How do we deal with falsehoods propagated about health on the internet?

Carol Rumack, M.D., University of Colorado, says experts have a responsibility to participate in online conversations.

Transcript

I think the residents have a huge amount of knowledge about using electronic devices and really engage immediately with iPads, with everything. My concern really has to do with not understanding that the Internet is not filled with experts. So there's a lot of people who proclaim you should eat this kind of supplement, or you should take this pill, who have no expertise in medicine. The Internet has a lot of bad information as well as good information, and I don't think patients know what brand is good.

As a radiologist, I'm very interested in innovation. I'm interested in PET scans. I'm interested in anything that gets me more imaging, but there has to be somebody to interpret any information that you get. So I think that that's the slowdown I would have is it's exciting, but maybe you don't what to know your genome if there's no cure for that disease. You have to be cautious about the advances of technology.