A paper in the current American Journal of Infection Control looks at how quickly – and erroneously – health information can spread via Twitter. ABC reports that one of the authors “said that even a single inaccurate tweet is broadcast on average to tens of thousands of people.”
Please allow us to issue that same reminder to ABC – with its much broader reach.
We stopped reviewing health news on ABC, CBS and NBC last fall because we had seen enough incomplete information after 228 stories reviewed in 3.5 years.
Besides ABC, it’s interesting that at this moment the only other major news organization I could find that reported on the Twitter health misinformation study was the New York Daily News. We don’t review them anymore either. Of 9 stories of theirs that we did review, 7 got scores of 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5. One ran under the headline, “Latest anti-aging craze ‘Dracula Therapy’ involves injecting your face with your own blood.” Our review said, “Sensational, non-evidence-based – not much else to say about this one.”
People who live in glass houses…..
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like