I’m a 3rd year medical student and I’ve already been caught off-guard a few times by the WILD medical misinformation my patients talk about, and figured that I should probably get ahead of it so that I can have some kind of response prepared. (Or know what the hell they’ve OD’d on or taken that is interfering with their actual medications)
I’m setting up a dummy tablet with a new account that isn’t tied to me in any reasonable way to collect medical misinformation from. I’m looking at adding tik tok, instagram, twitter, reddit, and facebook accounts to train the algorithms to show medical misinformation. Are there any other social media apps or websites I should add to scrape for medical misinformation?
Also, any pointers on which accounts to look for on those apps to get started? I have an instagram account for my artwork and one for sharing accurate medical information, but I’ve trained my personal algorithm to not show me all the complete bullshit for the sake of my blood pressure. (And I have never used tik tok before, so I have no goddamn clue how that app works)
Go on Facebook, look up and type any illness + cure
Dunno what type of tablet you’ve got but Apple News is pretty solidly loaded with medical fear mongering that’s sanewashed via being from interviews with “experts.”
Buzzfeed, Newsweek, HuffPost, etc. are your main name-brand culprits. Other magazines/websites also push this garbage but it’s a little more obvious.
Other key words across social media would probably be “nutritionist,” “coach,” “guru,” and other catchy terms that basically mean unlicensed. I’ve never used TikTok but when I was on Instagram years ago those were the biggest offenders.
Signing up for emailing lists is probably a good place to start. I also accidentally subscribed to an RFK apologist Substack when it was recommending health-related writers to me.
That will be a good downtime activity, but I also want to know what the algorithms are shoveling.
The more you engage with a type of post the more they will give yo that type of post so go on tiktok or threads and just engage with a bunch of them and you will see more of it but just know that especially by engaging you will actively be worsening misinformation. I know you said 1: million doesn’t matter but especially if you are looking for source material your initial engagement could easily cause a post that would otherwise stay in those mini cults to get spread
4chan comes to mind. /fit/ would probably have a bunch of BS for you to trawl, /ck/ will probably have dietary misinfo, maybe /sci/ as well.
That will actually be helpful towards the weird stuff that men get into in addition to wholly unnecessary “hormone replacement therapy” (aka juicing on steroids)
It hurts my soul that this is actually a good addition.
My wife is a Rheumatologist. She actually had a patient attempt to use an article SHE WROTE to argue against her diagnosis. The article the patient was “citing” was not even applicable to the symptoms the patient presented.
Not a doctor but I’d love this as well. I’ve seen various assorted noctors and nurses and other patients spout some shit that was so wildly off base I couldn’t even imagine how this came about or was even believable in the slightest.
I remember the one time a really good nurse told me how I “seemed alright” because I was decently informed on my condition and asked appropriate questions and it’s been in the back of my head ever since how she thought it was a noteworthy exception to the norm that she could somewhat trust me.
I got you.
Any pyramid scheme that has anything to do with food or health. Their books are troves of made-up shit. Sometimes they’ll say true things (i.e. highly processed foods are less nutritious than whole foods), but then tell you to eat highly processed food five times a day.
They’ll have several hour-long meetings where they talk about how the magic crystals, protein bar, or energy shake is changing their life.
Their websites are fucking whack-a-doodle. There’s usually one quack with an MD rubber-stamping, fabricating, and/or misrepresenting evidence.
I wonder if there is a list of Joe Rogan guests or an AI summary of the episodes. Also, Snopes covers a lot and won’t rot your brain.
I’ll be looking into free versions of Chat GPT and the like. And I like the idea of AI summaries of Joe Rogan because I don’t think I could actually listen to him without having an actual aneurysm.
Not really the internet, but I remember Dr. Oz being a daytime TV show that was full of quackery delivered as though it was coming from an expert.
Dr. Oz and Oprah are featured in Behind The Bastards for a reason. Oprah actually got a 7-episode mini-series.
Just search any symptom and add to it “home remedies” what ever will come will probably include medical misinformation.
That covers some things, but the algorithm feeds people such nonsense at such a high rate that it’s hard to keep up with.
University press releases, they often are very far from what the actual research says
Bookmarked on my personal accounts because then I’ll have access to full text articles through my institutional subscription when I go digging. :)
ask your patients where they are getting their stuff from, that way you will also know what places are more popular than others.
I do ask them, but some of the things they say/ask about are just so baffling that I’d like to know about it ahead of time so I know what to respond with or recommend instead. Also, it’s kind of along the lines of needing to know all the slang terms for drugs so I know what they’re talking about when they OD on something or take something that interferes with their actual medications.
There I can help, well kind of: not a medical advice though!
I highly appreciate the effort you’re putting in - and in addition to preparing for everything practice w few communication patterns on how to make them give you the info you need. You won’t be prepared enough for some of the shit people come up with, no chance.
S good example could be a set of guided questions or statements they should disagree or agree with.
I’m not medically educated at all so I can’t come up with food examples but what I’m trying to say is: prepare at least as well for crazy as you’re preparing for hard facts.
And for the drugs I can at least give s language perspective: slang has often very local derivates so while pages Likes these are w good stating point: https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/drug-alcohol-slang/ nothing beats a native speaker.
So you could either start a career as drug addict, or if you lack the funds and time, you could reach out to your local social workers and ask them to give a brief slang training wherever you work. From experience many are very happy to help others who get helping!
Just a few ideas, perhaps something resonates with you! Good luck ❤️
Also try looking up random medications names and see what comes up ? As a complete layman that is usually what I do when I (or a family member) am taking or about to take some new meds. Of course with a generalist scientific background, the best I can do is try to compare different sources and apply some critical thinking/common sense, but I assume a lot of people don’t do that (and be fair, I don’t always do it either). And/or trust the doctors who are sometimes incompetent self-important assholes (not generalizing at all, but I’ve heard and seen first hand my fair share of horror stories)
I have to know all of the medications for my board exams, but knowing what bullshit the pharma companies are advertising would be useful. There’s a lot of people who will ask for Ozempic and then be horrified when they learn about the side effects (or the price of the medication). I worry a lot about the “compounding pharmacies” that will mail people knock-off Ozempic with minimal medical oversight. It’s just a matter of time before someone gets killed by the pancreatitis or something.
Yeah my comment is probably not that useful to you since I am in France where the medical misinformation issues are different from other countries. Here it’s illegal to advertise drugs that are only sold with a prescription, but pharmaceutical companies sell all kinds of make-believe bullshit drugs that are basically expensive placebos.
Here’s a couple of pics of some funny ones a friend saw in a pharmacy just the other week
(The right one says “doubts - indecision”…)
