One day last summer, Antonia Prescott was scrolling through the Internet when she came across an article with a headline that intrigued her.
“Harvard University Professor Lists Best Exercises to Burn Fat and Keep It Off” We explained how many hours a week they should do it.”
Curious, Prescott turned to her husband, who was washing dishes nearby, and asked him what kind of exercise he should do to burn fat and keep it from leaving behind.
“That’s really complicated. I can’t answer that,” her husband replied. That person happened to be Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor at Harvard University, and he had never given anyone such guidance.
Like a lot of “information” available online, what she was reading wasn’t accurate, or at least oversimplified to the point of no longer making sense.
The internet is full of dubious guidance on weight loss and just about every other topic, but when it comes to health, such sweeping content can be downright dangerous.
Most Americans encounter health misinformation online. According to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundationand most people have no idea if that information is true.
Some questions may be innocuous, such as the best exercise to burn fat, but Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist, can’t simply answer based on data about human evolution.
But some of them are outright lies, often delivered by bad actors seeking to manipulate innocent people to make money or gain power, experts say. .
These bad actors also take advantage of flawed healthcare systems that can prevent people from accessing trusted professionals who can provide accurate and useful information.
Experts say systemic changes are needed to rebuild public trust.
On a personal level, people should learn to recognize the difference between accidental misinformation and intentional misinformation, said Lee McIntyre, a philosopher and author who has written extensively on the subject. Ta.
Mistakes happen all the time, like natural disasters. There’s not much you can do about them.
But disinformation is a lie that people can fight back against, he says.
Mr. McIntyre urges people to ask themselves where the information in question is coming from, what is at stake, who is behind it, and how the public will benefit from making that information available. “I want people to train themselves,” he said.
Building health literacy
David Nobilo Ortiz, European Regional Advisor on Data and Digital Health at the World Health Organization, said misinformation causes mental and physical fatigue by fostering fear.
It has a direct impact on trust in governments, government responses and public health messages, which disenfranchises people and puts their health at risk, he said.
“The challenge before us is how to rebuild trust in governments that has been damaged by misinformation,” said Nobilo Ortiz, who is leading the effort in Europe.
The world has changed significantly even in the lifetime of most people alive today. People over a certain age didn’t grow up in a world where they had to protect themselves from misinformation on social media.
Most countries have more mobile devices than people; Only half of the countries in Europe and Central Asia Nobilo Ortiz said that having policies to improve digital health makes it easier for false medical information to be spread.
“Insufficient investment in digital health literacy is leaving people behind.”
Nobilo Ortiz said everyone needs to play a role in fighting misinformation, from politicians to public servants, journalists and individuals.
“This is an issue for all of us,” he said.
know who to trust
Dr. Richard Barron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, which certifies doctors, said even otherwise reliable sources can sometimes fail.
For example, there’s no question that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made mistakes early in the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore everything the CDC says. “They got some things wrong, but I wasn’t going to throw the baby out with the bath water,” he said.
If several typically reliable sources agree, such as the CDC and experts and websites from well-known hospitals and universities, they’re probably right, he said.
“When you start getting information from reliable sources, that’s reliable information,” he says.
Mr. Barron pointed out that we live in an increasingly specialized society, and it is impossible to know or understand everything on our own, so we must rely on experts.
For example, his office is on the 17th floor of a building, so he has to take the elevator to work. He doesn’t really understand how elevators work, and he has no interest in fixing them when they break down. He just wants to get to his 17th floor and trusts others to get him there.
Similarly, the public must be able and willing to trust those with medical expertise, he said.
But that doesn’t mean everyone with a doctor’s name after their name is equally trustworthy, says John Robert Bautista, now a health misinformation researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia. .
Based on previous research at the University of Texas at Austin, Bautista said that doctors who post false information are disinformation dozenThose who promoted misinformation about vaccines before the pandemic are typically selling their products or themselves.
He says they are playing on people’s emotions to gain followers. “Once you have a certain number of followers, you can use that platform to sell products or, if you plan to run for office, use that social capital.”
Free speech is a legitimate right for doctors, just like everyone else, Baron said. But accuracy and avoidance of harm are also important. Doctors cannot claim free speech rights in medical malpractice cases, he noted.
