Gary Schwitzer is the founder & publisher of HealthNewsReview.org. Back in the 1970s he worked in local TV health news in Milwaukee and Dallas before joining CNN. Then he saw the light and left TV news altogether.
So I’m watching the 6 pm local news last night and see a piece on KARE-11, my local NBC affiliate, about ” a new buzzword called ‘cyberchonrdria’ ” – used to describe people who “google their symptoms online and then worry over the multitude of results and possible diagnosis..”
But it’s clear from what they posted online that this was not a piece of local enterprise journalism by your local Minneapolis TV station.
It apparently came from a Charlotte, North Carolina station. Google shows that several NBC stations across the country apparently picked up the story from an NBC feed and ran it as if it were their own.
There really nothing new about the “cyberchondria” buzzword.
I found a Harris Poll from May, 2002 entitled “Cyberchondriacs Update.” Wikipedia has references dating back to 2001 – 10 years ago.
News?
KARE in Minneapolis dropped in a local doctor’s interview and re-packaged what another station had done and made it look like their own enterprise story. We know this happens all the time, but most in the general viewing audience don’t.
The vast wasteland of local TV health news.
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.
Susannah Fox
March 16, 2011 at 1:23 pmI dislike the word cyberchondria and I dislike the stories it spawns because they sensationalize what is actually happening (and which, I’ll admit, is the focus of my research so I take it personally).
In 2008 I wrote about a cyberchondria study that Microsoft researchers fielded among Microsoft employees:
http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/cyberchondria-old-wine-in-new-bottles.html
As you can see (if you read the above post) I liked the study. What worried me was that press coverage of it skipped over the fact that they used a skewed sample that is not representative of the U.S. population.
It continues to worry me when sensational headlines get passed around, distracting people from what I hope is the goal of good research: providing data that people can use to make better decisions.
Let’s fact-check what we blog, tweet, and re-tweet. Otherwise it’s just noise.
Susan
March 18, 2011 at 3:18 pmSo maybe this isn’t “news” but perhaps it’s an indicative of a trend in which more people are arriving at the doctor’s office with questions. This gets you thinking: http://whatstherealcost.org/video.php?post=five-questions
Arthur Ellin
August 6, 2011 at 10:06 amIn The Book of Murray by David M. Bader (Harmony Books, 2010), The Prophet Murray states, “Thou shalt not Google thy symptoms and then phone thy internist at 2AM claiming to have a terminal illness.”
Ben
December 12, 2011 at 9:32 amCyberchondriasis: Fact or fiction? A preliminary examination of the relationship between health anxiety and searching for health information on the Internet:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.11.005
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