The Truth About Alternative Cancer Treatments

How to Protect Yourself Against Online Health Misinformation and Disinformation

In the age of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), it’s getting harder and harder to discern myth from fact. Our experts recommend a few steps you can take to help protect yourself from dangerous health misinformation and disinformation online.

Check Their Credentials

Look up the credentials of the person posting the information, advises Teplinsky. Ideally, they should be a doctor or other medical professional who works in the oncology field. But don’t stop at glancing at the credential letters listed after their name in their social media bio. Google their name and see if you can connect them to a reputable hospital system, she says. Cross-reference to make sure they have a professional profile on that hospital’s website.

A caveat: Sometimes scammers impersonate reputable doctors online, and with the introduction of AI, this is unfortunately becoming easier to do. Due to this kind of identity theft, looking up a doctor’s background, credentials, and the hospital where they work isn’t foolproof, but it’s a start.

Look for a Financial Stake

Roth and Teplinsky agree: When you see health information online, one of the first things you should do is investigate if the person posting it has anything to gain financially. For example, they may be selling juice cleanses through an affiliate link, where they earn a commission on their sales. Or perhaps they have a paid partnership with a supplement company that they may or may not be disclosing.

Watch out for anything else they might be selling or promoting for their own financial gain, like a “cancer prevention” group coaching program or any kind of unapproved cancer screening, cautions Roth. When a price tag is attached, our experts warn, it’s a giant red flag.

Seek Out the Evidence

“Whenever I post [health information] on social media, I include a link to the [relevant] study,” says Teplinsky. She encourages people not to take online health information at face value. Look up the studies that support the information presented, she says.

This is where it can get complicated, though, cautions Teplinsky. Some people might reference scientific studies in their social media posts, but they’re not applicable to you and your medical situation — or to humans in general! For example, this could happen if a study was conducted solely on animals and hasn’t had any human trials, or if there was a human trial but only a handful of people participated. Additionally, a clinical trial done for a different type of cancer, or even a different subtype of the cancer type you have, might not apply to you.

It’s not the patient’s responsibility to sift through clinical trials online and try to figure this all out on their own, Teplinsky says. If you see information about a study online and you’re curious about it, send the link to your oncologist and ask them if this is a treatment option that might be right for you or worth considering, she says.

Run Everything by Your Medical Team

Whether the health information you see online is about supplements, juice cleanses, cancer surveillance and screening modalities, or anything else pertaining to cancer, the guidance from our experts is the same: Before you follow any advice you’ve seen online, it’s essential to run it by your medical team. They will be able to separate fact from fiction and help you take the evidence-based, medically appropriate course of action that’s best for you and your health and well-being.

Summing it up, Roth says: “Be careful out there.”