YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."

Comments

WTF?

[Elemenope]

Who is stupid enough to go to Youtube for authoritative information about anything? I mean, I get why people might use something like Wikipedia for this (with all the pitfalls that can bring), but this just plain does not make sense to me.

Funny you mention this

[wamerocity]

ON my medical application, I coined the new word "Google-gnosis" describing the problem with people self-diagnosing based on information found on the internet, making the point that Doctors are now going to have to make more of an effort to know what information and misinformation is out there, and how Doctors are going to have to spend more time teaching people correct information to dispel popular myths that get spread around. This is case in point for me. Maybe I should bring this up in my next interview...

Re:Funny you mention this

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

ON my medical application, I coined the new word "Google-gnosis" describing the problem with people self-diagnosing based on information found on the internet, making the point that Doctors are now going to have to make more of an effort to know what information and misinformation is out there, and how Doctors are going to have to spend more time teaching people correct information to dispel popular myths that get spread around.

Sadly the verdict is still out on whether or not taking the first Google result is significantly less accurate than going to the doctor, and doctors are increasingly turning to Google themselves to help diagnose patients. The last study I saw placed Google's accuracy at about 65% and doctors at 69% for a first diagnosis. As someone who has spent much of the last year going to what are supposedly some of the better hospitals in the nation with little luck, my faith in the medical community is pretty much obliterated. Most any rational person would turn to Google and research their symptoms and possible diagnosis. The sad part is when you go back to the doctor and realize they spent half an hour reading one of the many articles you did and they are unable to answer any additional questions and don't even know some of the information you do. Taking a look at studies of how long it takes to be properly diagnosed if you have anything unusual (several years of seeing doctors) is just depressing.

Personally, I wish doctors would ignore what information their patient knows or thinks they know, but I sure wish they'd do some research themselves and actually have a fucking clue what they're talking about after you spend a week playing phone tag while violently ill, only to find out they haven't bothered to do their homework on your condition.

Re:Funny you mention this

[zstlaw]

Actually there is a difference between what you can access and what documents a really good doctor has available.

Recently a close relative was diagnosed with stage IV medullary thyroid cancer. According to everything I could find (using only medical sites) his outlook was 100% mortality within 5 years.

My sister works at a hospital and had access to journals that cost several-thousand per year (according to her) and she saw treatments that raised his life expectancy to 5 years with a 10 year cap on life expectancy.

We went to the best thyroid surgeon we could find. He actually knew the doctor who had written the papers my sister had found as they attended the same conferences. Furthermore he had access to follow up studies detailing promising treatment plans that actually gave a 5% possibility of being completely cured. Now my relative was not 100% cured -- but I would put his life expectancy up in the 10 years category so he has 2 times longer to live than anyone could have expected and he might live even longer than that.

So basically each tier we went up the studies were more relevant and contained newer treatments. We were all reading articles by the same doctors, but my sister had access to newer data, and the expert knew what the study author was doing today.

On one last note. It is worth noting that medullary thyroid cancer is hard to diagnose and the local doctors misdiagnosed it several times. My relative self-diagnosed it online and paid for the additional tests (which are not normally performed in the US) to prove that he had the rare, almost untreatable version of the disease. But he also became despondent because he _knew_ he had only a year or two to live from the same documentation I found. It was only the expert in the field that knew of any way to potentially cure him.

So the web can help you look up possibilities. But the data you see and the treatments are quite old. When I have symptoms I go online to look up common maladies and when I go in to my doctor I tell her what I researched already to save her time. Often times she can dismiss a couple options quickly, but several times it has been quite useful. If my relative had not done the same, I wouldn't be visiting him this Christmas as he would be dead.

Several doctors had misdiagnosed the type of cancer, and even at Mayo several residents were shocked that the patient had gotten the diagnosis as none of the residents had gotten it right on the walk-through session. So doing self-diagnosis might help, but even with the right knowledge and education the residents and local doctors were wrong. The patient has a more time and interest to look at every possible option while the doctor has several people he needs to see today so they tend to lean towards common maladies as they are just more likely to be right.

This is news?

[overshoot]

A rumor is halfway around the world before the truth can get out the door.

This weekend I had a chat with a fine gentleman who is one of the youngest polio survivors in the USA. He's in pretty good shape (he's in his 50s) but from visits with many others he knows what his future is like. Apparently, those who recover from polio do so by "swapping in" spare neurological paths -- the same ones that keep the rest of us functional as time takes its toll. Well, his "spares" are already used, so any additional losses as he ages are coming straight from function.

Measles? Look up the numbers. Case mortality for measles in the USA has been steady for over thirty years at 2/1000. In 1964, there were about 400,000 cases reported. Back when it was nearly universal, every state had well-filled schools for the deaf and blind -- most of them there thanks to neurological sequelae to measles, and which are still just as common as ever on a per-case basis. Those schools are empty now.

I have a smallpox vaccination scar on my arm, and wear it proudly. Most of you don't. You're welcome.

If you listen to the anti-vaccinationists, the vaccines are immeasurably worse than polio, measles, and smallpox. The best answer to that was stated by George Santayana. The rest is commentary; go and learn it.

YouTube is irrelevant

[pudge]

When Jenny McCarthy goes on to Oprah, to the delight of millions of viewers, to say that "science" is wrong because "my son is the science" that proves vaccines cause autism ... I don't think YouTube is really a significant factor in this discussion.

Re:Big deal

[Rei]

There is a lot, and I mean a *lot* of misinformation on YouTube. The Mythbusters forum gets posts every day from people who just saw a new way to "burn water" on YouTube and who are furious that we're still burning gasoline in our cars; people who saw that you can power your average TV by just wiring it up to a couple double-A batteries and believed it; and on, and on, and on. It's really bad. I'm starting to get a handle on just how gullible the average person is by looking at how readily people fall for these hoaxes.