An Immunologist Offers Tips for Assessing Science and Health Info on the Internet
I understand how difficult it can be to make choices that affect your family’s health. Conflicting information can be found everywhere and has become even more abundant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Being skeptical and learning as much as we can before we make important decisions is a good thing but researching information regarding our health and well-being can be complicated. Today’s world is filled with conflicting information online, in the media, and among peers and family members — it’s hard to know which sources are accurate and reliable. Conflicting information during the pandemic has also come from scientists and medical experts.
It’s important to know that science is always evolving.
At the start of the pandemic, scientists like me knew just as much as the general public. Until we (scientists) started collecting and analyzing clinical data and doing experiments with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, we had very little information about how the virus worked and how it spread. The more we learned, the more information we had to make recommendations for the health and well-being of our communities. I know it was (and still is) frustrating. I was right there with you. Mask or no mask? Wipe down the groceries, let them sit without being touched for a day or load them into my cupboards right away? We didn’t know.
What we do know is that the more we learn about the virus, the more information we have to make and update our recommendations. Sometimes new information leads us to revise an earlier recommendation. This is even more complicated as variants emerge that act and work a little bit differently than the original virus.
You can think of variants as kids. While kids have the same genetic information as their parents — it’s a little bit of a mixture with some unique changes — it often results in a human that looks and acts differently. This is the same with viruses. It means that we, as scientists, are always chasing after the newest variant of the virus to learn as much as we can to update our recommendations to the general public based on the most recent clinical and scientific data.
We all want to do what’s right and make the best decisions possible. With all the conflicting messages we see in the media, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and maybe even be led down a path of inaccurate and sometimes harmful information. The internet and endless number of social media outlets (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) have made finding credible information challenging. Anyone who wants to share their message with the world has the ability to do so. This means that experts and non-experts alike have found an equal voice in the wild world of the internet and social media.
This is where I come in; I’ll use my expertise as a scientist and my experience as an science communicator and educator to help you distinguish between the facts and fake news.
What can you do to make sense of conflicting information?
How can you find information that comes from credible sources and experts who are sharing their expertise to empower you to make decisions based on facts and the truth?
Here are four quick tips that I always use to help me decipher facts from fakes news:
1. Check my emotions. Does what I just read or watched make me feel strong emotions?
2. Check the author. Is the author an expert in the field? Does the author have experience and/or training in the area for which s/he is writing about?
3. Check the source. Is this a reputable source? Is it source that medical doctors and scientists would use to get and/or share information?
4. Check the references. Does the article or video share the source of information?
My motivation to share these tips came from a Letter to the Editor the St. Paul Pioneer Press published on Aug. 28 titled, “Ongoing debate on vaccines for kids.” As a PhD immunologist for over 20 years, I can tell you that there is no debate in the medical community about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. We agree that vaccines are one of the greatest medical advancements in existence and they have saved millions, if not billions, of lives. The author of the letter shared a YouTube channel from an individual who is not an expert in the field of medicine and, contrary to what was stated in the opinion piece, is not “respected by persons on all sides of the COVID issue.”
How did I figure this out?
Let’s use that YouTube video recommendation (which I will not list here for reasons stated above) as an example and go through my list of four quick tips together.
1. Check my emotions. How did this YouTube video make me feel?
The video was definitely created to spark strong emotion. It was designed to invoke fear and anger; the author conveyed that he was revealing information that the medical establishment did not want the public to know. The desired outcome was to inspire fear and anger against the medical establishment but trust in him, since he was (allegedly) letting us in on a secret.
2. Check the author. Who is this person? What makes him an expert?
After a little digging, I found out that he is not a medical doctor or a biologist. He also has no training in immunology, vaccine biology or infectious disease. He calls himself a doctor because he has a PhD in the study of open education resources. Having a PhD does make it legitimate to call oneself “doctor” (as I know from personal experience) but his expertise and training are not in the area this video was focused on — COVID and vaccines. Bottom line is that he is not an expert in the field that was the focus of the YouTube video.
3. Check the source. Is this a reputable source of information? Is this a source that scientific experts would use to find factual information?
No. YouTube is not a source that medical doctors or scientists use to gather factual information. The most legitimate sources of information about infectious disease and medicine used to treat them come from science articles that are published in scientific journals, medical textbooks, and reputable academic and medical institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Although YouTube can be a source for factual information, much of the time when scientific information is revealed on YouTube, it is coming from people who are not experts and do not have the scientific data to get their news published in a reputable source.
Can YouTube be a source of factual information? Absolutely! Scientists and medical professionals use YouTube as a communication tool to disseminate information about exciting new developments in disease treatments and research studies that have been published in scientific journals. Furthermore, there are fascinating YouTube videos created by music professors discussing the elements of music theory, mechanics explaining how braking systems work, chefs talking about the latest and most innovative cooking techniques, and so much more! YouTube is an audiovisual library filled with hours of informative and entertaining videos. To figure out if the YouTube video you are watching is factual, go back to Tip #1 (check emotions) and Tip #2 (check the author).
4. Check the references. Are there any references listed? If so, what are they, and are they reputable and valid?
First item of business here, if there are no references listed, that’s a red flag. For our investigation, this video did use a reference known as a “pre-print.” In science, pre-prints are versions of articles that communicate the results of scientific findings that have just happened but have not yet been validated and reviewed by other scientific experts through a process called peer review.
Peer review is a big deal in science. It is the process by which science experts in the same field as the author of the paper, but who are not part of the study, scrutinize the data and determine if the findings in the paper are accurate and valid. Peer review is the process in science by which we determine if the scientific findings are fact or fake news. Pre-prints have not yet undergone this intense scrutiny and should not be accepted as fact. It’s kind of like telling all your buddies about a huge fish you caught without having any witnesses with you on the fishing excursion. It could be true but could also be fake news.
During the early days of COVID, pre-prints were valuable to the medical community. The peer review process is time-consuming and when we needed to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, pre-prints allowed us to do so. Those of us trained in science could distinguish good data from bad data by analyzing the methods and statistical analysis in the pre-prints. We know from years of training which pre-prints had information that might be valid. We also know that pre-prints need to go through peer review and only those that go on to publication in a scientific journal would prevail as fact. Those that did not, would be chalked up to fake news.
Walking through the four quick tips together, we found out that:
1. The video sparked strong emotion (even for a Minnesotan)
2. The author is not an expert in COVID, vaccines, or pandemics
3. The source is YouTube, which is not an accepted platform for the communication of scientific information
4. The reference is a pre-print, which can be a source of information but has not yet undergone the scrutinous peer review process and should not be accepted as fact
Using the 4 quick tips, the result of our investigation suggests this is not a valid source of information and we should not accept this particular YouTube video as accurate.
As a scientist and educator, I encourage you to remain curious and skeptical when it comes to your health and decisions that will impact your life and the lives of your loved ones and the greater community. Knowledge is power. As you do your own research to learn as much as possible before making important decisions regarding your health and the health of your family, keep in mind the four quick tips listed above. Distinguish fact from fake news by remembering that credible information rarely comes from sources that evoke strong emotion, people who are not experts in the field of which they write, in a YouTube video, and without references from credible sources.
For more information on how to become a pro at deciphering facts from fake news, I encourage you to visit the News Literacy Project (https://newslit.org/about/) website.
For more information about how vaccines work with the immune system to train our bodies to fight infectious diseases, check out my “Immunology 101” blog series at Immunize Colorado Team Vaccine (immunizecolorado.org/understanding-the-immune-system-how-vaccines-protect-us/).
