Don't Forget, Almost No One Clicks Your #SoMe Links

I've done enough posts now about the dangers of Twitter and social media that I've decided it's worth a blog tag (#SoMe), and so here's the latest.

When you send out a Tweet, please don't forget that the vast, vast, majority of your followers aren't going to click your link (and those that do click, the vast, vast, majority of them probably won't actually read the article they click to). Even if you consider every single Twitter user "engagement" as a link click, I'd bet that for most of your tweets, 5% or less will actually bother to click through.

What that means is that if you're a trusted authority, you owe it to your followers to ensure that your message is the message of the tweet itself. Meaning sharing a hyperbolic headline, or the title of a weak study, without your own qualification in those 140 characters, may lead your followers to believe the hyperbole or that the crappy study you linked to because it was "interesting", was in fact important.

Bottom line, if you think a study's hugely preliminary, say so. If it's an animal model, say so. If you haven't read the actual study, say so. And if it's just bollocks, please don't link to it at all.

Curious about your Twitter Analytics, click here and have a peek.

Read It Before You Tweet It!

I know I've said this before, but I need to say it again. I honestly don't get it.

I don't get how really smart folks, folks trained to critically appraise actual journal articles, folks for who evidence is reported to be extremely important, regularly tweet out press releases without first having read the study.

Press releases are designed for hype and publicity, not for measured and scientifically supportable conclusions.

If you care about your audience, and you also care about evidence, you owe it to both to stop, read the article in question, and link to it in your tweet along with your own 140 character sound-bite.

Read it before you tweet it!

No, I Won't Debate Whether or Not Jell-O Cures Cancer

It's simply too stupid to discuss.

I guess that's the impolite way to explain the "burden of proof" fallacy in which someone, usually a cranky Twitter or Facebook troll, challenges you to prove that their particular position of nonsensical stupid isn't true.

The onus isn't on you to prove that they or their position is idiotic, the onus is on them to prove that it (or they), aren't.

Think Before You Link!

Periodically I put this plea out - especially to those of you with positions of influence in your fields and/or large numbers of friends and followers.

THINK BEFORE YOU LINK!

Before you link to the press release about that study that says chocolate is a weight loss aid, or that dieting raises the risk of developing diabetes, or that low-carb causes heart disease, or that kids with obesity eat less than kids without, take the time to actually read the source article and critically appraise it just as you would with an article whose press release didn't fit your own personal narratives or confirmation biases.

Or at the very, very, least - indicate to your followers that you haven't actually read the study in the tweet or status update itself.

Think before you link - you owe it to those who trust you.

An Open Letter to All Science Bloggers, Tweeps and Facebookers

Photo by Will Lyon, Via Flickr

Dear Colleagues,

That photo up above? That's the state of information on the internet. And us? With our tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates, we're effectively our readerships' valves where our jobs are to turn the torrent into something drinkable.

And being a valve I think comes with a simple obligation.

Before we tweet, post or update with links to, or commentary on, a press release, newspaper article or scientific abstract, I think it's our valvular duty to our readers and followers to read the source story's actual study and evaluate it critically to determine whether or not we're publicizing worthwhile information.

Sadly - and at times we're all guilty of this - many readers and followers don't get past the headline, or the 140 characters, or the update, let alone even make it through a story's first paragraph, and I'd venture nearly none pull and read the source study. Instead they take our link, retweet, or update as confirmation that we agree with the piece and feel that the study was a valuable addition to the literature, and as you all know, despite the existence of peer review, simple publication by no means guarantees quality.

And I know it's incredibly tempting to retweet a press release, news story or a blog post about a study that neatly confirms our own confirmation biases, but please, before we do, it's that much more important for us to first read the actual study and evaluate it just as critically (if not more so) as we would those studies that don't complement our own personal beliefs and narratives.

