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Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us

Author: 
Jack M. Gorman; Sara E. Gorman
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Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk to harm us. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several examples of such denial as test cases, they propose seven key principles that may lead individuals to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear of complexity; confirmation bias and the internet; isolation and marginalization; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existing beliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research; scientists have identified brain responses to new information. This book explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with health decisions. Denying to the Grave points the way to a new understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology.

Index: 

Introduction
Chapter One: Risk Perception
Chapter Two: Avoidance of Complexity
Chapter Three: Causality and Filling the Ignorance Gap
Chapter Four: Confirmation Bias
Chapter Five: Charismatic Leaders
Chapter Six: Conspiracy Theories
Conclusion

About the author: 

Sara Gorman, PhD, MPH, is a Project Manager at Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health, where she works on global mental health, increasing the quality of evidence in the global health field, and alternative funding models for global health. She has written extensively about global health, HIV/AIDS policy, and women's health, among other topics, for a variety of health and medical journals, including PLoS Medicine, International Journal of Women's Health, and AIDS Care. She has worked in the policy division at the HIV Law Project and as a researcher at the Epidemiology Department at Harvard School of Public Health. She has also analyzed mental health policy under the ACA for the Vera Institute of Justice and researched the effectiveness of semi-mobile HIV clinics in rural Kenya for HealthRight International.; Jack M. Gorman, MD, is CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Franklin Behavioral Health Consultants. Dr. Gorman was on the faculty of Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry for 25 years, eventually serving as Lieber Professor of Psychiatry. He then became the Esther and Joseph Klingenstein Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Like his daughter and co-author Sara, Dr. Gorman received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and did his residency and fellowship training at Columbia University.

Product details

Author: 
Jack M. Gorman; Sara E. Gorman
Pub date
Oct 2016
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Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us