When the British newspaper The Independent analyzed the 20 most shared stories last year with the word cancer in the headline, more than half included claims that health authorities or doctors had discredited.
However, millions of people had considered them interesting enough to share on social networks.
If fake news stories about politics can influence voting patterns, then could health histories of unproven treatments lead people to stop their medical treatment in favor of the last recommendation of any article?
Some fear that such articles can be dangerous.
And we all know that we must be cautious, but how do we know if something we see on Facebook or Twitter is based on reliable scientific results?
Cheats
Every day I receive dozens of e-mails from public relations companies, sometimes on very good research, sometimes on nonsense.
Like other journalists specializing in health, I have my tricks to detect which is which.
Perhaps the way to be sure of the quality of what you are reading is to start using the same tactics.
But not just mine: I consulted three other experienced health journalists to give us their advice: Sarah Boseley, editor of The Guardian; James Gallagher, BBC Science and Health Journalist; And Ivan Oransky, a columnist at Stat News and a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.
Here are the recommendations gathered:
1. Look for the source of the article. Check that it is from a newspaper, website or a broadcasting organization with a good reputation.
2. Ask yourself if that finding is really plausible. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
3. If it is described as "the secret that even doctors will not tell you," be careful.
Doctors do not have much to gain by maintaining effective treatments in secret. They want to heal people and they are for that.
4. The more significant the scientific advance, the more evidence will be needed to determine what is true. If it really is a tremendous breakthrough, it will have been tested on thousands of patients, published in medical journals and covered by the most important media around the world. If it is something so new that only a doctor recommends, it would be good to wait for more tests before following any health advice.
5. If the article says that the research has been published in a particular journal, do a quick search on the internet to check that the journal is reviewed by other specialists. This means that before an article can be published, it is sent to the scrutiny of scientists working in the same field. Occasionally, even peer-reviewed texts should be retracted if it is discovered after the results are fraudulent, but most are not. If the research has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, be more skeptical.
6. Has the wonderful treatment been tested in humans? Or only in a test tube or in mice? If no human trials have been conducted, the treatment may be promising and scientifically interesting, but it is too early to say whether it will ever be viable for people.
7. The Internet can save you a lot of time. Check the information on a digital site that reviews news coverage - such as Health News Review - and you may find that they have already done the hard work for you.
8. If not, look for the journalist's name to see what they usually write. If you regularly write about Science or Health, you are more likely to know how to ask the appropriate questions about a new treatment.
9. Do an internet search of the details of the story, in addition to the word "myth" or "deception". You can find that it has already been criticized elsewhere.
10. Finally, once you have established that a health history is not false and has been published in a reputable journal, you may want to check the methodology of the research. There are specialized sites - for example, NHS Behind the Headlines in the UK - that examine the studies in detail, discussing how they were done and whether they have been reported correctly in the press.
SOURCE: BBC
