@drg1985 on Twitter
Social Media Plagued By...
Social media plagued by health grifters, scaremongering, & snake-oil peddlers, many with huge followings. I'm often asked to weigh in on claims and confirm whether someone is a pushing misinformation or not. Here's a useful heuristic for spotting health charlatans.. a🧵..
..First question: Does claimant have relevant experience? Have they related qualifications, publications, or specific expertise to assess and make the claim they do? If not, that is a red flag. Also, important to dig beyond appearance: any grifter can pose in lab coat or scrubs
..Second question: Are they extrapolating from limited evidence, or dubious sources? Murine studies and petri dish prelims should never be the basis for human health advice. Also be extremely wary of someone who takes a small study, or a weak association, and makes a big claim
..Third question: Are they seeking to scare you? Fear strongly motivates purchasing behaviour, and charlatans know if. If they're trying to make you scared of something, it is worth checking whether their panic-inducing claims match the scientific literature or not, because...
..Forth Question: Are they selling something? If they're insisting you need something for optimum health, which they just so happen to sell, OR they are trying to scare you about something, the 'cure' for which they also sell, run a mile. This goes for supplements especially!
..Finally, Fifth Question: Do they have prior form? If they've scaremongered before, or have pushed discredit ideas or panics, it's highly likely they're simply seeking a new equally bogus niche to exploit, and you should be extremely sceptical about their claims..
..they're heuristics I tend to use when assessing claims. They're not fool proof, & expertise required for full determinations, but questions help impede misinformation. BTW, if you've ever wondered where terms like snake-oil, charlatan, & quackery, wrote about them in book..
Anyway, this post was adapted from something I did on Instagram yesterday, so please do follow me there if you find stuff like this helpful, as I tend to be more active there anyway.. https://t.co/3lyuHGCVnd (View Tweet)