Remember That Every Website Has an Agenda
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Wise healtcare consumers who recognize that all websites have a purpose to sell something, whether product or belief, can better recognize hype and hope.
It's fairly easy to recognize the bias of a site whose URL ends in .com (for commercial). What's not so obvious is the bias of those with .edu (education), .org (nonprofit organization), .gov (government), .mil (military), or .net (Internet or miscellaneous). Yet all sites are there for a purpose. Anyone who takes the trouble to put up a website has a reason for doing so. We certainly do!
While commercial sites obviously want to sell you something, even those underwritten by a nonprofit organization or university want you to know about their particular organization, attend their facility, enroll in their classes, encourage you to use their treatment center, and/or donate to their cause.
Wise healthcare consumers who recognize this reality are less likely to automatically accept as fact everything that is written on any site. Even warm and fuzzy stories of courageous survivors of terrible diseases who tell their story online because they want to "share their experience" are likely to believe their conventional treatment, alternative treatment, or non-treatment may work for others.
Granted, the content on government sites reflects officially-sanctioned information and is intended to provide a public service. However, with a million new sites added every month, it is almost impossible to get listed on a government site, where every link needs to be approved by a committee. Therefore, just because a site isn't listed in one of the many Government Sponsored Health Sites doesn't mean it doesn't contain valuable, and accurate, information.
On the other hand, you need to be equally careful about automatically accepting information from sites recommended by experts. For example, when I tried to check on the credentials of a health website that was part of a Wall Street Journal article, I couldn't find anything. The site didn't even tell who provided the answers to their "Ask the Doc" section. This doesn't mean the advice may not have been good, but I'm highly suspicious of any site that doesn't clearly identify its backers. Why don't they want me to know who they are?
A good way to check on the bias of a website is to look for a page called "About Us," "Who We Are," "Our Company," etc.
The bottom line is that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there on the new information highway hawking their wares to cancer patients. Some are legitimate. Some are self-deluded. Some want to delude you. So use your common sense. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, despite the fact that it's available twenty-four hours a day.
Most of all, remember that today no one has a monopoly on health information. Therefore, just as you would check out the accuracy of rumors and testimonials of something you hear on TV or on a radio talk show, check out Internet rumors as well.
© Copyright 1998, Revised 2002, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
