Episode 1 - Who can you trust?

Ever feel like you're swimming against a current of health misinformation? Join us, Katie and Sydney, in the kickoff episode of "Fact Check Your Health" where we set the stage for the series, focusing on how to find reliable health information and determine how credible a source may be. In a world where anyone can be a "health expert", we break down how to critically examine the qualifications of the information you see online. 

In this episode, we take you through practical strategies for determining the accuracy of health claims you see on social media and beyond. By going through examples of how to effectively use websites like PubMed and Google Scholar, we hope to empower you to be able to independently verify health information and equip you with the tools to navigate and fact-check health information in a world full of both knowledge and noise.

Podcast Outline:
0:01 - Introduction
1:30 - First thing to do when you see health information online
2:32 - Creator/Authors credentials
4:10 - Crosschecking information
4:50 - How to find accurate sources
5:26 - How to use PubMed and Google Scholar
6:00 - Quick overview of academic articles w/example
7:00 - What is an abstract
7:30 - Alternative ways to find accurate information
9:12 - Example of finding health information
10:47 - Episode recap

For more information and additional resources check out the Fact Check Your Health website at https://factcheckyourhealth.squarespace.com

Disclaimer: The information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes and is not intended as medical advice. For medical advice contact a licensed medical provider.

Transcript

Episode 1 Transcript

[00:00] Katie: Welcome to the first episode of Fact Check Your Health, a podcast mini-series where we're going to teach you how to find accurate health information online, understand what that information means, and use that to make a decision about your health. I'm Katie, and I'm currently finishing my PhD in Quantitative Methods.

[00:16] Sydney: And I'm Sydney, and I have a PhD in health behavior research. Given that we have a background in research, Katie and I wanted to start this podcast because we recognize that there's a lot of information out there, and there's a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to trying to figure out how to make the right decision for your health.

[00:35] Katie: So, to just kind of put this into context, I'm sure that you've had a point where you're scrolling through social media and you see an influencer or a health person that you follow, and they share something about how everyone should be taking a supplement for their health. But before you go out and buy that supplement, wouldn't it be nice if you could go online and find accurate health information to be able to figure out if the claims that they're making are true? So that's really what we want to do in this podcast series: help you be able to hear that information and then decipher if that information is true, and if you want to use that for your health.

[01:09] Sydney: Exactly. So in this first episode, we're just going to cover the basics on how you can, first off, just have a basic understanding of whether somebody is a reputable source and how you can go and actually find reputable sources yourself. And then in the following episodes, we'll get more into the nitty-gritty about how to understand research findings.

[01:28] Katie: Perfect, so let's start with talking about what we should do when we come across health information online. I like to think of three main things to consider whenever I'm trying to evaluate whether some information that I see online should be trusted or not. So the first thing that we can look at is the credentials. Is the person who's giving this content actually qualified to be talking on this topic? And then the second thing that we can look at is whether there are any financial motives. Are they an influencer? Are they someone who made a product? Are they getting kickbacks, or are they being paid to promote this topic on social media? And then the third thing that we can look at is whether or not they have a social motive. Is this something that they're doing to help them gain status on social media? Is this something that they're doing for publicity or popularity? Or maybe they're just trying to throw out facts so that they can go viral. And if any of those three scenarios are true, that might be a good indicator that we should probably try to fact-check that information and make sure that what they're saying is accurate.

[02:29] Sydney: And another thing is that when you're considering the author's credentials, you want to ask yourself if the author really has relevant expertise in the subject matter. For example, if someone has a PhD, that sounds pretty impressive, but PhDs are very specific. So someone may have a PhD in English, and while they may have a lot of knowledge in English, they probably don't have specific knowledge in terms of health. So, for example, if you're trying to understand if you should take magnesium for sleep and brain function, this may not be the person you want to listen to necessarily. Whereas a neuroscientist who has done decades of research in the area of sleep is someone who would be a lot more credible than the person with a PhD in English.

[03:12] Katie: I feel like that's something we see a lot, especially when it comes to products being sold online. So for example, in someone's bio, it might say "Dr. Smith, expert in fitness," but just because they put that in their bio doesn't actually mean that they have those qualifications or that they're technically an expert in that area.

[03:29] Sydney: Yeah, and I think it's really hard to understand this nuance. Being someone that has a PhD in health behavior research, people ask me so many broad questions about health and about medical diagnoses and medical conditions. But my training is super specific to diet and other behavioral things. So I could not tell you if you should have a kidney transplant or something like that. I think a lot of people just see 'MD' or 'PhD' and they think, "Oh, this person's smart. They probably have all the answers," but that's definitely not correct. You definitely want to seek out experts who have expertise in the very specific area that you're interested in.

[04:04] Katie: So another reliable indicator on top of just the credentials that you can use to make sure that information is accurate is to see if you can find consistent information online from multiple sources. So if you come across just one source saying something, but you can't find any other information online that confirms that, then chances are that it's probably not a very legitimate research finding. Looking online to see if there is consensus or just, you know, more than one person out there agreeing that this works can be really helpful to just double-check that that information is accurate and should be trusted.

[04:38] Sydney: So that's the perfect segue to go into the next portion of this episode where we talk about how to actually cut through misinformation and go straight to more reliable sources. So Katie, let's just say that ultimately you want to know how to fact-check all of this health information, what should you do first?

