These days we hear a lot of arguments about issues like climate science, GM crops etc. that are quite controversial. And there are science Vs. religion debates. All sorts of people write on 'science'. Good! But where do these people get the knowledge of science?   From internet of course!

But think about this: Can a few hours googling be equivalent to a Ph.D. of a specialist? Never!

Internet mostly provides half truths. I have seen people 'learning' things from internet  ( I gave them a new name: "Internet Scientists"! ), thinking that what they have learned is correct so now they are as good as any scientist or even better than scientists as they have 'researched thoroughly' about the subject on the net and questioning the integrity of science and arguing things with real scientists. What they don't realize is what they have learned was second hand knowledge, which could sometimes be error-prone but refuse to accept it, refuse to provide proof,  add their prejudicial opinions to their 'research' and create a Chimera. And blame scientists and science for all this confusion! This is a dangerous situation! Because what these people 'know' can only be half truths. And what they understand is based on their preconceptions of the matter (2).

Getting information on the internet requires separating fact from crap. Most people can't do this.

There is a whole lot of crap when it comes to "cures" on the internet. If you don't have genuine knowledge, and the ability to think critically, you will fall for it.

Searching the Internet for information may make people feel smarter (The Dunning-Kruger Effect *possessed individuals) than they actually are, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association (1). It seems internet searches create false sense of personal knowledge. With the Internet, the lines become blurry between what you actually know and what you think you know. According to lab scientists, an inflated sense of personal knowledge also could be dangerous in the political realm or other areas involving high-stakes decisions.

(* The Dunning-Kruger Effect is, essentially, that people believe they’re smarter than they really are, thus, end up being more outspoken, and unfortunately, the ones who usually end up making the most noise.)

What is more dangerous is these internet scientists try to ‘advice’, ‘inform’ and sometimes even try to ‘correct’ not only laymen but also the real scientists.

Yes, I have seen these 'internet scientists' actually arguing with 'real scientists' on several important topics. And I am shocked too to realize how they get their information, who 'funds' them, who 'informs' and 'influence' them.  Sometimes Internet scientists will have 'more information' than real scientists! Yes, internet  is generating more information than labs these days!  I have seen some science writers with 'silly beliefs'  vigorously propagating their view points.

And I am proved right! Nearly after a year of writing this article, today I came across news reports that say:

Scientists have warned against a dangerous new trend where patients check on Wikipedia for information on their health conditions, instead of going to a doctor.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, contains errors in nine out of 10 of its health entries, and should be treated with caution, a study has warned.

American scientists compared entries about conditions such as heart disease, lung cancer, depression and diabetes with peer-reviewed medical research. Most of the information in Wikipedia contained "many errors".

Wikimedia UK has admitted to the findings and said it was "crucial" that people with health concerns spoke to their GP first.

The online encyclopaedia is a charity, and has 30 million articles in 285 languages.

The researchers said "Most Wikipedia articles for the 10 costliest conditions in the United States contain errors compared with standard peer-reviewed sources. Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care. Our findings reinforce the idea that physicians and medical students who currently use Wikipedia as a medical reference should be discouraged from doing so because of the potential for errors".

Dr Robert Hasty Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine, North Carolina said "From a public health standpoint, patients should not use Wikipedia as a primary resource because those articles do not go through the same peer-review process as medical journals. It can be edited by anybody, but many volunteers from the medical profession check the pages for inaccuracies".

Wikipedia is at present the sixth most popular site on the internet and up to 70% of physicians and medical students use the tool.

For commonly identified assertions, there was statistically significant discordance between 9 of the 10 selected Wikipedia articles (coronary artery disease, lung cancer, major depressive disorder, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes, back pain, and hyperlipidemia) and their corresponding peer-reviewed sources.

The scientists said that since its 2001 launch, Wikipedia has become the most popular general reference site on the Internet.

As of March 2014, it contained more than 31 million articles in 285 languages.

Wikipedia has also become a popular source of health care information with 47% to 70% of physicians and medical students admitting to using it as a reference. 

Studies also found that Wikipedia, a source of information on natural disasters, is  biased towards rich countries (5). As a source of information related to natural disasters, the authors  of the study show that on Wikipedia, there is a greater tendency to cover events in wealthy countries than in poor countries. By performing careful, large-scale analysis of automatic content, "we show how flood coverage in Wikipedia leans towards wealthy, English-speaking countries, particularly the USA and Canada," they claim in their work. "We also note that the coverage of flooding in low-income countries and in countries in South America, is substantially less than the coverage of flooding in middle-income countries," they add. This makes Wikipedia's information highly flawed, according to the study.

