After Joe Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone on his podcast, a group of more than 270 doctors signed an open letter to Spotify, calling on the streaming platform to create a policy against “misinformation.”
But according to an investigation from journalist Jordan Schachtel, only around 100 of those who signed the open letter are actual medical doctors.
The open letter stated: “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.”
Schachtel reported that he reviewed the letter and “it turns out that only around 100 of the 270+ signatories to the letter are people with qualified medical degrees. And a large chunk of that 100 or so medical doctors are MDs employed at universities who are not in fact practitioners of medicine.”
The journalist added that the list of the signatories included more than 50 PhD academics, 4 medical residents, 10 students, 29 nurses, about 60 lecturers, and a few science podcasters.
The open letter was titled, “An Open Letter to Spotify: A call from the global scientific and medical communities to implement a misinformation policy.” It called on the audio platform to “take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform.”
The letter claims that Rogan “has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” such as promoting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 and questioning the need for vaccination in the younger population.
The letter added: “Dr. Malone’s interview has reached many tens of millions of listeners vulnerable to predatory medical misinformation. Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications.”
It concluded: “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. We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”