Now I'm not suggesting that we all have to come to the same conclusions, nor that we're all going to do a bang up job in our critical appraisals, I'm just suggesting that we owe it to our readers to ensure that the information we provide is information that we've personally and carefully curated (or at the very, very, least disclose right off the bat we haven't actually read or evaluated the study at hand).

The fact of the matter is, people follow our work because they trust us and it's up to us to ensure that we're deserving of that trust.

Simply put, you've got to read it before you tweet it.

(P.S. - because this blog post doesn't in fact refer to a particular study, please feel free to share it far and wide without the need for further review)

Warmly,
Yoni Freedhoff

Health care professionals, Twitter, and the Abuse of Public Trust

I had a brief Twitter scuffle this past Friday with a fellow MD.

While I'm all for debate, this one left me concerned. Not because I'm unhappy or unsure of the positions I took, but rather because I realized that Twitter's particularly dangerous when wielded by health professionals.

While I've seen discussions in medical journals and medical forums about the risks of Twitter to such things as patient confidentiality, I think there's a much greater risk when Twitter's wielded by health professionals - patient misinformation.

Physicians and other allied health professionals rightly or wrongly are often inherently trusted by the public. Physicians who tweet will likely collect their own patients as followers along with other members of the public who while not directly under their care, will be looking to them as a purveyor of expertly vetted medical information.

But what if the information isn't expertly vetted?

What if the health professional simply retweets press releases or newspaper articles that fit nicely within the confines of their own personal confirmation biases without taking the time to actually review the press' sourced articles for accuracy and authority?

Unfortunately, institutional press releases and lay press reporting is often lacking in critical appraisal and regularly misrepresents outcomes or simply doesn't appreciate methodological, paper-negating flaws.

Yet if retweeted by a health care professional those misrepresentations and flawed papers may be seen by that person's followers/tweeps as factual.

And hence my tweet up above. While the directive won't protect followers from health care professionals who do a cruddy job of critical analysis, I think it's the very least a health professional can do in protecting their tweeps. Not to do so - well I think that's a frank abuse of public trust.

[Strange after story. Unless there's a Twitter glitch, my co-scuffling MD has deleted our conversation from her timeline]

Twitter's dangerous.

Dr. Jenn Berman is a celebrity psychologist.

Prior to her celebrity status, she spent many years working with eating disordered patients and her doctoral thesis was on, "The Effects of an Eight Week Intuitive Eating Program on Eating Disordered Participants", and she reports that eating disorders are still part of her practice on her official biography.

Yesterday she tweeted,


While I know Dr. Berman recognizes many of the complexities of obesity in modern society, the average Joe/Jane doesn't. They don't think about the psychology of eating, socio-economics, co-morbid medical problems, predatory advertising, environmental obesogens, genetics, the cheap costs of calories, food hyperpalatability, lack of proper nutritional education in our schools, etc., etc. To them, societal obesity is a consequence of us spending too much time eating our proverbial, "chocolate sandwiches". They think it's all about laziness and gluttony, and that parents, "just saying no" and willpower would make this all go away. Though certainly not intentionally, Dr. Berman's tweet reinforced that message.

Given Dr. Berman's professional pedigree, I highly doubted that she meant for her tweet to be taken the way I've spun it above, so I contacted her via Twitter where she replied that was certainly not her intention.

That said, I wonder what her eating disordered patients, some of who also likely struggle with obesity, would think of her tweet, given that without a doubt many of them have seen their struggles amplified by health professionals who've callously and ignorantly, attributed their weights to the consequence of simply eating too many "chocolate sandwiches".

So why am I bothering with this post? Well maybe I'm over-reacting, but according to TweetReach, Dr. Berman's tweet reached nearly 200,000 people, and while certainly some may have taken that comment to be innocent, others certainly had it fuel their own ill-informed biases.

Given her profile, I'm guessing Dr. Berman's tweets carry more weight than the average, and here's hoping that she, and all of us who are enamored with 140 character updates, will remember to think about how those 140 characters might be interpreted before we tweet.

[Great image up above from Jayro Design]