People who rely on social media for information were more likely to be misinformed about vaccines than those who rely on traditional media, according to a study of vaccine knowledge and media use by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania(6). The study, based on nationally representative surveys of nearly 2,500 U.S. adults, found that up to 20% of respondents were at least somewhat misinformed about vaccines. Such a high level of misinformation is "worrying" because misinformation undermines vaccination rates, and high vaccination rates are required to maintain community immunity, the researchers said. It stressed that increased exposure to information about measles and the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine on social media were more likely to grow more misinformed about vaccines. 

And we have another warning too:  You Tube life-saving videos are not reliable! YT is full of videos depicting life-saving techniques like cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and basic life support (BLS)  but only a handful of these provide instructions consistent with recent health norms, say experts. 

A team of Turkish emergency medicine specialists reviewed educaional videos fromt the last three years accessed via You Tube when the search terms 'CPR', 'cardio-pulmonary resuscitation', 'BLS' and 'basic life support' were entered. A total of 209 videos were analysed. They found only 11.5 percent videos to be compatible with CPR guidelines!

And one in four You Tube videos on COVID 19 is fiction (7). More than one-quarter of popular English-language COVID-19 information videos posted to YouTube are misleading, researchers warn. There are posts, for example, falsely claiming that drug companies already have a cure for COVID-19, but won't sell it, and that different countries have stronger strains of coronavirus, a new study finds.

And it seems False health news is more popular on Facebook (3, 4). 

• 12 per cent of 200 Facebook posts spread incorrect information or rumours

• These were more popular than posts with correct information about Zika

• Credible communication by institutions faces “unfair competition”

In an article published in the American Journal of Infection Control, the authors reported that while posts published by institutions such as the World Health Organization reached 43,000 page views, misleading pages that described Zika as a medical ploy or a hoax received 530,000.

“This kind of misinformation can be harmful because it strengthens existing narratives, obstructing efforts to stop the outbreak”, concluded the research group.

Also specialists warn not use health information from internet. 

Patients with chronic health conditions especially rely on social media, including YouTube videos, to learn more about how to manage their conditions.

But video recommendations on such sites could exacerbate preexisting disparities in health.

Extracting thousands of videos purporting to be about diabetes, I verified whether the information shown conforms to valid medical guidelines.

I found that the most popular and engaging videos are significantly less likely to have medically valid information.

Users typically encounter videos on health conditions through keyword searches on YouTube. YouTube then provides links to authenticated medical information, such as the top-ranked results. Several of these are produced by reputable health organizations.

Recently, YouTube has adjusted how search results are displayed, allowing results to be ranked by “relevance” and providing links to verified medical information.

However, when I recruited physicians to watch the videos and rate them on whether these would be considered valid and understandable from a patient education perspective, they rated YouTube’s recommendations poorly.

I found that the most popular videos are the ones that tend to have easily understandable information but are not always medically valid. A study on the most popular videos on COVID-19 likewise found that a quarter of videos did not contain medically valid information.

This is because the algorithms underlying recommendations on social media platforms are biased toward engagement and popularity.

Based on how digital platforms provide information to search queries, a user with greater health literacy is more likely to discover usable medical advice from a reputed health care provider, such as the Mayo Clinic. The same algorithm will steer a less literate user toward fake cures or misleading medical advice.

Correcting algorithmic biases and providing better information to users of technology platforms would go a long way in promoting equity.

For example, a pioneering study by the Gender Shades project examined disparities in identifying gender and skin type across different companies that provide commercial facial recognition software. It concluded that companies were able to make progress in reducing these disparities once issues were pointed out.

According to some estimates, Google receives over a billion health questions everyday. Especially those with low health literacy have a substantial risk of encountering medically unsubstantiated information, such as popular myths or active conspiracy theories that are not based on scientific evidence.

The World Economic Forum has dubbed health-related misinformation an “infodemic.” Digital platforms where anyone can engage also make them vulnerable to misinformation, accentuating disparities in health literacy (8).

Social media and search companies have partnered with health organizations such as the Mayo Clinic to provide validated information and reduce the spread of misinformation. To make health information on YouTube more equitable, those who design recommendation algorithms would have to incorporate feedback from clinicians and patients as well as end users.

So...even after reading this if people still rely on internet for science/medical references, methods and information, they are doing that at their own risk. Remember, we warned you!

References:

1. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf

2. http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/literate-people-...

3. http://www.scidev.net/global/networks/news/false-health-news-facebo...

4. http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(16)30918-X/abstract

5. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-wikipedia-source-natural-disasters-bi...

6. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-02-vaccine-misinformation-socia...

7. https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-covid-facts-fiction-youtube-vid...

8. https://theconversation.com/biases-in-algorithms-hurt-those-looking...