Dr. Yenting Chen is a board certified emergency medicine physician practicing at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center emergency departments in Berkeley and Oakland, California.
In this opinion piece, he discusses the importance of empathy when tackling misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, many of my peers in the healthcare and science professions have found themselves on a new, unexpected frontline in the war against COVID-19: the battle against widespread medical science misinformation on social media.
It is important for us to engage empathetically if we choose to enter into this discussion, even though this is particularly challenging for those of us who have spent our entire careers adhering to the standards of