Fool Me Once?

5 Tips for being savvy online when it comes to health-related content:

1. Clickbait headlines are misleading. Even reputable newspapers now use them. Open the post or article and read to the end before sharing, commenting, or forming an opinion.

2. Verify the author’s real-world credentials. Many people lie or exaggerate online.

3. Sound odd? Check another, verified source. If cancer has been cured, this is something a major news network would probaby cover.

4. Just because something looks like a scientific journal doesn’t mean it is. (This requires a deeper dive, and I‘ve posted on this in the Blog before.)

5. If it is something that affects your own treatment, nutrition, or health, ask your own GP or qualified CORU-registered allied health professionalto help you look into claims. As I like to remind patients: there is a doctor and health professional shortage. So any reputable health care professional isn’t looking for more business in Ireland so if a marketed treatment is legitimate, effective, or safe, we have no incentive to “hide the truth” from you.

Earlier this week, like many people, I wrote satirical piece. Some forgot to read to the end, and despite the nonsensical stuff in the post, took it seriously. The sad part is, we live in a world where it’s hard to tell a fake headline from a real one: A colleague WhatsApp’d in all earnestness about how Simon Harris was appointing a Minister for Plant-Based Affairs (didn’t realise it wasn’t not real headline) and patients gave out about waste of tax payer money when Dublin Fire Brigade tweeted that their new defibrillators also can stream Netflix for longer patient journeys (they can’t).