This article is from the WebMD Feature Archive

March 7, 2002 -- Don't believe everything you read. It's true for books and newspapers. And now we know it's true for health information on the Internet, thanks to three studies in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

Two of the studies show it's not always easy to know whether to believe Internet health information. A third shows that despite these concerns, Internet health information has improved over the past few years.

The harshest criticism comes from a study by Funda Meric, MD, and colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Meric, a breast cancer specialist, evaluated breast cancer information on the first 200 sites provided after typing "breast cancer" into a popular search engine.

"The big concern is that there is so much information available -- anyone who can create a web site can put out information," Meric tells WebMD. "Unfortunately, the public is unable to evaluate the quality of this information. In print media, we know who is responsible. You know where it comes from, and how current it is. Online you don't always know this, or how current the information is."

Meric's team compared the most popular sites -- those to which people are most often sent by "links" on other sites -- with the least popular sites. They found that popularity was no guarantee of quality.

This means a person has to look for some signs of quality. Meric suggests that a person look for the answers to several key questions:

• Who is presenting the information? Who are they affiliated with? What is their background?
• When was the information last updated?
• Is this web site linked with other companies? Is there disclosure of sponsorship, advertising policies, and conflicts of interest?
• Where is the information coming from?

Another research team, led by Heinke Kunst of the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, found that even when web sites seem credible, they aren't always accurate.

Print Friendly Version          Email a Friend