[04:54] Katie: So if you want to fact-check information, the first thing that you should do is make sure that you're finding that reliable source and that reliable information. So, typically when it comes to health, the way that you're going to be able to do this best is through academic articles or research articles. And the best way to find those academic and research articles is going to be to use PubMed or Google Scholar. So for someone who might not be super familiar with what Google Scholar or PubMed is, we're just going to kind of talk you through what they are and how to use them.

[05:24] Sydney: Right, so to get to Google Scholar or PubMed, you literally can just go to Google, type in "Google Scholar" or "PubMed," and then it will be the first link that pops up, and you click on it, and there you are.

[05:34] Katie: And the great thing about Google Scholar and PubMed is that it's just like a regular search engine. So there'll be a search bar at the top where you can enter in the topic that you're interested in, and then click search, and then it'll have a whole list of academic articles come up, just like you would see a list of pages come up in Google.

[05:51] Sydney: So in upcoming episodes, we're going to break down the different things that you'll see and how to interpret these articles. But for now, Katie's just going to give a quick rundown of what an academic article is and what types of information they normally contain.

[06:05] Katie: So academic articles are usually done by researchers at either a university or a company. And the article is just going to include sections like an abstract, an introduction, method section, results section, and a conclusion. To help put this into perspective, we're going to give you a quick example.

[06:22] Sydney: So let's say that you haven't been sleeping very well recently, and you've seen people online talking about how they have a similar problem, but it's gotten better after they started taking certain supplements. So let's say they've been taking magnesium, so you decide, you know, "I should look into if I can take magnesium to make my sleep better." So let's say you go to Google Scholar and you type in "magnesium and sleep." The first thing you want to do is just read through the titles of the studies that come up and click on the one that seems most relevant to what you're looking for. So you might be able to see the entire study, or you might only have access to the abstract, which is okay for the purpose of understanding the overall picture of the study.

[06:59] Katie: So for people who might not be familiar with academic articles, essentially an abstract is just the overall summary of the study itself. It's typically one paragraph and it's going to include all of the most important information about the research study. So it's easy to find, easy to read, and kind of gives you a recap of everything that the study said.

[07:19] Sydney: So if you're trying to find health information, as we said, you should first go to Google Scholar or PubMed and find academic articles. However, Katie and I have both had this experience of trying to figure out something regarding our health, and we go to Google Scholar, we go to PubMed, and it's completely overwhelming because there are so many articles, or maybe sometimes there's not even any articles at all that match what you're looking for. And then for a lot of people, it can be really overwhelming because these articles are in very scientific language. It's even confusing for me sometimes, having a research background, because I don't understand the specific field that I'm looking into. So let's just say for kicks that maybe you try this method of going to Google Scholar or PubMed and you're just way too overwhelmed. And so instead, you want to do something a little bit easier. So Katie, what would you recommend that people do instead?

[08:05] Katie: If PubMed and Google Scholar are overwhelming, what you can do instead is just go to Google and you can type in the same question, but the key here is, once you use that Google search, you really just want to make sure that you're checking the source. So you want to see if that source on Google looks valid and you want to try to use more official websites. So let's say that you're looking up something about medicine for your heart. You're going to want to try to look at a website like the American Heart Association, or a government website, or a medical website, just something along those lines that's more credible because they're going to have links and citations to the studies that they're referencing on that page, and then you could use that information to go and find the academic article if you want to.

[08:48] Sydney: And we're not saying that a medical website or a government website is 100% correct about everything, and that's why you should go to them. But the thing about these websites is they have experts who have already dug through scientific information and dug through scientific articles, and they've kind of summarized it all for you. So it's a really good place to start if you don't have a research background and you don't quite understand all of the methods that these people do. So something that I love to do is to kind of do the best of both worlds. I'll go to Google. I'll try to find a website that seems reliable. It could even be like a WebMD type website, and then I use these websites to help me find the academic articles because they've kind of already dug through the weeds and found the most important articles about a topic. Then I'll look through their website and they'll usually have citations at the end of the study. So if I'm looking up magnesium and sleep, they'll talk about the potential pros and cons, and at the very end, they'll have all the citations of all the studies that they've actually read through and used to write this post. Then after that, I'll take the citation, I'll go into Google Scholar, and I'll look up the citation and I'll read the study myself to determine if I think that the study is saying what they think it says, and if the study is really trustworthy and accurate, and if it's something that I want to use to make my health decision.

[10:05] Katie: So for example, let's say that you are looking up a medication on WebMD, they're usually also going to say, you know, "Here's a study that shows that this medicine works, and here's a study that shows some side effects or maybe some bad things that could come from this medicine." So you'll be able to use the steps that we're going to teach you in future episodes to be able to read both of those studies and potentially decide, "Okay, which study's the strongest, which study means the most to me in this moment? And which route should I go based on the two studies that are showing somewhat opposing things?" So that's something we're going to go into in further episodes, but we just wanted to explain how these resources can be useful to help you make a decision about your health.

[10:46] Sydney: So just as a brief recap of today's episode, the main takeaway is to remember that when it comes to health information, you want to always seek out reliable sources, especially academic articles and scientific studies when you can.

[10:58] Katie: So that wraps up our first episode of Fact Check Your Health. Stay tuned for the upcoming episode where we're going to dive deeper into how to actually decipher what the information means whenever you click on those academic articles. Thanks for joining us on Fact Check Your Health.