International Emergency Nursing 31 (2017) 1
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International Emergency Nursing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aaen
Editorial
The importance of facts in this ‘fake news’ era
Over the past few months, we are being told about ‘fake news’
and ‘alternative facts’ and it seems that for some people, truth is no
longer a virtue. So, it is quite ironic that we have lost one of the
world’s most renowned public health statisticians. Hans Rosling
was a Swedish international expert who battled ignorance around
health-related issues, in particular, the long-term good news
trends around fewer infant deaths, longer lives and better health.
The BBC podcast ‘More or Less’ made a tribute programme to
him and it is well worth a listen.
Hans came to prominence with his TED talks and suddenly
statistics were fascinating and alive. With his innovative graphs
and various props (including Lego), he changed people’s percep-
tions with his enthusiasm for explaining data. He created a founda-
tion called Gapminder (https://www.gapminder.org) to highlight
these important health facts. Listening to his TED talks, our often
ill-held biases are shattered by his factual global perspectives. He
explains population changes with his creative graphs (available
on Gapfinder website). He presented his work to a multitude of
audiences around the world. He was passionate about myth-bust-
ing especially use of terms such as ‘developing countries’ and
points out that the terminology is defunct and not appropriate as
he said – ‘isn’t every country developing?’
One misconception that he highlighted were the views com-
monly held about Africa. He spoke about how Africa is judged as
a whole continent and often associated with famine and wars
but as he points out, we don’t make the same generalisations about
the whole of Asia. He gives examples of pertinent facts in different
countries to highlight these biases. Mali for example, an often mal-
igned country and synonymous with war and poverty in news
reports, records 6 children per woman whereas Ghana, a relatively
stable African country records 4 children per woman. In terms of
life expectancy, Mali’s life expectancy is 50 years whilst Ghana’s
is 67 years (a difference of 17 years). This places Ghana half-way
between Britain and Mali and highlights our outdated views of
the African continent and the importance of examining the facts.
Of course in this post-truth era, you may ask, does it matter?
Yes, it does. These figures highlight that if health policies are being
made on out-dated or inaccurate information, it can have an
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enormous impact on those receiving healthcare. Hans also worked
in Monrovia, Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak tracking cases
so knew from being on the ground, the importance of collecting
accurate data and using that data to manage the crisis.
When Hans challenged participants at the world economic
forum in Davos about how many children in the world were vacci-
nated against measles, many believed it was 50% when the figure is
actually over 80% – only 18% of participants knew the correct
answer. The audience consisted of global health leaders, econo-
mists and politicians; all, like us, who thought they were relatively
well versed in the facts around global health issues but clearly
were not. Hans highlighted how important it is to be well informed
as our false or inaccurate, albeit by accident rather than deliberate
ignorance, can have consequences on public health policy and allo-
cation of aid for example. The truth matters.
Having the facts is also relevant for us who work in healthcare-
we aim to take an accurate medical history, be able to rationalise
our diagnoses and perform clinical tests to prove or disprove these
diagnoses. But do we sometimes make assumptions about our
patients? We process information and make assumptions (correct
or ill-informed) based on previous experiences and education but
sometimes using information from the media (from credible news
sources as well as social media and potentially dubious, fake news
sites). Now more than ever, we need to ensure we have the facts
around issues such as migrants, poverty and terrorism (all issues
that affect emergency healthcare professionals). Hans represented
the opposite of ’fake news’ and for us to succeed as healthcare pro-
fessionals and members of the global community, we need to be
open minded and check the facts before we can have informed dis-
cussions. Hans Rosling highlighted the importance of facts as they
form our perceptions and we owe it to the Jedi master of data visu-
alisation to have the facts about our fellow humans- start by taking
GapMinder’s ignorance test: www.gapminder.org.
Geraldine Lee
Senior Lecturer
King’s College London, London, UK
E-mail address: gerry.a.lee@kcl.ac.uk