Are your sources reliable?

The recent tragedy at the Boston Marathon was very interesting from an information point of view for two main reasons. The first one was the incredible flow rate of information that was being produced; people all over the world knew about the events as they were unfolding in real time. Part of this is because the marathon is an international event and there was intensive media coverage present to cover the race, but also because there were thousands of people onsite with access to the Internet who were relaying information as the events occurred. The second reason was the amount of unreliable and ultimately false information that was also released to the public. Mainstream media and social media alike were equally culpable in this regard with newspapers publishing photos of “suspects” who in fact turned out to be high school track athletes and cable news networks trying to get the “scoop” reporting completely inaccurate items. Social media sites; largely driven by the general public also were guilty of falsely accusing innocent people and putting families through much undo distress.

Your Health Information

Similar problems exist when people are accessing their health information. Over the last 15 years, the Internet has completely changed how people get their health advice. When stricken with an ailment or injury, most people will take to the Internet first to make a self-diagnosis and arrive at their health practitioner’s office with an idea in their head with what is wrong. This information is great for the patient, and can be helpful to the practitioner as well, but often leads to some confusion.

Also troubling is the amount of information that gets released by people who work in a health or fitness role who convey information through blogs, tweets and Facebook posts that purport that what they do “cures” or prevents a stunningly long list of disease, injury and sickness. Unfortunately, most of this information has no basis and has not been established through any kind of peer review research at all. When an exercise instructor (let’s say a yoga teacher) leads a class and mentions that a certain pose helped another client of theirs with hip flexibility; that is called anecdotal evidence and is the weakest form of evidence available and should not be considered reliable. It is cherry picking of information because there may have been ten other participants who saw no benefit from completing that pose. Even less reliable is when an instructor claims that a certain pose had a positive impact on immunity in a blog post and the only evidence to back this up is what they heard from another instructor. Undeniably there are many benefits to doing yoga, however it is not specifically yoga that yields many health benefits; it is exercising in general. Most other forms of exercise will yield massive health gains compared to a sedentary population base and there is mountains of peer reviewed evidence to support that.

Nutritional information has the same problem. So many people who are so called experts are actually pushing an agenda to have the products they promote cast in a favourable light. Many products can be very helpful, however starting with a proper diet and consulting with a qualified expert regarding nutrition should always guide your choices regarding nutritional products.

Getting your health information from qualified people and reliable sources cannot be overstated. The Internet is a tremendous resource but you have to be able to sift through a lot of dirt to get to the gold. For any readers of this column, I would be happy to send you a few links on particular areas of health that are interesting to you. Feel free to contact me through the provided email.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.