From the Salem witch trials to social media: Exploring the past to forge the future of medicine

Mikhail "Doctor Mike" Varshavski, DO, and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff at Learn Serve Lead 2026: The AAMC Annual Meeting on Saturday, Nov. 7.

Photo credit: Kaveh Sardari

With the benefit of 300 years of hindsight, most look back at the Salem witch trials as the result of mass delusion. But for those swept up in the times, they were built on a bedrock truth, explained Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian speaking at the opening plenary of Learn Serve Lead 2026: The AAMC Annual Meeting on Saturday, Nov. 7, in Anaheim, California.

"There are so many lessons in the Salem witch trials and one of them is precisely that the simplest solution is the most appealing solution, but not necessarily the right solution," Schiff said. "It's astonishing what you can explain by witchcraft. You can explain why you woke up in bed with the wrong person. You can explain why the kitchen scissors are missing. How that person got pregnant."

This human desire for simplicity and certainty has continued to fuel misinformation in the modern era, but it also creates opportunity for doctors to use these same communication tactics for good, added Mikhail Varshavski, DO, a family medicine physician and social media influencer popularly known as "Doctor Mike".

The two communicators came together to kick off the annual meeting with a discussion focused on how individuals and institutions can navigate uncertainty by reflecting on the past while looking toward the future, a topic inspired by the nexus of the AAMC's 150^th anniversary and the United States' celebration of its semi quincentennial in 2026.

Varshavski, who has built a following of more than 30 million across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms by incorporating entertainment and popular culture into debunking medical myths, said that, just a few years ago, many colleagues in the medical field dismissed his social media presence as unprofessional. Instead, he said he's found it has enhanced his connections with his patients at a time when mistrust in health care institutions has been increasing.

­"More and more bad actors are using the tool of social media to help them make more money and gain influence in politics, and - as a medical community - media is just not a place where we had much success. We largely discounted it," Varshavski said. "And me, being a younger doctor 10 years ago, when I first started, I thought this was such a missed opportunity. This was a chance for us to reach our patients outside of our practices at a time when they were seeking answers, but we were not there."

In the vacuum, many people have turned to prominent figures who push narratives not backed by evidence, such as leaders in the anti-vaccine movement.

Varshavski said that, to reestablish trust with the public, doctors must move away from the goal of persuasion and toward approaching patients with curiosity and empathy.

"What I've found from my experience is that when you walk into the room and you approach the conversation with a genuine level of curiosity - you want to learn from that person, to understand how they got there - the natural instinct of the human mind is to reciprocate," Varshavski said. "And if you walk in and you want to argue, you want to throw stats and debunk everything the patient is saying, what ultimately will play out is they will match your force. If you come in friendly, interested, curious, wanting to help, that's when you get by and that person will be a bit more open-minded."

Varshavski and Schiff also acknowledged lessons from history that should encourage doctors to remain open minded in their own pursuit of truth, including the medical establishment discounting of germ theory for generations after its proposal and the power of the placebo effect.

Schiff pointed to Benjamin Franklin's involvement in investigating the mysterious cures supposedly achieved in the 18^th century by Franz Anton Mesmer (the origin of the term "mesmerize"), who circulated a theory about magnetic fluid in the body. Franklin conducted a placebo-controlled trial and essentially found that it was the placebo effect that explained the "cures."

Varshavski said that now is the time to respond to the Mesmers of today by using the same marketing tactics they use, but to amplify evidence-based information.

However, this does not mean every doctor should become a social media influencer, he cautioned.

"There are very easy ways for that to go wrong because when you put something online, it's permanent, whether you like it or not. It reaches potentially millions of people, and it can put at risk not only your own license, but all your colleagues' [reputations]," Varshavski said. "You can actually hurt a lot of folks by doing something wrong on social media."

Still, social media can be a powerful tool, and Varshavski encouraged medical schools to consider having communications and language experts teach classes and even create fellowships specifically for health communications and influencing.

Schiff and Varshavski also reflected on the role of AI in the future of medicine. While Schiff said there is much from the past that we can look to for guidance, the swift changes that are coming with AI seem to be truly unprecedented. She hesitated to predict the future, but said that she believes humans can bring nuanced and divergent perspectives to information that AI cannot.

"I'm really invested in humanism," Schiff said. "I don't really want to read the biography of AI."