During this recent emotional and divisive election cycle, much ink was devoted to analyzing the brave new political world we now live in, a world in which just about anyone with an audience and a platform can issue statements that are accepted as fact by millions of people, often in the face of solid evidence to the contrary.
I'm talking, of course, about the world of post-truth politics.
But this problem is not isolated to politics. As faith in facts has diminished, so too has our trust in institutions: banks, churches, the “lamestream” media. Medicine, an institution that for more than a century has been firmly rooted in a tradition of trust, stands to lose much from this post-truth environment which threatens to erode its very foundation. In fact, it is already suffering: in 2016, only 39 percent of responders to a Gallup poll reported having “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the medical system.
