Study Finds Harmful Information in Popular Health Articles
Scientists from the University of Utah have found that about one third of the most popular articles about cancer found on social media contain misinformation.
Even worse, most of those articles also contain information that could be harmful.
The scientists analyzed 200 English language articles about each of the four most common types of cancer. These included articles that had been shared on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest between January 2018 and December 2019. They found that 32.5% of the articles contained misinformation.
More worrying was the fact that 30.5% of the articles contained harmful information. For example, they told people to not get medical treatment, pay for expensive treatments they might not need, or take treatments that could be harmful.
The study also found that people were more likely to engage with articles containing harmful information. On average, an article with harmful information was shared 2,300 times, while articles with safe information were shared only 1,500 times.
Dr. Skyler Johnson, who led the study, says that he wants doctors to make sure their patients know that misinformation is a problem and that they can ask their doctor about anything they find online about their cancer.
"As a medical community, we can't ignore the problem of cancer misinformation on social media or ask our patients to ignore it," he said. Instead, he wants good communication between patients and doctors, so that patients have the right information to make the best decisions.
