TORONTO — When Dr. Siobhan Deshauer makes online videos, her primary goal is to demystify medicine. Her secondary goal?
Take one of her medical mystery videos, for example. In it, Deshauer tells the story of a woman who had lead poisoning. Doctors took ages to figure out what was causing her symptoms, but ultimately realized they were a result of lead in the Ayurvedic supplements she was taking. "I brought in the concept of how are supplements regulated and what should you look for when you're buying a supplement? How do you keep yourself safe? That wasn't the topic, that wasn't the title of the video, but someone would walk away learning those things."
The algorithms that feed compelling content to users can bolster those fears, experts said. They tend to boost sensationalized misinformation and generalizations, turning social media sites into a harmful echo chamber for some users, said Timothy Caulfield, a health policy and law professor at the University of Alberta, who has in recent years become one of Canada's loudest voices on the topic.
There are a number of people doing this well, he said. Dr. Jen Gunter, a gynecologist, has been at it for a while, first taking aim at misinformation published by Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness website Goop, and Dr. Samir Gupta is on Instagram and TikTok debunking wellness fads and misinformation. Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator with McGill University's Office for Science and Society, said another tactic involves using anecdotes.
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