Attacking patients’ alternative beliefs provokes defensive resistance

Evidence

Do not ridicule or aggressively attack alternative disease concepts – this is more likely to achieve the opposite. Ask exactly which methods patients are using and from which practitioners; ask about the practitioners’ training. If you are not familiar with a method or if it does not appear to be serious, let them know. The representatives of a method often present it as recognized, scientifically proven and widely used, even if it is in no way so. Your professional assessment can be an important guide, as long as you do not provoke a defensive attitude in your counterpart. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 633

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to the Complaints About Immodesty article’s theme that moral panic and attack rhetoric backfire, here applied to medical communication.
• XREF: connects to: Weakened fictional doses stimulate resistance without actually duping players — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 773