Dan McQuade tells the story of a viral video:
If you take the video at face value, it is pretty traumatic. The video shows an officer flat on the ground. The video says the patrol deputy, still in training, was processing drugs at the scene of an arrest. He then passed out. A corporal reacts quickly, suspecting an opiate overdose—likely fentanyl, the synthetic opiate that has increasingly taken over the recreational opiate supply. The corporal administers naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, which can reverse overdoses. He tells the deputy he’s going to be OK. “I’m not going to let you die,” he repeats. “I’m not going to let you die.” The corporal and the patrol deputy return as talking heads, lit like Sheriff Gore, to recount the story. Eventually, the deputy is wheeled into an ambulance. “He was ODing the whole way to the hospital,” the corporal says. He needed four shots of Narcan up his nostrils to save his life.
The department did not release the full body cam video, and did not release any toxicology reports. When I saw the video last week, I immediately knew that it was not a fentanyl overdose. . . . I also didn’t really need my own experiences to know all of this, because it was not the first time I had seen a story like this. Police officers have been “overdosing” from handling or simply by being near fentanyl for years now. News story after news story detail incidents where cops encounter fentanyl powder, overdose as a result, and are administered Narcan. Fentanyl can be skin-soluble—in specially designed patches that slowly release the drug into the body. This took a lot of work to develop; the drug was synthesized in 1959 and patches were only developed in the 1990s. The story just strains credibility by common sense: Why would anyone inject fentanyl if they could just get high by touching it? Why don’t drug dealers and users ever overdose in this way?
One obvious problem with these stories is that the drug simply does not work in that way. . . . Inhalation is unlikely, too, as powdered opiates do not aerosolize. New synthetic opiates like carfentanyl behave in this same way; though they are stronger, you can’t overdose them via touch. Police officers—and, sometimes, other first responders—simply believe they can overdose by touching fentanyl, and have a panic attack as a result. . . .
“Mass psychogenic illness happens all the time,” Jeanmarie Perrone, director of medical toxicology at Penn’s med school, told the Inquirer in 2018. “We see it all the time with law enforcement. Police pull someone over and find an unknown substance. Suddenly their heart’s racing, they’re nauseated and sweaty. They say, ‘I’m sick. I’m gonna pass out.’ That is your normal physiological response to potential danger.” A 2019 study of New York state first responders found 80 percent thought “briefly touching fentanyl could be deadly.” . . . it’s pretty clear the video does not depict an opiate overdose.
But . . .
That did not stop the incident from spreading across the Internet. People shared the video. Though many users on Twitter ratioed the tweet and pointed out that the sheriff department’s recreation of the incident was impossible, it still went viral as a cautionary tale. Cops shared it. The Clay County (Missouri) sheriff’s office shared it with a similar myth about fentanyl-laced weed. And since the San Diego sheriff’s office had been generous enough to produce this slick, dramatic, traumatic video for the press, the press went ahead and shared it.
The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote an article about it that only quoted cops. The Los Angeles Times syndicated that story. CNN reported the tale. As did ABC. The New York Daily News did, too. Stars and Stripes had a report. So did, for some reason, Mediaite. Thanks to syndicated content from San Diego, local news stations around the country carried some report: Los Angeles; San Francisco; Dallas; Corpus Christi, Texas; Butte, Montana; Dayton, Ohio; West Michigan; Southern Colorado. Here in Philadelphia, 6 ABC ran it on their website and on the news at 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Friday. Even a hip-hop website called My Mixtapez covered it. (DatPiff did not.)
Then, eventually:
More reports, ones that quoted more than just police officers, came a few days later. The New York Times headlined its story about it “Video of Officer’s Collapse After Handling Powder Draws Skepticism.” NBC News’ report was “Viral video on San Diego deputy’s fentanyl exposure raises questions.” “You can’t just touch fentanyl and overdose,” Marino, the #WTFentanyl doc, told NBC News. “It doesn’t just get into the air and make people overdose.” Leo Beletsky, a Temple law graduate with a masters in public health, told the Times “it is not biologically possible” to overdose on fentanyl from touching or being exposed to the drug. . . . Still, despite the outlets’ reporting and citations from the National Judicial Opioid Task Force and a peer-reviewed research from the International Journal of Drug Policy, the cops aren’t said to be lying in cases like this, or even wrong. They simply have raised questions and drawn skepticism. The San Diego sheriff didn’t even comment, telling the Times that both the corporal and trainee deputy were on vacation. (A trainee already gets vacation! This is why you should organize with your coworkers, friends.)
