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"Bad Mushrooms": Rooting Out Dangerous Health Stories

Event Interactive 2011
Format Panel
Organizer Gary Schwitzer – healthnewsreview.org
Description According to the cliché, searching for health information online is akin to foraging for mushrooms: it can be tough to tell the good from the bad, and the bad could very well kill you. But the problem with health information extends beyond the usual “cult of the amateur” criticisms. Mainstream news outlets – including those syndicated widely on the web – are also falling short, the victim of shrinking staffs, savvy industry players and a glut of raw data that only grows each year. In its self-correcting way, online communities have evolved to respond to health information that lacks context or is just plain wrong. This army of skeptics includes both solitary bloggers who are dedicated to exposing fraud and woo-woo to Gary Schwiter’s HealthNewsReviews.org, which employs seasoned scientific journalists to fact check their peers in a way that is not unlike the now-powerful political fact-checking websites. This panel will discuss the way that bad information is propagated and examine in depths the formal and informal systems for ensuring that the web contains as few deadly mushrooms as possible.
Questions
Answered
  1. Is reporting on health generally accurate?
  2. What are the factors leading to poor reporting on health?
  3. How have online information sources allowed misinformation and out-of-context health information to spread?
  4. Does the democratic nature of the web help or hurt the propagation of accurate health information?
  5. What role can patients, bloggers and other experts play in fact checking reporting on health?
Level Intermediate
Category Health
Tags healthcare, information therapy, social media
HELP