Influencers Mislead to Hawk 5 Medical Tests You Don’t Need

Fear-mongering non-experts leave out the science, aiming to pick 200 million pockets

“Social media is an open sewer of medical misinformation.”
— Ray Moynihan, PhD

Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license.

So maybe it’s time for a full-body MRI scan, as Kim Kardashian suggests. You know, see how things are inside, whether you might be about to die. Or maybe a testosterone-level check will reveal what you’ve long suspected, whatever it is. Heck, might as well survey your unimpregnated eggs while you’re at it, so you can count them before they hatch.

Or maybe not.

Those three largely unnecessary medical tests—along with multi-cancer early detection tests and gut microbiome tests—are heavily promoted on TikTok and Instagram by influencers aiming to make money, at any cost. That’s pretty much all you need to know, end of story. But in case you’re actually thinking of pursuing one of these tests, you’ll want to know that the influencers are often pitching you a bunch of hooey without really knowing the medical science behind the product and while sidestepping mention of side effects.

We know this because researchers analyzed 982 posts about medical tests, by influencers who have a…