I’m sharing this here because it reminds me so much of a sequence that we see all the time in the world of junk science:
1. A claim is made with apparently incontrovertible evidence (in this case, eyewitness testimony on a video; in science, statistically significant p-values published in a peer-reviewed journal).
2. Knowledgeable observers hear about the story and realize something’s wrong.
3. Meanwhile, the original claim gets spread by credulous media (in this case, newspapers and TV; in science, NPR and Ted).
4. Critics mock and complain on social media (that’s me!).
5. The regular news media eventually catch up, but often still showing some deference to the original ridiculous claim.
We’ve seen this with beauty and sex ratio, himmicanes, ages ending in 9, and so many other cases.
One thing worth noting about this pattern is that it’s not as simple as people getting fooled and then realizing their mistake. For one thing, even from the beginning you have lots of people on social media screaming that it’s b.s.; it’s just that these screams don’t get heard by the news media. Another thing is that this whole cycle happens again and again, and it doesn’t stop the usual suspects from being fooled. We see that in the bogus overdose stories above, and we’ve seen this over and over again in science. For example, the nudgelords got fooled by the fake research Brian “Pizzagate” Wansink, but even after that episode had ended, they bit again at the next juicy worm, “Candidate for coolest behavioral finding of 2019: If a calorie label is on the left of the relevant food item, it has a much bigger impact than if it is on the right.” It’s not progress; it’s just the wheel of life. The other thing is that so much of this appears to driven by confusion: just as the nudgelords presumably sincerely believe the latest social psychology claim they saw in PNAS, I expect these cops and news organizations believe these videos. These are not simple cases of bad guys spreading lies; rather, they are people who are susceptible to certain forms of misinformation, and they spread it even while it is being taken apart on social media the very same time, and that allows hucksters as well as confused people to flourish.
P.S. Yet another form of misinformation is political lies of the sort that we’ve been seeing most notoriously from Russian propaganda lately. That’s a big problem too! The misinformation discussed in the above post is a little bit different in that I assume that many of the people in the news media spreading it are genuinely fooled, it’s not just a straight political operation.
Andrew –
> For one thing, even from the beginning you have lots of people on social media screaming that it’s b.s.; it’s just that these screams don’t get heard by the news media.
I think context is needed there. Sure, it happens. No doubt. But I think prevalence is an important aspect. You say that “these screams don’t get heard by the media.”. Well, maybe sometimes they do? Or maybe usually they do Or maybe they hardly ever do? Or maybe it’s just totally random Or maybe there are patterns that play out – which could be of some value to identify? (My own sense is that there are patterns, but patterns which reflect a very complex matrix of interactions).
I dunno. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to note that it happens, as certainly it does. If there’s anyone who denies it, then simply noting it would be of value but I don’t think anyone does deny it.
Personally, I think the observation thst it happens necessarily leads to a “next level” discussion about what to do about it. I think we’ve mind if been operating from an assumption that more information is inherently better and that has led us to a kind of crossroads where we need to talk about the implications of that assumption.
> The misinformation discussed in the above post is a little bit different in that I assume that many of the people in the news media spreading it are genuinely fooled, it’s not just a straight political operation.
I’ve been thinking lately about Sandy Hook, birtherism (whose figurehead got elected president), 9/11 trutherism… Maybe framing this as an issue of problems with “the news media” is no longer sufficient (not to say it’s not part of the problem). This is a societal problem, and must necessarily include looking at “social media,” and the pervasive attack on “expertise,” which are playing an increasing role in all of this.
Joshua,
Sure, but often the news media take their lead from social media. See above:
The LA Times, CNN, etc., running with a viral video is as irresponsible as NPR, Ted, etc., falling for the latest crap from Psychological Science.
You’d think the same people decrying the “death of expertise” and wailing about how journalists are 3rd class citizens now or whatever (even though they are genius heroes who have saved our democracy and never leave a lover unsatisfied, or whatever other crap they tell us about how awesome they are — like the police do!) would care the tiniest bit about not spreading misinformation. Guess not?
Maybe they *want to* want to “do journalisming good”, but it’s too hard or something.
I would distinguish blogs from “social media”. You yourself have noted how much better they are than Twitter. And it’s not like Facebook (the biggest social media site) has better standards than Twitter.
Millions of people have beliefs that can be proven to be incorrect. Furthermore, they have networks of relationships which reinforce those beliefs. Finally, there are people who exploit those false beliefs for their own purposes. Has it not always been thus? Why do you find this so disturbing? Is there some idyllic prior age where everyone was a seeker of truth and able to determine true from false persuasion?
