US "cyberchondriacs" do not check on-line sources

Three quarters of US adults who regularly search for health care information on-line (sometimes known as "cyberchondriacs;" Marketletter August 7) do not check the source and date to verify the data's quality, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The research also found that 10 million US residents, or 7% of the country's Internet users, perform on-line searches for information about diseases, treatments, prescription drugs and other health-related issues.

Most respondents were said by Pew to be using general search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and the survey's author, Susannah Fox, claimed that the failure of people to examine sources and dates of data was because "web sites aren't listing it." Adriana Cronin-Lukas, a social media expert who advises firms about on-line communication, said the problem was probably a lack of sophistication among early Internet users. She said: "by using Google and Yahoo's advanced search options, limiting the responses to, say, three months is easy. Some search engines list results by date or importance. Bloggers and the better media outlets link directly to their sources and have time stamps."