By: Stephanie Funkhouser, MPH, CHES®, BSN, RN, Health and Well-Being Coordinator, Student Health Services
“Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts.” – Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States
We can access breaking news, current trends, and answers to almost any question imaginable with the click of a button. Sharing that information is just as simple. While our society has greatly benefited from this, it’s important to remember that not all information is created equal. Misinformation is becoming increasingly prevalent. This can be especially dangerous when it comes to health misinformation. Acting on inaccurate messages about health can harm our well-being significantly. The good news is that we can learn how to think critically about health-related messages, so we can discern what is truly credible and what isn’t worth our attention. Here’s how to overcome health misinformation.
What is Health Misinformation?
You may have seen the term “health misinformation” become more prevalent during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it isn’t new. Health misinformation has been spread for years on all sorts of health topics: vaccines, drugs, diets and nutrition, non-communicable and communicable diseases, and health treatments. Regardless of the topic, health misinformation on social media poses a serious threat to people’s health as it causes confusion, mistrust, and harm, according to the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
Health misinformation is defined by the U.S. Surgeon General’s report “Confronting Health Misinformation” as “information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time.” A common misconception is that health misinformation is spread intentionally. But realistically, it gets shared because people are not aware that it is misinformation. Often, misinformation gets spread when people are trying to inform others, protect loved ones, or make sense of information that conflicts what they’ve heard or known before.
Social media is one of the biggest contributors to the spread health misinformation. A 2018 study published by the journal Science found that misinformation on social media platforms was up to 70 percent more likely to be shared than accurate information. This was especially true for information that was emotionally charged. According to the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, misinformation content typically gets presented with the intention of creating an emotional response or aligning with viewer’s cognitive biases. This allows misinformation to get sensationalized and have increased levels of engagement, prompting algorithms to prioritize the content and push it out to more people.
Ways to Identify Misinformation
A good place to start the process of differentiating between true and false health information is by knowing what health misinformation can look like. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Toolkit for Addressing Health Misinformation, outlines common tactics used in the spread of misinformation. Here are a few:
- Easily shareable content. Memes and jokes about health topics can be spread easily and may get confused as real information. This can also happen with articles from satirical websites, like The Onion.
- Websites that look professional. This happens a lot with news outlets. The website can look like any other news site, but it’s designed to get engagement by posting dramatic headlines.
- Cherry-picked statistics. Misinformation may provide statistics to back a claim while excluding the information that doesn’t support that claim. A good example of this is saying a study has proven something, when in reality, the study says that more research has to be done to form a conclusion.
- Misinformation may only present part of a quote to change the meaning. An example of this is using “Curiosity killed the cat” to discourage someone from asking questions, when the whole quote is: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back!”
- Misleading graphs, images, or videos. Content like this can surface and seem convincing, but it can often be edited to change the meaning, outdated, already disproven/explained, or completely out of context.
Identifying health misinformation can be difficult, especially because it is often presented in a way that looks real, causes anxiety or fear, or aligns with bias. However, there are things you can do to double-check the information you find online and avoid health misinformation.
Ways to Evaluate Health Information
Don’t just accept health information you read right away. Evaluate it carefully, in ways like these:
- Talk to a medical provider or other reliable health practitioner. When it comes to your health, always talk to a trusted medical provider or another licensed professional. Medical doctors (MD), doctors of osteopathic medicine (DO), registered dieticians (RD), physicians assistants (PA), and nurse practitioners (NP) are just some of the providers you can visit. Be careful though. Some certifications are not regulated, so you should do your research if you come across something you don’t know.
- Stick to trustworthy and reliable sources online. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or National Institutes of Health (NIH), and World Health Organization (WHO) are great places to start. When visiting a website, make sure that the site ends in .gov or .org.
- Get more information on the source. Using the “About Us” page on a website is a great place to start as it can tell you about the purpose and mission of the source. You can also look and see if the source is receiving funding or sponsorship from an organization or product.
- If you get stuck, look it up. If you come across a claim that seems confusing, contradicts other outlets, or sounds too good to be true, type the claim into a search engine and see what trustworthy and reliable sources are saying. Doing your own research with trustworthy and reliable sources can help you understand if the information you found was reliable.
- If you’re not sure, don’t share. It’s always better to play it safe and avoid accidentally spreading misinformation.
Additional Resources
- Play GO VIRAL!, an interactive game to learn more about tactics for spreading misinformation: Play GO VIRAL! | Stop Covid-19 misinformation spreading (goviralgame.com)
- Learn more about evaluating health information from MedlinePlus, a resource by the National Library of Medicine: https://medlineplus.gov/evaluatinghealthinformation.html
- Discover how to spot health fraud from this U.S. Food and Drug Administration resource: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/bioterrorism-and-drug-preparedness/how-spot-health-fraud
- Check out this health misinformation checklist: Toolkit for Addressing Health Misinformation from the Office of U.S. Surgeon General – 2021 (hhs.gov)
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