Argghh… Intended as a reply to Joshua above.
The only difference I see is that in that gilded prior age it was more difficult for millions to have beliefs that could be proven wrong and whose beliefs could be exploited. This was probably true in earlier time, but not to the extent that it is today.
Jonathan:
The above story is upsetting to me because all those news orgs just ran with it, even though experts realized right away that the story was bogus.
They’re not doing it for the cold hard cash?
I’m expanding on Anonymous below here…
Why did the officers feel the need to share the video? Why did the department spend the time polishing it and submitting it to the news? In both cases, it’s largely because it promotes a narrative the officers wanted to promote – that policing is incredibly dangerous, that the cops in your own city are putting their lives on the line for you every day. When folks come around talking about “defunding” the police, these are the stories and images they’ll use to push back, to show you that are “the thin blue line” that exists between civilization and chaos.
The newspapers ran it… for money. The police are supposed to be a trustworthy institution, but they have done A LOT to break that trust over the years. The editorial board of the newspaper knows not to trust everything they put out, but they also know folks will see this and react to it. They’ll share the story online at places like Reddit or Hacker News (‘sup) and be either outraged that the cops aren’t being supported enough, or outraged at how stupid they must be to believe in this nonsense. The news makes money on subscriptions and through selling eyeballs to advertisers – all they want are more eyeballs. And, hey, they did their journalistic job – they presented the facts that the police put this story out there and are trusting their readers to have the intelligence to figure it out. Yes, that’s all bullshit… but it’s convincing bullshit.
And so communities become more divided. They get angry at each other during election time since the cops are, again, asking for more money, but so are the schools and the road crews and the housing groups, etc. The cops will use these images to get voters on their side – and may even use the same images to fight against laws intended to compassionately help the unhoused, which may take more money from the cops or put additional restrictions on how they do their jobs.
The question is not “why didn’t they look into this” – when misinformation is spread, it is always with some purpose in mind. It’s never innocent, it’s never an accident. The questions to ask are, “where did this information originate from?” and “how do they benefit from its release?” The article above seems to miss this entirely, trusting that even scientists don;t mean any harm when they get things wrong initially. But you must ask why they rush to publication. More often than not, it’s because someone above them is pressuring them to publish, likely because they are developing a new product based on that information and they want the positive marketing. Those profit incentives, like power incentives, are what truly drive misinformation. It’s intentional – always.
Jonathan –
> Has it not always been thus? Why do you find this so disturbing? Is there some idyllic prior age where everyone was a seeker of truth and able to determine true from false persuasion?
Yah. Those are the questions. I always go to the key benchmark of Johnson lying about the Vietnam War. As a child growing up in a household where my father subscribed to I. F. Stone’s Weekly, I certainly don’t imagine there was some gilded age were the public as a whole was shielded from false persuasion..
On the other than, it *feels* worse to me. In part maybe because Fox News has grown so much in stature – not that Fox is some different beast of false information generation than more left of center-based media, but because the information it generates is further away from my own ideology than the information I always viewed skeptically. So in a sense maybe it just *feels* worse because there’s more out there that seems like false to a higher degree of magnitude to me. I have to allow for that possibility.
But I’m really leaning towards the idea that modern technology and social media have amplified phenomena that where always there to some extent. Oil not sure how to assess these Trans in some subjective way.
What’s interesting is that your question to me reflects a question I always ask about the “replicability crisis,” which it seems to me, necessarily suggests a phenomenon that is not only worse in some absolute sense but also more of a problem because somehow bad science has come to have a larger impact inn a relative sense. So I ask where is the evidence of that?
I’m not sure how to assess these trends in some subjective way…
Two ill-formed thoughts (as I proctor an exam):
1. A cynical view: this cycle of (#3) one wrong article by “credulous media” followed by another as (#5) “regular news media eventually catch up” is great from the point of view of productivity — it’s two articles for the price of one! If journalists did their homework the first time, they’d at best get one article out of it, and perhaps zero if they realized that the story is nonsense. Of course, this assumes that the goal is the production of articles, not information.
2. What’s missing seems to be some sort of feedback: assessing “what went wrong in our [the media’s] reporting on X, so that we don’t repeat the same practice again?” I don’t know enough about journalism to know if mechanisms for feedback existed and have been eroded, or if this is how it’s always been.
Seems like they’re going with the feedback, aren’t they? They published a bogus claim that got a bunch clicks and drove up their add revenue. Score! Rinse and repeat!
