1.2 Why Is It So Difficult To Determine Credibility?

Information about health and wellbeing reach us from a wide variety of sources: ads, Internet, television, podcasts, social media, apps, celebrities, trainers, and friends and family members, among others. But how do you know whether or not what you see and hear is trustworthy? How do you separate fact from fiction from opinion? Unfortunately, many people’s beliefs about what’s healthy and what’s not are based on factors other than the evidence.

To find accurate information about a variety of health- and wellbeing-related topics, it’s important to develop and apply critical reading and evaluation skills to all of the sources of health information you come across. Being a critical consumer helps you accurately weigh the pros and cons in order to make informed decisions about your health and wellbeing.

Student perspective: Where do you get your health information?

Video Transcript

It can be difficult to determine the credibility of information for a variety of reasons. Consider the following:

• Search engine results are not free of bias. Anyone can pay to optimize their website’s ranking to show up on the top of the first page of results. Further, the process of researching is impacted by the algorithms used by search engines to generate results for each individual user. This means that not all people will get the same results even if they do identical searches.
• Information shared on social media requires those reading the content to do extra work to figure out the original source and its purpose. For example, consider a celebrity might post about a juice cleanse using a branded product. How do you know if they are getting paid or compensated in any way for their post?
• People who recommend health advice may appear to be qualified based on their profession, but in reality, should not be giving advice outside the scope of their credentials. For example, a personal trainer has the background to provide instruction in fitness and exercise, but does not have the credentials, necessarily, to recommend dietary supplements to treat a condition unless they’ve received an additional license to do so.
• Testimonials from people you know or respect can be powerful motivators, but don’t usually come with scientific evidence to support their experience or provide the complete picture.

Additionally, the United States is one of only two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise their prescription drugs directly to consumers. Critics of this policy argue that these advertisements overstate the benefits of a drug, while minimizing the potential risks (Faerber & Kreling, 2014). The American Medical Association (2015) supports a ban on these advertisements due to the resulting increase in patients demanding brand-name drugs when generic versions are equally effective, as well as asking for drugs that may not align with their medical diagnosis.

Considering all of these factors, it’s no wonder why it’s easy to be misled.