Tag Archive for: bots

Be Wary of What You Read

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Did you think about Thursday’s Memo? Especially if you’ve gotten into heated discussions about health on social media? I feel bad for anyone who was a victim of bots and trolls. I generally get the aftermath of a discussion—people who read what I write about vaccinations or artificial sweeteners or some health issue and think I don’t know what I’m talking about because they’ve read something different online. If they’ve been victims of this intentional misinformation, I understand how they’ve been duped.

But don’t think that every bot or troll took the anti-vaxxer position. In order to maximize the argument, they sent out responses supporting vaccination as well. Once an argument began, bots and trolls continued to feed the fire on both sides.

There are two questions that are obvious. Who would do this? And why?

Why Health Information Is Weaponized

Even writing that subhead seems surreal. Who would weaponize health information? Here’s who: people who want to negatively impact our health. Based on the analysis by the researchers, a known Russian troll account from the Internet Research Agency was a major player in this effort to spread vaccine fights. They’re backed by the Russian government; that means they were using disinformation about health as a weapon to create arguments, and more than that, create doubt.

It really doesn’t take much to do that. We are already suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry, and it’s well deserved based on some of their behavior. But that doesn’t mean that they’re in the business of selling worthless vaccinations as has been suggested by many tweets, posts, and websites.

Harming Our Health

What would be the end game for Russian trolls? The goal of creating doubt and suspicion about vaccinations or any issue related to health is sowing discord among readers, but ultimately they want to harm our health. Think about how many people won’t vaccinate their children because they don’t believe in vaccinations for one reason or another. If that proceeds to enough parents, there will be outbreaks of diseases that might have been prevented with vaccinations. It’s already happening.

Think. What if the outbreaks that are occurring in various communities are just the beginning? You can find posts that seem to carefully explain that this is normal and not related to the lack of vaccinations. Now think about it as a post from someone intent on harming the health of the U.S. and other wealthy nations. Puts things in a different perspective, doesn’t it?

The Bottom Line

As someone who writes and speaks about health, I’m deeply troubled by health misinformation and how easily it can be spread. You have to be a wary consumer of health information in these days of social media and the Internet. If what you read or what you hear sounds too good to be true or feeds into some conspiracy theory, keep looking.

Nothing in health is simple, but let me go a step farther. I’ll do my part by checking the research to help keep you informed, and I’ll never push you in a direction I don’t believe in. That’s why I’ll never sell foods or dietary supplements on DrChet.com: I want you to know for sure that what I’m telling you is based on my best reading of science and research, not a ploy to increase my income.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet
Reference: Am J Public Health. August 23, 2018: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567.

 

Of Bots and Trolls

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Have you heard any of these about vaccinations on social media or the Internet?

“Big Pharma only wants vaccine profits.”

“Natural immunity is better.”

“Vaccines cause autism.”

If you’ve read those articles, they seem to be full of truth about vaccinations, don’t they? Did you ever get into a conversation with someone who posted these types of articles? How did it go—especially if you disagreed with them?

Would you be surprised to learn it might not even have been a human doing the answering? It may have been bots or if actual humans, trolls.

Bots are social media accounts that automate content promotion. Trolls are people who misrepresent their identity and post inflammatory remarks with the express purpose of creating discord. The idea is to amplify the arguments to fever pitch so people end up angry at each other. They draw in friends and relatives to get them at each other’s throats with false narratives about health. You could use the same approach with cancer treatment or cholesterol levels.

Researchers at the George Washington University examined Twitter posts between July 2014 and September 2017 and did a computer search of close to two million tweets about vaccines and vaccinations. The most stunning revelation, at least to me, was that 9.3% of all tweets were sent by accounts that could not be verified as automated bots or trolls, yet exhibited malicious behavior by spreading misinformation about vaccines.

We’ll continue this on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: Am J Public Health. August 23, 2018: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567.

 

Are Prenatal Vaccinations Safe?

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Vaccinations for infants and children always inspire debate. Sometimes, fierce debate. Today I’m going to look at a study that examined whether it’s safe for pregnant women to get the tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccination or if it increases the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their babies.

Researchers examined the records of over 81,000 mothers and offspring who were continuously in the care of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Hospitals. They determined which pregnant women were vaccinated with Tdap. Those women and their children along with the women who were not vaccinated with Tdap and their children were monitored for four to seven years.

The rate of ASD diagnosis was 1.4% of the total subjects. The rate for the children was 3.78 out 1,000 per year for those who were exposed to the vaccination and 4.05 per 1,000 per year for those who were not. In other words, there was no impact on the children of the Tdap vaccination during pregnancy. The researchers concluded that the use of Tdap vaccinations was supported during pregnancy.

But my focus isn’t really on the use of vaccinations; you can look at the data and decide for yourself. It’s on the controversy around vaccinations.

Debate is good, especially as it relates to health, and nothing inspires more debate than vaccinations. But are all debates a real discussion of the issues or are they an attempt to create discord? A recent study may give us some insight. More on that Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: PEDIATRICS 14(3) September 2018:e20180120