Medical misinformation is not a new problem. On December 28, 1917, the New York Evening Mail headlined an article “A Neglected History” written by H.L. Mencken. In the piece, Mencken exclaimed that physicians opposed the use of bathtubs, deeming it dangerous to health and inviting “phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of the lungs, and the whole category of zygomatic diseases.”1
With the advent of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, misleading and inaccurate medical information has become only more easily accessible and widespread. For every scholarly article that is based on peer-reviewed research, there are self-proclaimed "experts" espousing miracle treatments that haven't been scientifically tested or verified.
Unfortunately, medical misinformation can sometimes have fatal consequences. On February 28, 1998, a paper published in The Lancet described 8 children whose first symptoms of autism appeared within 1 month after receiving an MMR vaccine. 2 The paper was ultimately redacted as 13 subsequent studies failed to support an association between an MMR vaccine and autism. 3 However, the damage was already done. According to the CDC, the number of children who are not vaccinated against preventable diseases has been steadily growing and has quadrupled since 2001. In 2019, there were 1,282 individual cases of measles confirmed by the CDC, the highest total in any one year since 1992. 4
Ultimately, the decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate lies with the patient, but it is important for those weighing their options, to have the most accurate medical information at their disposal.
In the last several months, there have been a plethora of news articles which have misconstrued evidence from the scientific literature regarding the Covid-19 outbreak. To combat this, we have developed a fact-checker tool which can analyze your website of interest and instead provide you a link to similar peer-reviewed articles from a scientific database.
Analysis:
How the algorithm works: The algorithm works by scanning a user-inputted article for key phrases, symbols, tone, and sources cited. The website then takes these key phrases from the article and inputs them into a reliable, scientific database such as PubMed. Finally, the website outputs a link to a peer-reviewed article from PubMed about the same or a similar topic(s) which the user can then access.
Features Coming Soon: 1) Webscraping feature--Instead of having to copy the text of the article, a web scraper will fetch the text automatically once the link to the article is inputted.
2) Accessibility features--Spanish compatibility will be added. Additionally, as scientific literature can be difficult to comb through, we are designing a tool which will simplify words found in scientific articles into layman’s terms. For example, terms such as "stoichiometry, motility, cytokines" could be reworded as "ratio, movement, and protein." Ultimately, the goal with the accessibility features is to make it easier for people to access and understand scientific literature thereby increasing their health literacy and allowing them to make more informed health decisions.