"Search engines such as Google are giving wrong medical advice," data scientists point out.

× Internet service

Search engines such as Google and Bing make it easy for anyone to access a variety of information, but the reliability of the information is because some of the information searched and displayed is incorrect. Must be determined by the individual user. A research team consisting of data scientists from Martin-Luther University Halle Wittenberg in Germany and Ural Federal University in Russia has released a study claiming that "search engines are helping to disseminate false health information." Did.

In general, users tend to trust the pages that appear at the top of the search results, as well as the " snippets " of the text that appears at the same time as the search results. The research team picked up "questions about health information" from 1.5 billion search queries from the Russian search engine " Yandex " using a list of medical terms and alternative medicine terms, and was specifically searched for. We extracted 30 cases that were often found. The 30 cases extracted included folk remedies of medically suspected efficacy, and the research team entered Yandex with questions with these suspected efficacy and searched, and the top 10 cases. I investigated the snippets of the search results. Then, the contents of the snippet were classified into three categories: "when the question content is positive", "when it is negative", and "when neither is the case".

For example, regarding the question "Does celandine work for cancer?", The efficacy of celandine has not been medically proven at all, and on the contrary, celandine is a poisonous herb, so the research team "denies the efficacy. , Complaining about the health risks of poison. " However, when we actually conducted a survey on Yandex, 7 of the top 10 search results provided positive answers, and only one answered negatively. In addition, none of them mentioned health risks. Six of the top 10 search results answered positively and four negatively to the question, "Is garlic effective for toothache?", Which is also not medically proven. Also, regarding the question "Can leeches cure hemorrhoids?", Of course, there is no successful precedent for leeches being used to treat hemorrhoids, and there is a risk of infection with pathogens. I have. However, of the top 10 snippets in the search results, 8 answered positively, the remaining 2 did not answer the question, and none of the search results displayed a negative snippet. Investigation revealed that approximately 44% of the snippets displayed in Yandex provided incorrect information. In addition, only 13% pointed out that it would lead to health risks.

In addition, the research team entered the same question into Google and conducted a similar survey. As a result, it was found that the wrong answer rate of the snippet was 47% for the question sentence with the correct negative, and the wrong answer rate was 32% for the correct question with the positive. From this result, the research team said, "Google did not show as remarkable a result as Yandex," but "I am worried because there is evidence that Google's snippets also have potential health risks." It states. When Fast Company, an IT news site, asked Google about this survey, Google said, "This survey method only looks at snippets that quote short texts from the website, and the website creator and We haven't seen the information that is actually included, so we can't accurately measure the quality of our search results. " In addition, Google said that it was too simplistic to divide the contents of search results for medical-related questions into two items, "affirmation / denial", and claimed that the research method was flawed. According to Google, health information is classified as YMYL (Your Money or You Life) as shown in Google's (PDF file) search quality evaluation guidelines . YMTL is content that may affect the future well-being, health, financial stability, and safety of users, and this search result about YMYL ranks the sites of national, local governments, and news organizations at the top. It is a system. With these search quality assessment guidelines, Google claims that search results for health information are reliable.

However, when the Fast Company searched Google for the question "Is garlic effective for toothache?", 7 of the top 10 search results were on the website of the dental clinic, and "Garlic has gum recovery." It has the characteristics of an antibiotic that promotes it. " Fast Company said, "You may not think that Google needs to address the issues pointed out in the study because it needs to deal with a lot of other misinformation, but who is this? Seems to be a problem to think about. "