The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday at AND a case involving the Biden administration efforts to communicate with social media sites about posts that officials said contained false or misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines and the pandemic. While the case focuses primarily on the free speech debate, it also highlights the potential harm of medical misinformation, which experts say is becoming more complex and difficult to discover.
“Things are changing really fast, and it’s even harder for the average person to filter it out,” said Dr. Anish Agarwal, an emergency room physician in Philadelphia.
Health hacks not backed by science have spread widely on social media platforms. The same conspiracy theories that helped increase vaccine hesitancy through the Covid-19 pandemic at the moment are undermining vaccine confidence against others diseases, including measles, as more people lost trust in public health experts and institutions. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has made it even tougher for people to distinguish what’s true and what’s false online.
“We’re increasingly understanding that it’s not just a poisonous stream of information that people are receiving, but a feedback loop where we lose trust, we have misinformation, and misinformation can lead to a loss of trust,” said Tara Kirk Sell, senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Here’s how to spot and respond to misleading health claims online.
How to recognize disinformation
Beware of baseless health tricks, medicines and quick fixes, Dr. Agarwal said. “Confirm this with your doctor, with local public health agencies and with long-term, trusted sources,” he said.
Be wary of cases where online claims lead to conclusions without evidence or appeal to emotions, advises Dr. Sell. When you see medical content online, ask yourself: Does any aspect of this message seem designed to attract you? Does the message seem designed to upset or worry you? Does the source correct itself when it makes a mistake?
According to Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at Cambridge who studies disinformation, disinformation often involves “fake experts.” These are either people making health claims who haven’t any medical qualifications or doctors speaking on topics by which they will not be experts. “You wouldn’t want to go to an ear and nose doctor to have heart surgery done,” he said. he said. “Is this a vaccine expert, or is this a doctor who doesn’t actually do research and has no knowledge about vaccinations?”
Sometimes misleading posts will mention an authority without his name or quote “famous scientists” without providing details, he added.
He added that disinformation often uses polarizing language. “Bad actors exploit intense and extreme emotional responses such as fear and outrage, an us-versus-them mentality, and scare people,” he said. Images and videos intended to cause concern, corresponding to footage of crying babies and big needles, are likely to be used.
The commonest types of health misinformation include old images passed off as newer ones, snippets of quotes taken out of context, cherry-picked statistics, and misleading charts. If possible, try to trace the unique source of the data and check whether key details have been omitted or modified, said Irving Washington, senior specialist on health misinformation and trust at KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization.
He also advisable corroborating the claim with multiple other sources of reliable information, corresponding to health agency web sites.
How to fight disinformation in your personal circles
If someone you already know seems to be repeating false or misleading health information, it is vital to be empathetic, Dr. Sell said. AND Toolkit issued by the U.S. Surgeon General recommends using phrases like “I understand” and “it’s hard to know who to trust” as an alternative of shutting someone down or shaming them.
“Listen to them, but ask questions,” Dr. Agarwal said. He suggested asking how the person found the source and whether the data matched what the person heard from doctors. You must also point them to trusted resources.
“They may not trust the CDC, but could you go to your local public health office? Could you go to the university website?” Dr. Sell said.
“But sometimes,” she added, “you can talk and you won’t convince the person. But save that relationship for the next conversation and you can just move on.”
