Somewhere along the way, I began to notice that I developed a really low tolerance for the abuse of legitimate research and statistics in an effort to garner a great headline. When I see these headlines, I’m usually among the first to dig into the "research" and figure out the real story. What’s missing? What methods were used? Do the actual conclusions match the headlines?

[...]

So, what’s the actual number? How many people actually use social media for healthcare information? I looked to Pew Research and Susannah Fox for this since I’ve been through nearly every single one of their studies and dissected each and consistently find the highest standards of research practices. I asked Susannah about her views on the National Research study and she had this to say: "It worries me that people are so eager to promote a sensational headline. The goal of research should be to help people make good decisions based on sound data. Facebook is not a dominant source for health information. Not even close."



Read More