Thursday, December 7, 2023
ISSN 2765-8767
  • Survey
  • Podcast
  • Write for Us
Daily Remedy
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Podcasts
    A conversation with Dr. Lewis, a Pain Specialist who has seen it all

    A conversation with Dr. Lewis, a Pain Specialist who has seen it all

    December 5, 2023
    A follow-on conversation with Drs. Lawhern & Nadeau, delving deeper into opioid mortality statistics

    A follow-on conversation with Drs. Lawhern & Nadeau, delving deeper into opioid mortality statistics

    December 3, 2023
    Joseph Parker

    A conversation with Dr. Parker, a model of physician advocacy

    December 2, 2023
    Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses Flu Season and Trends in 2024

    Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses Flu Season and Trends in 2024

    November 25, 2023
    Drs. Lawhern and Nadeau Explain Overdose Mortality Data

    Drs. Lawhern and Nadeau Explain Overdose Mortality Data

    November 23, 2023
    A conversation with Dr. Gavin Francis

    A conversation with Dr. Gavin Francis

    November 20, 2023
  • Surveys

    Surveys

    Should guided yoga and breathing exercise (pranayama) classes be covered by your health insurance?

    Should guided yoga and breathing exercise (pranayama) classes be covered by your health insurance?

    November 29, 2023
    How often do you distrust healthcare news

    How often do you distrust healthcare news?

    October 30, 2023

    Survey Results

    How strongly do you believe that you can tell when your provider does not trust you?

    How strongly do you believe that you can tell when your provider does not trust you?

    October 16, 2022
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Support Us
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Podcasts
    A conversation with Dr. Lewis, a Pain Specialist who has seen it all

    A conversation with Dr. Lewis, a Pain Specialist who has seen it all

    December 5, 2023
    A follow-on conversation with Drs. Lawhern & Nadeau, delving deeper into opioid mortality statistics

    A follow-on conversation with Drs. Lawhern & Nadeau, delving deeper into opioid mortality statistics

    December 3, 2023
    Joseph Parker

    A conversation with Dr. Parker, a model of physician advocacy

    December 2, 2023
    Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses Flu Season and Trends in 2024

    Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses Flu Season and Trends in 2024

    November 25, 2023
    Drs. Lawhern and Nadeau Explain Overdose Mortality Data

    Drs. Lawhern and Nadeau Explain Overdose Mortality Data

    November 23, 2023
    A conversation with Dr. Gavin Francis

    A conversation with Dr. Gavin Francis

    November 20, 2023
  • Surveys

    Surveys

    Should guided yoga and breathing exercise (pranayama) classes be covered by your health insurance?

    Should guided yoga and breathing exercise (pranayama) classes be covered by your health insurance?

    November 29, 2023
    How often do you distrust healthcare news

    How often do you distrust healthcare news?

    October 30, 2023

    Survey Results

    How strongly do you believe that you can tell when your provider does not trust you?

    How strongly do you believe that you can tell when your provider does not trust you?

    October 16, 2022
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Support Us
No Result
View All Result
Daily Remedy
No Result
View All Result
Home Trends

Transacting Health Information

We find content that supports what we believe and use it to justify our beliefs.

Jay K Joshi by Jay K Joshi
October 23, 2022
in Trends
0
Transacting Health Information

We think of information as something to learn from. But we really use it to verify what we already think to be true, particularly for healthcare. We use healthcare information like a transaction: find some content that supports what we believe and use it to justify our beliefs.

It’s called confirmation bias, and it appears in places where there are few checks and balances on the way we think. This would be the internet. And the process just described would be what most people refer to when they say, “I did my own research”.

We can see the effects of this process repeated over and over by reviewing the most widely trafficked healthcare websites. We’ll see a pattern that reveals how most people consume healthcare content online through the ratio of backlinks to search traffic.

A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. It represents a “vote of confidence” from one site to another. Search traffic refers to the visitors who arrive at a website by clicking on the search results that lead to a website.

Websites that have more search traffic views than backlinks are popular sites that present healthcare content through a polarizing opinion on a controversial healthcare topic. Conversely, websites that have more backlinks than search traffic are sites that are heavily referenced, but not actively searched for online. These sites present healthcare content from medical institutions or accredited thought leaders.

Ideally, the two should align. People should search for sites that have the most backlinks because they are deemed the most credible by the Google search engine overlords. But the two seem to move in opposite directions – at least for the most popular healthcare websites – and it belies a curious behavior among those searching for healthcare content.

The way they search for content does not correlate with the quality of content available.

Many websites, like WebMD or Medscape, format their articles into easily digestible articles. They present content in small paragraphs with short sentences that distill medical information into the simplest terms.

But simplifying healthcare usually entails adding a bias. After all, a bias is a heuristic, a shortcut way of thinking. So naturally biases will appear when healthcare content is simplified.

Take drug interactions among opioids as an example. When most people search for these terms, they use simplified language like ‘mixing’ instead of ‘interactions’. But just a slight change of wording leads to a massive shift in the links that appear in the search query.

