The social network for doctors is full of vaccine disinformation
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Doctors on the industry networking site Doximity are finding their news feed inundated with anti-vaccine comments from fellow physicians.
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“You rarely get to the level of microchips in vaccines, but a lot of this stuff is pretty close to it,” said Dr. Paul Malarik, a retired psychiatrist who now volunteers with Covid-19 vaccine administration.
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Doximity held its IPO in June and is now valued at over $10 billion.
Malarik read directly from several comments posted by people with the initials M.D. or D.O., which indicates doctor of osteopathic medicine, after their names. There’s no anonymity on the site, so everyone is identified. In the posts, they refer to the vaccines as experimental, unproven or deadly and occasionally write “Fauxi” when talking about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical advisor.
Some commenters say that antibodies from contracting Covid are more effective than the messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines, which instruct human cells to make specific proteins that produce an immune response to the disease.
“Covid-19 vaccines have already killed over 4,000 adults who’ve received the vaccine,” the post said, appearing to mimic a debunked claim made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “To mandate a vaccine that has already killed over 4,000 is akin to murder.”
It’s not an outlier. Dozens of screenshots and descriptions of posts shared with CNBC by other doctors were consistent with Malarik’s experience. Articles about vaccines or masks have hundreds of comments, many that are factually inaccurate and often based on conspiracy theories, while stories on less politically divisive topics have just a few comments, if any at all.
“Everyone is jumping on the articles they can fight about,” Malarik said.
Doximity is not an open social network: To join, users must be practicing U.S. health-care professionals. The company verifies members by photo identification of a medical license, a hospital badge, emails from medical institutions and through challenge questions, among other methods.
Like LinkedIn, the company makes money through sponsored content and from recruiters, who use the site to find talent. Because Doximity is entirely focused on medical professionals, the marketing dollars come largely from drug companies and hospitals targeting relevant users with treatments and services, including through sponsored articles and animated videos on the news feed. More than 80% of Doximity’s revenue in its last fiscal year came from its marketing products.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/06/doximity-social-network-for-doctors-full-of-antivax-disinformation.html