Containing health myths in the age of viral misinformation

Abstract

It has never been easier in human history to find and share information about health and medicine. But much of the information found on the Internet and shared on social media is inaccurate and potentially dangerous. As more people seek health content online, it will become increasingly important for medical researchers and practitioners to find effective ways of steering the public toward evidence-based content and away from myths and pseudoscience.Viral misinformation has become a threat to public health. Unfounded fears about vaccines have resulted in the re-emergence of preventable diseases. Purveyors of naturopathy and homeopathy have huge audiences on social media, and often discourage their followers from seeking medical care for serious illnesses. Fad diets with unhealthy adverse effects, unproven wellness products hawked by celebrities, appeals to opinion and emotion over facts and reason -all of these proliferate online like bacteria on agar.What can science and medicine do to contain the threat of health misinformation? Throwing more facts at the problem, unfortunately, is not the answer. People who study the growing disregard for evidence in society suggest this is more a matter of human psychology than scientific literacy. No matter how much contrary evidence they encounter, people tend to cling to long-held health myths. Many social media users avoid sources of information that challenge their views, sticking to communities in which their beliefs are confirmed. Nor is it constructive for medical experts to talk down to people whose beliefs fall outside the consensus within the scientific community. Well-known physicians and scientists with large numbers of followers on social media frequently dismiss views they deem unworthy of respect, with disparaging remarks and putdowns. As a result, people who already have misgivings about modern medicine become further alienated. Humility, compassion and friendly persuasion would perhaps make for a more productive approach to changing minds than combative superiority.It is beyond the scope of medicine to fix the Internet, but techsavvy medical experts can assist in the fight against misinformation. They can lend their expertise to technology companies and help develop better methods of weeding out low-quality health content and promoting medical knowledge based on scientific data. The medical community can also experiment with unconventional ways of disseminating accurate health information.One new approach that has shown promise is contacting social media influencers and asking them to share useful medical content with their followers.2 This can be a more productive means of reaching a skeptical audience than having medical experts use traditional channels of communication, which usually go no further than likeminded peers. The goal of generating medical knowledge, after all, is to improve human health, not receive kudos from colleagues. Likewise, public health organizations need to improve their social media presence to help Internet users find accurate hea...

An assessment of fluoride related posts on Instagram

“…Social media provides connectedness for those that hold similar beliefs and further encourages misconceptions about health. 11 Furthermore, ample research suggests that there is a significant amount of misinformation related to health matters on social media that can lead to potentially dangerous health practices.…”

Perspective: The Evidence-Based Framework in Nutrition and Dietetics: Implementation, Challenges, and Future Directions

“…Translating scientific evidence to practice involves a number of challenges. To begin with, we are currently living in a time of plentiful, but often inaccurate, information (2). As a result, a growing number of consumers access health and nutrition information from internet sources (3,4) and this may be flawed.…”

Public Health in the Information Age: Recognizing the Infosphere as a Social Determinant of Health

“…Since the mid-2000s, the evidence demonstrating that the content people access online can affect significantly their health behaviors [ 70 ] has been growing. Researchers have connected proanorexia content with the rise in eating disorder incidence [ 71 ], antivaccination messages with a loss of trust in public vaccination programs [ 72 ], celebrity endorsements with mass uptake of fad diets and increased reliance on homeopathy and naturopathy over clinical intervention [ 9 ], and participation in specific chatrooms with suicidal ideation [ 73 ]. Furthermore, research has also shown that the creation of this potentially harmful content is not always unintentional.…”

“…As a consequence of the lack of intervention in this state of affairs, hesitancy around getting vaccinated is now a major global health concern. At the same time, myriad online communities promoting self-harm, anorexia, and homeopathy now exist; unevidenced and unregulated apps are freely available for download; and the reckless promotion of fad diets and unproven wellness trends by celebrities on unregulated social media platforms is leading to the spread of various dangerous behaviors [ 9 , 10 ]. In short, as [ 11 ] states, “A child who needlessly experiences disabilities caused by measles, an adult who dies after stopping a statin despite having high-risk coronary heart disease, and a patient with cancer who ceases chemotherapy in favour of a bogus alternative are all victims of misinformation that is being promulgated on social media and other internet platforms.”…”