Nonsense in global health

KEY MESSAGESSpin, hyperbole, meaningless buzzwords, and technocratic jargon have become increasingly common in global health discourse. They are part of a broader phenomenon labelled “global health nonsense”Three main forms of global health nonsense are obfuscation, misrepresentation, and omission of relevant informationGlobal health nonsense must be called out, because it stifles collective efforts to understand, critically assess, and improve global health governanceOne of the most salient features of early 21st century global health discourse is that there is so much nonsense. Spin, hyperbole, meaningless buzzwords, and technocratic jargon have become common fare. Nonsense is not necessarily marked by a will to deceive. Rather, it is characterised by a “lack of a connection to a concern with truth—[an] indifference to how things really are.”1This kind of discourse is marked by its “unclarifiable unclarity”2 and that it tends to be “pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious.”3 Whatever the intention behind nonsense may be, it usually…
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