King's College London

Regulating unproven, disproven & misleading health-related claims

‘Misinformation’, we are often told, is everywhere. In recent years, there has been significant policy attention to regulation of unproven, disproven or misleading health-claims, and their potentially harmful effects.

Concerns span areas as diverse as mental health, reproductive health, weight loss and life-threatening diseases. Controversial claims can originate from a range of groups and individuals, including social media influencers, the wellness industry, religious lobbies or political figures.

But not all contested claims are equally problematic. Claims that challenge consensus, or are difficult to prove, can sometimes constitute legitimate dissent or lead to new knowledge. Governments and others make a range of decisions about which types of claims are tolerable, which are seen as legitimate, and which are deemed so harmful or problematic that they require intervention. Yet, we know very little about how and why these decisions are made, nor about the ways in which they are implemented.

This project aims to explore how lines of regulatory tolerance and intervention are drawn, in different states, through which legal or regulatory techniques, and to what effect, is at the core of our 6-year project.

The co-investigators of this project are: 

• Professor Caesar Atuire (University of Ghana)
• Professor Mairead Enright (Loughborough University)
• Dr Phoebe Friesen (McGill University)
• Professor Patricia Kingori (University of Oxford)
• Professor Tidiane Ndoye (University Cheik Anta Diop)
• Professor Martyn Pickersgill (University of Edinburgh)
• Dr Nayeli Urquiza-Haas (Lancaster University)

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