Tina’s Top Ten Tips for Finding Reliable Health Information Online
In this day and age of information overload, it’s really hard not to get caught up in confusion about what is accurate health information. So here I lay out some guidelines to help you decide whether the content you are consuming meets the mark when it comes to scientific credibility.
Check credentials. Many “health experts” are just people with an online certificate in a field of human health eg. “Menopausal Specialist”. Certified Personal Trainers are not the same thing as Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialists. Nutrition experts are generally people with an actual post-graduate degree in Nutrition Science, Metabolism and Physiology, and are educated in understanding and interpreting scientific literature. Holistic Nutritionists, Nutrition Coaches are NOT trained to do this. Not all MD’s are reliable either: they know clinical medicine but unless they do primary research AND have publications in reputable, peer-reviewed journals, then they ARE NOT EXPERTS.
Be skeptical of radical, absolute and/or polarizing claims. If the health advice sounds absolute (this is the “best” way, the “only way” etc), overly complicated or departs from what mainstream scientific scholars in the field are saying: be wary. People are doing their job to make a living and the more attention they get, the more money they make. So being different, being opposed to the common wisdom or claiming that something new-fangled is your golden ticket, it's often just great marketing.
Listen to people who sound less pontific and more uncertain. If someone is standing on a pulpit of truth, telling you that everyone else has been wrong and they are telling you they have the “solution”, they are a fake. Real scientists understand and speak of the inherent uncertainty of science. It’s always evolving and requires an inquisitive and open mind. Listen to experts who describe the uncertainties and nuances of a given question, not the fakes who pretend things are black and white, because they NEVER are.
Don’t base your trust in an expert on the fact that they have a large social media following. The number of followers a person has is largely a reflection of their time, energy and talents for creating sizzly and attractive posts. Real scientists have better things to do.
Just because someone wrote a book (or many) doesn’t make them an expert! This tip is often shocking to people. But anyone can publish a book. The process of writing, editing and publishing a book has more to do with time and money than expertise. It has NOTHING to do with the rigorous application of scientific knowledge and process and is not peer-reviewed. Getting published in a REPUTABLE journal is the gold standard for reliable scientific content.
Their advice should stem from a large consensus of scientific work, not a single research paper. Single studies can be published to show results but their “power” is very weak unless they are huge, rigorous multicentre studies. Meta-analyses are more powerful data than even a collection of single studies. Even if you don’t know the difference, you should be very skeptical of someone generalizing health advice on the basis of a single small study. This is commonly done by news media outlets. They sensationalize studies. Eg. the study on blending fruit in smoothies as being a bad idea (I wrote about this a while ago). You can do a study to “prove” almost anything you want if you set it up the right way. This is why consensus and peer-reviewed data is so important.
Don’t trust anyone who can’t or won’t cite their sources.
Curate a very short list of people you trust in any given field. Avoid clicking on everything you see. Go ask your trusted experts when you have a specific question that falls in their area of expertise: see what they say. Eg. a menopausal “expert” is selling tickets to a weekend of info on eating to “fix” menopause. Don’t buy a ticket unless Jen Gunter is there. She is a go-to world expert in this field. A holistic nutritionist and menopausal specialist is NOT. Instead of paying for that ticket and wasting all that time: go to Jen Gunter’s website and google any TED talks she may have done on the subject.
Generally speaking, don’t get your information off of social media. This also means NOT clicking on health claim posts. Start cleaning up your social media: unfollow, block and hide content that is clearly just selling you health misinformation.
Trust your gut. Common sense and your instincts go a really long way to guiding you in the right direction. These instincts will be off during times of health panic! Recognize when you are spiralling: you are fed up, tired and impatient for results. These are times when you are vulnerable to believing fake health claims. Stay the course, calm down, trust the process and TAKE YOUR TIME. The idea that great health can be siphoned down to a hack or some quasi-magical new-fangled idea is just preying on your impatience to fix things that are usually just down to good old common sense stuff that your grandma always told you was good for you. Just remember: we haven't gotten healthier since the advent of widespread communications and media so ......