With thanks to Jule Reza (HIFA Steering Group) for pointing us to this excellent article from the National Cancer Institute. Opening sentences below. Full text here:
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/cancer-misi...
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You or someone you love has just been diagnosed with cancer. You’ve met with the doctor and your head is spinning. You’re overwhelmed and scared.
Like many people these days, you turn to the internet and social media for information. Someone you know points you to a scientific-sounding article or a video by a “medical expert” that offers new hope, perhaps by describing treatments that are “all natural” and don’t have unpleasant or serious side effects.
And although the information may sound too good to be true, the site includes testimonials from patients or their family members who describe miraculous results.
Scenarios like this are all too common, say oncologists, health communication experts, and the information specialists who field questions for NCI’s free Cancer Information Service (CIS).
“People have been sharing inaccurate health information since the beginning of time,” said Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, Ph.D., M.P.H., of NCI’s Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB). But the internet and social media have made it far easier to share and spread health misinformation, Dr. Chou said.
Indeed, a recent study found that of the most popular articles posted on social media in 2018 and 2019 on the four most common cancers, one in every three contained false, inaccurate, or misleading information. And most of that misinformation about cancer was potentially harmful—for example, by promoting unproven treatments as alternatives to those that rigorous studies have shown to be beneficial...
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Neil Pakenham-Walsh, HIFA Coordinator, neil@hifa.org www.hifa.org
