Six Tips for Spotting Fake Health News

First confirm the researchers and the organizations are even real. “I do work on trying to identify fraudulent research studies. Sometimes, they have authors that say they are affiliated with the University of Something, and then you look it up, and it’s not even a real university.”

Basically, verify that they are citing a study from a scientific journal that people have heard of, not from some junk journal and not from some unknown blog. “You can tell pretty easily if it’s a real journal by just googling the title. If it has other papers; if it has an editorial board that has some sort of process it describes for reviewing their articles – that’s how we would tell whether it’s a real journal or a junk journal.”

“I’ve found that a lot of times when fraudulent studies are being talked about, they don’t actually say much about the study. They talk more about the authors of the study: and the author said this, and the author said that. But they don’t actually tell you what was done in the study, where the study was done, who the participants were, what the findings were – because there is no study.”

Bero used the hydroxychloroquine claims during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: “A cheap drug with no side effects that cures COVID? First of all, there is absolutely no such thing as a drug with no side effects or that’s totally safe (let alone, one that cures COVID).”

“They’ll say: the majority of scientists say, or scientific societies support, or the majority of people with this disease feel. That should be a tip-off.”

“Those are very suspect. Usually, when the focus is solely a critique of a study rather than reporting on a study, its main objective is to discredit some sort of legitimate research. There’s usually no balance. There’s a lot of cherry picking of the comments to try to attack a legitimate study or scientist.”