Radiology among specialties urging Spotify to moderate misinformation on Joe Rogan podcast
Radiology is among numerous specialties represented in a recent letter to Spotify, urging the streaming service to moderate misinformation on the world’s most popular podcast.
Some 270 scientists, physicians, nurses and educators put their name to the piece making the rounds in the media this week. They’re concerned a “highly controversial” episode of the Joe Rogan experience in which virologist Robert Malone, MD, promotes “baseless conspiracy theories” about the COVID-19 pandemic.
The episode has reached tens of millions of listeners who may be vulnerable to “predatory medical misinformation.” Scientists want the Sweden-based audio platform—which paid $100 million for exclusive rights to the show—to moderate misinformation on the platform, concerned about the “dangerous ramifications” of such content.
“As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast,” Sean Adwar, MD, an interventional radiologist with Mount Sinai in New York, and docs representing emergency medicine, pediatrics, immunology and other areas of expertise wrote. “This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform.”
The podcast reaches roughly an audience of 11 million each episode and has “tremendous influence,” the writers noted. Listeners are an average age of 24 years old. And unvaccinated individuals between the ages of 12-34 are 12 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID compared to those who are fully vaccinated. This is not the first time the show has promoted baseless lies, they added, with Rogan previously discouraging young people from getting vaccinated and promoting off-label use of the drug ivermectin.
Rolling Stone first reported on the letter Jan. 12. Spotify and Rogan had not yet issued a response as of Friday.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.