Baron said it’s also common for people peddling misinformation to attribute malice to others. “Not everyone has pure motives all the time,” he said. But ask yourself: Why would they have that incentive? If the drug killed people, would drug companies really sell more of it?
For example, everyone likes to criticize big pharmaceutical companies for being greedy, but they have plenty of money. $50 billion US market Dietary supplements are subject to far less government regulation than pharmaceuticals.
So if you’re looking at a doctor or self-proclaimed expert who’s outside the mainstream, and you think that person, or by extension, yourself, is smarter than everyone else by doing so, you might want to think again. the barons said.
“You have to be skeptical[about your skepticism],” he said. “You can really outdo yourself.”
Institutions have a lot of work to do
Baron said institutions like his take public trust for granted, rather than deliberately trying to build it.
Dr. Geeta Nayyar, author of the new book Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness, says doctors and academic scientists have long thought of “marketing” and patient communication as someone else’s job. Ta.
She said every candy store has an Instagram account to inform customers about products and hours of operation and provide an opportunity for interaction. But, she says, “In healthcare, it’s probably the other way around. Once people retire, they don’t know how to engage with us.”
Today, many people don’t even have a personal physician, so when they really need medical advice, they don’t have the trust that used to define the doctor-patient relationship.
This also increases the burden on doctors and nurses, which may explain at least some of the caregiver burnout.
Nayyar said patients have been coming in and asking how much money they’re making off of COVID-19 vaccinations. (Answer: Nothing.)
The lack of easy communication between healthcare providers and patients created a gaping hole that people with other objectives were not willing to fill.
“Misinformation thrives in the dark,” Nayar said. “We’ve left this space dark, but people are realizing that they can (exploit that information void) to their benefit.”
How to vaccinate yourself
To ensure you and your family have access to the best medical information online, look for content posted on platforms that are widely available and have editors, says Dr. Martin, assistant professor of medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Marjie Ghasemi, who develops learning algorithms, proposes this. Inform medical decisions.
Bots and social media accounts can post anything, but those vetted by a large number of people and posted on an institution’s website are likely to be more trustworthy, he said.
“If your goal is to spread misinformation, you’re going to be looking for efficiency,” she says, so if it’s very easy to get information onto a platform, you’re more likely to find it accurate. There is a higher risk that it will disappear.
Ghasemi said people act differently on information when they are ready to evaluate its accuracy.
She says content warnings like the one social media site X (formerly Twitter) once included have been effective in making people question misinformation.
“This is a very powerful intervention,” she says. “Even if you can’t control how[information]is produced, you can at least control how it’s distributed.”
Another way to break the power of lies is to “pre-lie,” or expose a lie as a fraud, before it becomes part of the public imagination, McIntyre said. Ta. His latest books include “How to Talk to Science Deniers” and “On Disinformation.” : How to fight for truth and protect democracy. ”
Often when people want to do something, they choose to do nothing. something It’s actually safer or more reasonable. That’s why people often skip regular health checkups that are thought to help prevent serious medical problems.
“If you take too long to make a decision, you’re effectively making a decision,” he said.
People who want to take advantage of others know how to take advantage of people’s natural biases, McIntyre said. “Disinformers know what the cognitive biases are, what the existing divides are, and where to plant them,” he says.
McIntyre said he doesn’t blame conspiracy theorists for being sensitive to being fooled. “It’s a very powerful human motivator to want to avoid being fooled,” he says.
But they are being led astray by someone who is not who they think they are. “You may think you’re being fooled by the CDC and FDA, but you’re actually being fooled by Alex Jones, Naomi Wolf, and other people on Twitter (now X).”
Mr Ghasemi said that being fooled by misinformation and not trusting “official” sources is in some ways a reflection of people not feeling heard.
Your doctor was someone in your community that you know and trust.
“You were disproportionately likely to listen to their advice. I don’t think that’s as true today,” she said. Electronic health records were supposed to improve the situation, but in some ways they just reinforced pre-existing racial and other biases, she says.
“Many communities don’t feel like their pain is being heard or acknowledged by the power structure,” she says. “Some movements are weaponizing this collective emotion in very dangerous ways, and spreading misinformation may be part of normalizing behavior that comes from fear and anger.”
Karen Weintraub can be reached at kweintraub@usatoday.com.