So hysteria can put someone in the hospital. Apparently this happens “all the time”.
This is something I have been wondering about the covid response as well. How many people were more concerned than they should be which exaggerated their symptoms? We will never know, I guess.
not to mention all the people just pretending to be dead!
Well, to start with something like 20% of deaths are reported to involve nosocomial infections. If you would like a link, ask.
Surely the primary infection couldn’t be increasing susceptibility to nosocomial infections!
I know your whole shtick is contrarianism but this one seems to have a pretty straightforward rejoinder, no?
Nosocomial means you got it from the hospital, because that is where there are lots of people with infections. If you did not go to the hospital you could not get a nosocomial infection.
I know what nosocomial means. Infections like MRSA are opportunistic, many people can be exposed and even carry it without ever becoming actively infected unless their immune systems are sufficiently weakened. Like by COVID, for example.
If you do not go to the hospital (because you are not having a panic attack, or whatever “mass psychogenic illness” refers to) how will you pick up MRSA? The answer is you will attempt to recover at home, and not pick it up.
What we want to know is how many people died unnecessarily due to this vs how many were saved by going to the hospital.
Or we can avoid the uncomfortable question and have more suffering and dying in the future by repeating the same mistake. I pick addressing the issue insofar as that is possible over playing CYA.
When will the experts get around to acknowledging that drug prohibition causes more harm than the drugs themselves?
and then here comes the pro-fentanyl post
You don’t need to be pro drug, though, to be very concerned that the overblown lies about drugs do more harm than good (assuming you’re fine just lying through your teeth “for the greater good”).
Telling someone they’ll get holes in their brain, “trip” 40 years later, have their johnson fall off, or whatever other lie, is — like all lies — playing with fire. “Santa is watching” is a lie you can tell a 6 year old, not a 16 year old.
Can I play the my-buddy-overdosed card here, you insensitive clod? If heroin were legal, could I have been there to pull the needle out of his arm, as I’d done a few times, before I had to quit due to prohibition? If heroin were legal, would he have at least been more aware of the strength of his purchase, so we would know if the overdose was intentional?
This fentanyl myth doesn’t seem as bad as two previous ones: the “recovered memory” feeding frenzy (in which large numbers of children were horrifically tortured with stories of sexual abuse, and the “multiple personality disorder” BS (the “patients” with the “disorder” were people who were in pain and needed help, but all they got were shrinks looking for subjects for their multiple personalities papers (hint: it’s a phenomenon that only occurs in patients of shrinks who think it’s real)) whose second most obnoxious aspect was lots of really stupid fiction and really stupid TV dramas. (Although I suppose the fentanyl BS has resulted in some number of really stupid TV dramas.)
Whatever. I’m more irritated with the breathless science coverage that grossly overstates minor improvements as game-changing breakthroughs (fusion research coverage is one of the worst for this). Remember bubble memory? Now we’re hearing about “neuromorphic phase-change memory”. Etc, etc. etc. Science magazine’s science coverage is wonderful because they get comments from folks who know that the significant, real, scientifically important, but really really minor discovery at hand really is really really minor, or maybe not even real. You _never_ see that at Quanta or the NYT.
Being “correct” has been displaced by “having the right views” — that’s a lot of the problem. Drugs are bad — play act in a video and lie about it! The warm glow of being the good sort of people that keeps others on the path of righteousness (cloth masks, anyone?) has supplanted truthfulness as a virtue. Isn’t this where “truthiness” came from?
Besides all that, the incentives here are bad (as is often the case). Retraction takes work. Validating a video takes work. Developing sources takes work (how much”sports reporting” these days is literally just reading Twitter in the radio?). Etc etc. Why do any of that hard work stuff when you could do much less work and get your clicks it whatever?
“For one thing, even from the beginning you have lots of people on social media screaming that it’s b.s.; it’s just that these screams don’t get heard by the news media. Another thing is that this whole cycle happens again and again, and it doesn’t stop the usual suspects from being fooled.”
When I was a young adult about 20 years ago, I used to read a few newspaper and news magazines, and I wondered why journalists did not notice and avoid falling in to the same traps. Eventually I cut back my news consumption. I think that a lot of news is aimed at people who don’t follow things and don’t remember, so can’t see that the usual suspects are using standard trope #9 to achieve objective gamma, whereas three months ago they used trope #2 and last year they used trope #4. Or so that these tropes an exciting new idea. And as journalists have less and less opportunity to specialize, its hard for them to learn the tricks which people on a given beat will use against them.