When using the word ‘mixing’, we see more sites advertising addiction centers. When using the word ‘interaction’, we see more academically oriented sites, even direct links to clinical studies. These are the articles with a high number of backlinks. Interestingly, they are the sites frequently referenced by the more popular sites that appear when using the search term ‘mixing’.

It’s an example where the way people search affects the actual results. Since our words reflect our thoughts, it’s natural to assume people searching online for healthcare content will gravitate toward content that is predisposed to the way they already think.

It’s how search algorithms are designed to work. But it’s not how credibility is garnered for healthcare content. Sure, there’s some correlation between website credibility and what appears in a search query. It’s detailed in the way Google formats its search algorithm. But there’s a stronger correlation between how websites mirror search phrases and overall search traffic.

To its credit, Google has tried to modify its algorithm to reflect the quality of content instead of just buzz-worthy search terms, but there’s a limit to how effective this can be. That limit represents the bias that innately appears in the search algorithms.

Google uses words and word-sequences to gauge how credible a site is. Those sequences are then logically arranged in a way that conveys information. And Google makes judgment calls based on those arrangements.

But every judgment, no matter how sophisticated, comes with some variability. This is regardless of the quality of the underlying search algorithm. The variability in this case is the differences in the search rankings between the most popular and the most credible sites that arise from using various search terms.

Behavioral economists call this noise, or unwanted variability that comes in any system that makes judgments. Noise is the reason Google’s search algorithms prefer websites that match how people search for healthcare content instead of websites that convey highly credible, objective information about that content.

For each individual search, there may be little noise or variability in the search results. But over time, that variability compounds to where wild fluctuations in search results create massive disparities between links that are popular and those that are credible.

This variability explains why search traffic and backlinks do not match up for high-volume healthcare websites. But more than anything else, it explains why misinformation is so pervasive online. We encourage it, search over search. People searching for healthcare content aren’t focused on the most credible sites. They’re focused on the best ranking sites, which are determined by how they are searching.

They use terms laden with bias, so naturally the results will carry that bias into what appears in the query. It all starts with a slight shift in the way we think that manifests in the way we search for healthcare content. This introduces an initially subtle but growing variability that turns healthcare content from a source of information into a veritable transaction – and turns facts into preconceived value judgments.

ShareTweet
Jay K Joshi

Jay K Joshi

Dr. Jay K Joshi serves as the editor-in-chief of Daily Remedy. He is a serial entrepreneur and sought after thought-leader for matters related to healthcare innovation and medical jurisprudence. He has published articles on a variety of healthcare topics in both peer-reviewed journals and trade publications. His legal writings include amicus curiae briefs prepared for prominent federal healthcare cases.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Videos

Dr. Adalja shares his thoughts on the current flu season and future trends in viral infectious diseases. He talks about vaccine misinformation and what he expects to see in 2024.

Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an Affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.

https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/who-we-are/our-people/amesh-adalja-md-fidsa

Twitter: @AmeshAA

Instagram: @ameshadalja


#COVID #RSV #influenza #misinformation #disinformation #vaccines #trust
Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses Flu Season and Trends in 2024
YouTube Video rSipAzS4d90
Subscribe

How does Congress learn about health issues?

Visuals

A Two Headed Monster - State Attorneys General and the Drug Enforcement Agency

DEA driven production cuts of prescription opioids

by Jay K Joshi
November 15, 2023
0

We highlight a figure from patient advocate, Monty Goddard's article, A Two Headed Monster – State Attorneys General and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Read more

Twitter Updates

Tweets by DailyRemedy1

Newsletter

Start your Daily Remedy journey

Cultivate your knowledge of current healthcare events and ensure you receive the most accurate, insightful healthcare news and editorials.

*we hate spam as much as you do

Popular

  • Unraveling How Patients Lose Credibility with Their Physicians

    Unraveling How Patients Lose Credibility with Their Physicians

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • A Call to Action for Pain Patients and Advocates

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • A Two Headed Monster – State Attorneys General and the Drug Enforcement Agency

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Focusing on the Jury Instruction on Drug Conspiracy at My Trial

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Healthcare is Health Justice

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • 628 Followers

Daily Remedy

Daily Remedy offers the best in healthcare information and healthcare editorial content. We take pride in consistently delivering only the highest quality of insight and analysis to ensure our audience is well-informed about current healthcare topics - beyond the traditional headlines.

Daily Remedy website services, content, and products are for informational purposes only. We do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All rights reserved.

Important Links

  • Support Us
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions

Newsletter

Start your Daily Remedy journey

Cultivate your knowledge of current healthcare events and ensure you receive the most accurate, insightful healthcare news and editorials.

*we hate spam as much as you do

  • Survey
  • Podcast
  • About Us
  • Contact us

© 2023 Daily Remedy

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Podcasts
  • Surveys
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Support Us

© 2023 Daily Remedy

Start your Daily Remedy journey

Cultivate your knowledge of current healthcare events and ensure you receive the most accurate, insightful healthcare news and editorials.

*we hate spam as much as you do