On social media, health-related misinformation pops up as relentlessly as furry heads in a game of whack-a-mole. In recent years, posts have claimed that ginger can be “10,000 (times) more effective ” at killing cancer than chemotherapy, that fluoridated water provides “no benefits, only risks ,” and that the measles vaccine is “more dangerous than becoming infected with measles.”

A national survey released in January by Abacus Data and the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) found that false health claims can have a direct impact on patient care. Encountering health misinformation led 35 per cent of respondents to delay seeking appropriate medical care and 29 per cent to avoid effective treatments.

But the sheer volume of social media posts published on a daily basis means health experts hoping to set the record straight face a near impossible challenge – how do you know which claims will sputter out, which ones will gain momentum, and the best way to counteract false messaging?
These are some of the questions researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario hope to answer with a tool used to identify health misinformation on social media .

Named U-MAS, short for UbiLab Misinformation Analysis System, the University of Waterloo research tool is able to track health misinformation patterns before they become potential catastrophes. While the project launched in 2022, development is ongoing. The tool has been used to explore false claims about the war between Russia...

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