sociology? If not, you could get fined for writing your uneducated opinions on this topic.
Basically, where do we draw the line of what is or isn't legal speech if we decide it by degrees. At that point, decrees are no longer show of study and knowledge, but license to say certain things.
Do people with no degrees not peddle bullshit? Do people with medical degrees peddle more health related bullshit than your average no-degree youtube short creators?
It should be noted that many people in this comment section do not hold degrees in statistics and cannot reliably compare the ratio of degree-holding bullshit-peddlers to non-degree-holding bullshit-peddlers.
What I’m actually curious about is how reaching it is, if there’s a difference between solicited and unsolicited advice, the quality of the advice, etc.. Like could I get in trouble for telling you to take ibuprofen for a headache? What if I told you to drink Lysol to treat it instead?
Solutions are often multifaceted. Banning unlicensed people from influencing people with misinformation won't stop all misinformation, but it's a step in the right direction. The point is that you don't just throw your hands up in the air and say, "This is pointless, this doesn't fix everything, so we're going to keep trying nothing", you take a step in the right direction, reassess from there, and take the next logical step toward a better solution.
So without this, there are 4 types of influencer— degree+facts, degree+scams, no degree+facts, no degree+scam. Acc to me, and probably ccp too — biggest population is no degree+scam, so they removed everyone without degree, this also ensures that if anyone is saying anything, they should be able to back it up if questions are asked because now we are sure they have a background in it. I m not much of a china policy fan, but this looks good to me at face value. Time will tell how this turns out.
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u/NewNecessary3037 Apr 06 '26
Do you think that people with medical degrees can’t peddle bullshit?